I thought it was a little strange that I hadn’t seen any posters for it anywhere in Barcelona, but when Xavi said that he was going to an Alanis Morissette concert last weekend everyone said, “Cool! Let’s go!” Actually, the lack of advertisements was very strange considering the fact that Molotov – a little band from Mexico – had the city plastered for their “Fuck You Puto Baboso” Tour. But we were all excited nonetheless. We gathered about 10 of our closest friends and made our way to el Palau de San Jordi where the “concert” was being held. Xavi handed us our tickets and I couldn’t help but notice the simple fact that Alanis’ name was nowhere to be seen. Hmmm. Instead it said something about the first annual Festival de Solidaridad. OK. Maybe she’s doing a benefit, right? We get inside and the place kinda looks like a mini Madison Square Garden. Very nice. We make our way up to the “nose-bleed” section (the only area we were permitted with our cheap tickets) and find programmes waiting for us on our seats. Surprise surprise, she’s there! But so are about 10 other artists, half of which I’d never heard of. The half I did know consisted of people like Elvis Costello, Veruca Salt, and Jarabe de Paulo (a Spanish singer I really like). This was a benefit to stop using mines in third world countries. What the heck were we doing there? It looked like it was going to be a very long night. We were all psyched up for an Alanis concert! But, right before the show started, one of the gate guards came up to us and asked us if we wanted to move our seats down to the floor (the expensive seats) because the show was going to be televised and it would look bad if all of the seats weren’t filled. We said “Sure!” and were escorted down to the VIP seats for a veritable front-row view of the show. Four rounds of beer later and the show was starting to pick up. Alanis only did two songs but we ended up on Spanish national television!