OK, so before we even get started, I’m going to cop to the fact that the folks had a point.

Of course if they pay good, hard-earned American cash to see a good, hard-earned American concert featuring a trio of good, hard-earning rock bluesmen like the members of ZZ Top, they darned well expect to be able to SEE said show.

Not arguing. Much. Yet.

But jeez, people, why spend your good, hard-earned American cash if you’re just going to sit there and quietly applaud, in between screaming at the rest of us to sit down? Can’t you maybe just stay home and listen to the CD in your good, hard-earned American living room instead and let the rest of us dance in our seats?

I’m sorry, but they just made me mad.

Friday night. We’re seated in the cheap seats toward the back of the L.B. Day Amphitheatre. First bars of the show. Billy Gibbons slides into the opening chords of “Gimme All Your Lovin’” and just about all 9,000 or so people leap up, yelling, clapping, singing along.

Not the people behind us. “Sit down!” they began hollering in unison. “SIT DOWN!”

I ignored them for the first few hollers. Eight rows deep in front of us, all the people were standing. Finally, when they continued to yell at me, I turned and gave them what I thought was a friendly, helpless shrug, nodding at the folks in the rows ahead. “You see the problem,” I commented.

“Yeah, I see the problem,” the man snarled. “In fact ” – raising his voice to carry to the middle section of the amphitheatre – “I see a WHOLE BUNCH OF PROBLEMS. SIT DOWN! SIT DOWN!”

Confused, people around me started looking here and there. When they finally lighted on the yelling guy and his wife, or whoever, they did, in fact, sit down.

Except one guy. One poor guy about four rows in front of me kept bobbing spastically up and down. He wasn’t even blocking their line of sight, best I could see. But the couple behind me kept heckling him until finally somebody next to him spoke to him and he sat down.

Every so often throughout the concert, however, he would bob up again, seemingly just to clap and dance for a second or two. The couple behind us would laugh hysterically at him and point and then start yelling again, and he would sit.

“Give the guy a break,” I wanted to say. “He’s just having a good time! Can’t you join us all in having a good time?”

But I didn’t. I gritted my teeth and tried to concentrate on the music.

The band left the stage after about an hour and a half. We stood (the whole arena stood, Nasty Couple included) and yelled and cheered and whistled and stomped, like you’re supposed to do when you’re asking for an encore. The couple behind us didn’t yell at anyone – probably because the band had left the stage – but as soon as they came back and picked up their instruments, they commenced their “SIT DOWN!” hollers again.

Husband, who isn’t even particularly into the whole dancing-in-the-aisles routine – that’s usually my department – had had enough. His act of civil disobedience at that point was simply to remain standing, regardless of their yelling, and ignore them. Most, although not all, of the people around us meekly settled in their seats again, but Husband remained stubbornly on his feet. And I stayed on mine, too.

Eventually the woman tapped me. “Sit down!” she demanded. (Point in this couple’s favor: They never swore at anybody. They never said “please,” either, but that apparently didn’t occur to them.)

As politely but as firmly as I could, I said, “You know, there’s seats right in front of us” – I indicated – “and nobody’s sitting in them. Nobody has sat in them all night. Why don’t you move up here?” And I kept standing.

“Sit down!” the man yelled at me. Husband continued to play the deaf game. I repeated my invitation, pointing to the row ahead (the L.B. Day has long metal benches for seats, not individual chairs).

“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll just come and stand right in front of you!” the man yelled.

“Go right ahead,” I said, again, as politely as I felt I could under the circumstances. “It’s open. You go right ahead.”

After a few minutes of fuming, the man did just that. “At least you gave me an option,” he said grudgingly.

And he sat. While all the people in several rows in front of him, including the one spastic bobbing guy, stood for the three- or four-song encore and sang along. Presumably his lady friend did the same behind me, but I refused to turn around to look.

And then the show was over and we left, as quickly as we could, out the first exit we could find that was as far away from these people as we could get.

I’m betting some of you are saying to yourselves as you read this, “Man, I hate it when people stand in front of me, too. I want to see the show! Good for these folks for shouting down those yahoos; they were being inexcusably rude !”

And I say to you, OK yeah, sure, at a movie theater or a stage play, at the symphony or at your kid’s Christmas concert.

At a rock show? I’m sorry, I have utterly no sympathy for you. Buy a front-row ticket. Shift over a few inches on your metal bench. Maybe try asking, nicely, if perhaps the people in front of you could move just a smidge? Better yet, stand up and join in the fun! The best part of a concert is that giant wave of energy generated by thousands of people so into the artists’ music that they would pay extra money to see them live.

I can hear my mother’s comment now: “Maybe they were handicapped and couldn’t stand for long periods of time. You should have more compassion.”

Of course I should, but I don’t. I was, and remain, more than a little angry at these people for ruining what had promised to be a fine outdoor concert experience, not just for me but for everybody around us.

“What a couple of lame-ass concertgoers,” was Husband’s comment as we left that evening.

Hope we never meet again.