First, let it be said that Boyfriend Nik and I had a great time on Saturday at the Weakerthans show at the Burt. According to a friend of ours, they were shooting material for a dvd release and I’m certain they got some really great material as it was just an awesome show. I  feel like I enjoy them more and more every time I see them. If you haven’t heard of them (meaning you’re probably not from Winnipeg), give the video above a watch/listen to. Tournament of Hearts, it’s one damn poignant curling song.

However, although the Constantines are a fine band, I found myself getting bored during their opening set and started drifting off. I’ve found that in these situations, where talking to my boyfriend would be a bit rude, I like to invent little games in my head to play. Saturday’s game was “Count the Plaids”. Now, I love plaid, and own a few shirts of my own. But as I looked down at the crowd at the front of the theatre, I couldn’t help but imagine the crowd shots on the Weakerthans dvd as just being a sea of plaid. Probably about half the audience on the floor, men and women, was wearing plaid or some kind of plaid-variant. It was a bit freaky.

The whole thing with the plaid reminded me of my previous hipster-counting game, “Count the Unnecessary Scarves” and prior to that, “Count the Skinny Jeans Paired with Ballet Flats”. And I started thinking that you can spot fashion trends that are exclusive to certain musical genres at just about any concert you go to. I’ll post some examples here and maybe some folks can help me fill in the list in the comments.

• Toby Keith (Country) – Mullets, nah, too easy. Try looking for NASCAR or “9-11, Never Forget” gear.
• Britney Spears (Pop) – Count the number of bangles on girls’ wrists, then work out the average BPG (Bangles Per Girl).
• 50 Cent (rap variants… no, Kanye is NOT rap, he’s barely pop at this point) – Figure out the average difference between the size of jeans people are wearing versus the size they actually should be wearing. Note the inverse relationship between the mens’ and womens’ sizes (too big vs. too small).
• Broken Social Scene (indie) – Besides the plaid game above, you can also count the number of girls with side-swept bangs and unkempt hair. Also, the number of guys with poorly grown facial hair.
• Nickelback (crap-rock) – You should never be at a Nickelback show. There’s no acceptable reason for that.

Okay, now you do some!