When I bought our $20 lawn tickets to see Pentatonix at the Lakeview Amphitheater a few months ago, I figured we’d use our annual trick of trading up to pavilion seats the night of the show.

So my dear wife Karen and I left our bag chairs home when we took the Centro bus from the satellite lot at Long Branch Park to the New York State Fair, switched at the main gate for a bus to the Orange Lot and onward and were met by … a very long line of fellow Pentatonix fans.

Uh-oh.

Three buses pulled up to the circle at once, and still we had to stand.

The line to get to the entrance of the Amp was already thousands of people long, even though organizers were wise enough to have it split in two, bus people to the left, parking lot people to the right.

When we made our way past the search and ticket-taking, along the walkway and to the table where in past year we’d accomplished the trade-up for seats inside, there indeed were two women sitting there.

But …

No seats were to be had. They were only offering standing-room-spots in the pit.

Fortunately, there was a tent offering rental chairs for five bucks a pop. We took a pair.

We found a grassy location with a good view of the screen, then took turns going off to the stands for our dinner. Couldn’t leave those rental chairs unattended or else others might claim them, right?

I captured the sunset and the building crowd as Karen picked up her chicken tenders and fries.

There were two openers before the headliner. I thought that was one too many. But the crowd, a cool collection of many generations, liked both first-up Calum Scott and the act I preferred, middle band Echosmith.

Family band Echosmith had fans lighting up the night with their phones. My favorite song was about the cool kids. Everybody had that feeling in school, each decade right to my years quite far back.

The crew worked fast to get the headliner on the stage.

The fans were psyched.

The moonrise overhead proved to be as pretty as the sunset had been.

I figured the crowd well into five figures when Pentatonix came on.

And with just their five voices, they delivered in a big, big way.

Enjoy how I caught their opening piece, Sing, with my iPhone 8.