By Andy Tarnoff Publisher Published Jul 17, 2013 at 10:22 AM

This isn’t a review of last night’s Paul McCartney show at Miller Park. For that, I’ll direct you to be colleague Bobby’s excellent piece that he filed before I even got home.

No, this is what it was like to be at my first McCartney show. To see a legend. From the worst seats I’ve ever sat in.

I’d like to say that seeing my first major stadium show from the distant Section 209 didn’t diminish the experience, but it did. It didn’t ruin it, by any means. Even though we could hear the music perfectly, only if we squinted could we see a tiny Sir Paul. Most of the action was watched on the humungous vertical monitors. It felt a bit like watching a concert on TV.

The distance also took away from the experience a little. While the thousands on the field were standing and rocking out, the crowd in the seats – as far as I could see – remained seated except for the two encores.

On the plus side, we could walk around and check out different vantage points, and talk about what we were hearing without screaming in each others’ ears.

Obviously, I’m extremely spoiled by having great seats, via OnMilwaukee.com, at pretty much every show I see. So these $100 crappy seats were quite the anomaly. But even though it wasn’t as great as it could’ve been, it was still pretty great – and it allowed me to focus on the details I might not have noticed from the field:

Like the thousands of glowing cell phones, attempting to record the show – probably in vein. Or the happy, mellow, sweaty crowd in the hottest Milwaukee night I can remember. Or the vast age range of the audience. Or the amazing stage set up. Or, the lack of pot wafting around (until the very end). Or the fact that I ran into my next door neighbors three rows behind us. Or the fact that Paul, 71, didn’t take a sip of water during the three-hour show.

Based on what I read on social media, the entire Metro Milwaukee area was at the McCartney concert last night. Obviously, this was a huge, seminal show for Milwaukee, one that people will be talking about for years to come.

Cheap seats and all, I’m so glad I was there. It certainly was a different type of concert experience for me, and it could’ve been better, but I left very, very happy. I still am this morning.

Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.

Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.

Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.