Bringing the Drama

so probably a month or so ago i noticed the Reba McEntire/Kelly Clarkson tour was going to be hitting Biloxi. i didn’t really know who to ask, because all the people who i went with to see KC two summers ago live far away. last Sunday in Sunday School, i brought up the show, and as soon as the words left my lips two girls went “OMG! FOR REAL?” newly listed last week was a 4 pack of tickets that lowered the per ticket price from $47 and $57 to $25, take that TM! (of course after the fees they were $35 each)

i knew the show would not be as cool as the last time i saw KC. that weekend will go down as one of the greatest weekends ever. nothing was going to come close to my friend Mike and i wearing American flag bandanas, nothing was going to be as great as jumping and flailing about during the show. sure, The Reeb would be there but really, would all of the fun?

i met the girls i was going with at the carpool meetup spot and we set off for the coliseum. immediately upon getting there we were stuck in traffic. the people directing traffic were not professionals and that getting out would be a nightmare. i parked on the last row of the parking lot, avoiding being blocked in. i’m not sure who suggested it (not me) that to kill time after, we could go wait by the tour buses. i figured that would be fine, since it would be either that or sit in the car for 30 minutes.

when we got inside we walked up to our seats, and saw it wasn’t really that crowded. we watched the opening act, who was the girl who played Barbara Jean on Reba’s show doing a comedy act. it was alright, but most of what she said was how cool Reba was, which got old after a while. the lights went down and Reba and Kelly took the stage! after the 2nd song (Why Haven’t I Heard From You?) we moved down to seats opposite the stage, so we had a great view of the video screen and everything. after we moved down there, i saw plenty of other people move. why sit in the $25 seats when you could move down to the seats twice as expensive?

the show was a lot of fun, and they both went through their major hits and some covers. KC only did two songs off her newest album, which was kind of surprising. she of course did the big hits off Breakaway, and i noticed Reba learned the words to a few songs this time since i saw her with KC on Crossroads. i only knew 5 or so Reba songs before the show and she did all of those. they also did some older Reba songs which probably made the older people in the crowd happy. you could tell Reba was really good at telling stories between songs, but Kelly wasn’t. there were a lot of old ladies in the crowd, so when Kelly would say something that she probably thought was funny, it would feel awkward because the older people wouldn’t really cheer.

they finished the main set having not sung “Since U Been Gone” or “Fancy”. you knew they HAD to do both of them. so the crowd’s cheering, and the arena is dark, and then the bands come on stage and start playing music that ended up being SUBG. Reba and Kelly emerged back to back from a riser at the top of the stairs. OMG! they sang it and everyone’s going crazy, and then they started Fancy. the entire crowd is up on their feet screaming and yelling and singing. the lights on the stage are at their peak, and then they finished. it was amazing!

after the show, we sat in our seats as the crowd was leaving. there were so many hair and fashion disasters, it was almost hard to believe. i went past the merch booth on the way out and while there saw a guy with a Reba tour shirt and i think it said either 1991 or 1998 (is either okay?). he was telling the girl he was with, which shirts he saw that he already had. it was kind of scary. he kind of looked like the brother from Napoleon Dynamite. after we walked outside, we saw the insane amount of traffic, so we walked around to find the tour buses. there were probably 30-40 other people back there, including one group of ladies who i think were intentionally trying to channel Reba. they all had sequin type shirts on and that mid to late 90s Reba haircut. i almost asked to get a picture with one of them, but i didn’t. the security guards were kind of jerks and made up stories to get everyone to leave. i felt bad, because most of the people back there seemed to be normal people who just wanted to catch a glimpse of their heroine (Reba). by the time the tour bus drama ended, the traffic had cleared out, so we hopped in the car and headed home.

the new Ryan Adams album, Cardinology, came out today. i have been listening to the album via the stream from facebook a lot since it debuted last week. i love these songs. i haven’t really loved an album so fast before. hearing the songs live just flipped my anticipation for the album into overdrive. i emailed friends during the day at work to talk about it or sat listening to the stream and IMing friends about how good the songs were and gushing about the lyrics. it got a bit ridiculous.

finally today, i was able to go buy the cd (the vinyl is on order and won’t be here for a few more days). i didn’t have any issues getting it at best buy this afternoon, which was nice. i’ve had issues before trying to get new releases because most of the time the workers at BB suck at music. i went running tonight, and ate dinner when i got back. now i’m relaxing with some hot chocolate (it’s getting down to 35 tonight!) before bed listening to the album. what a great way to end the day.

Ryan Adams road trip 2008 Night 2, 10/17/2008

so the morning of the ATL show, i drove up to Birmingham to meet up with my friend Susan and then drive to ATL. in order to waste time, i ate at a Subway near her house (have y’all tried the chicken pizzalorio [pizaloria, pizzaiola?] yet? it’s a $5 foot long and worth every penny). then i sat in my car, read my Bible, sent texts, then called someone to gush about the show the previous night. i could not stop thinking about the new songs. Susan called me to let me know she finally got home, i met her at the house, and we left, with what we thought was PLENTY of time to get to Atlanta. little did we know how things would change.

i drove her car so that she could catch up on sleep, and everything’s going fine. traffic is moving well, i was on my way to another Ryan Adams show, what could go wrong? i’ll tell you what could go wrong! traffic came to a stand still somewhere around Anniston, and for the next hour, we were basically stopped. STOPPED! i must say on my drive from home up to Tuscaloosa the previous day i saw two 18 wheeler wrecks, one in which the truck had flipped off into the trees in the median, and another where the truck had turned over spilling what looked to be bags of rice. both of these accidents were on a sunny day, last Friday was kind of dreary. i figured with the traffic stopped, there must be something major. after an hour, we finally got moving, and the way the interstate was set up, the three lanes merged to two for construction. normally this is not a major deal until there is an older man in a white minivan who is stalled in the right lane. STALLED IN THE RIGHT LANE IN A CONSTRUCTION AREA! this man appeared to not know the rules of trying to move your car off of the roadway when we passed. i blew the horn at him. Susan called the stalled vehicle in to the highway patrol so they could maybe GET HIM OFF THE ROAD! as we went further down the road we saw a massive accident of i think two 18 wheelers which was pulled off into the median. the traffic going the other way was at a crawl, but eastbound I-20 was moving smoothly. we deserved it!

because of the traffic mishap, we had to skip stopping at Jeff and Adriene’s and went straight to the venue. we stopped for Chick-Fil-A at the same exit we were getting off at, and got to the parking lot at 8:20 (or something like that). we made our way inside, and i stopped at the merch booth to get my poster. while in line i was able to weigh in on a conversation about the new songs with the people in front of me. i thought they were cool, until the couple in front of me decided to buy 2 shirts, and have to check sizes on each, and then kind of also think about getting a poster, but then not, then rethink if one of the shirts they got was the right size OMG JUST BUY YOUR STUFF AND MOVE! it was 8:32 by this point, i was trying to play it cool and not freak out, but these people, seriously were pushing on my nerves. the guy behind me had been making comments to me about if i was going to be able to buy my stuff and move ASAP when i got to the front, and i told him i was ready. i also bought a shirt, and i knew the size when i got to the front. also, the guy asked me if i was on the Archive, which i told him i was. we exchanged user names, but i honestly forgot his. his g/f (i guess?) kind of rolled her eyes at us. i thought meeting people from the internet was not considered weird anymore? i made my way to my seat with about a minute to spare.

the show started and the band sounded spectacular. the venue was an open air ampitheatre which seemed to have been built recently, so the acoustics were great.

they started with Born Into A Light and kept rolling with a fantastic Cobwebs. when i first had heard that song, i didn’t really know what to think, but after seeing it live i really started to love it. the show kept building though, Bartering Lines was insane. Wonderwall was AMAZING! i was a little distracted in Tuscaloosa for this song, because ‘that’ girl got up twice DURING the song, but in ATL, all the people around me were staying in their seats. it was awesome. after they did Off Broadway, Ryan said something about his voice going out, and he was sorry, but they were going to do their best. this was the last show of the US headlining tour, i was hoping they were going to play extra long, so the voice thing didn’t sound too good. the weird thing was, then they played The Sun Also Sets, which is a hard song to sing the way he does live. i didn’t understand, but i appreciated the effort to give us the full experience. between songs Ryan mentioned the voice thing, which after being repeated, i started to feel the show was going to be cut short. after Shakedown, he finally apologized for what seemed like the 20th time, and said he felt humiliated, but he was not going to be able to go on. i felt bad for him, because he kept apologizing, and his posture was just one of defeat. when he said that was it, the band kind of looked at him puzzled, and reluctantly followed his lead and left the stage.

Susan and i figured maybe he’d go drink some tea with honey, or the band would convince him to come back on and sing quieter songs that wouldn’t be so taxing on his voice. he had sung the regular songs without changing the setlist in spite of his voice issues, which made me wonder why he did that. people started booing. and then it got louder. we were going to wait until they started taking everything apart though, which they hadn’t yet. i figure it was about 10 minutes or so before the houselights came on. the roses on the backdrop were still lit though, and we figured once they turned those off that would be the end for real. the people booing kept saying things like they wanted a refund, or that they should have known this would happen. i was more sad about what could have happened than what should have happened. they had sounded so great, i was disappointed for it to end like that. about 15 minutes after the band left the stage, they turned the roses off, which signaled our time to leave.

Ryan Adams road trip 2008 Night 1, 10/16/2008

i left last Thursday for Tuscaloosa and arrived in time to eat dinner with two of the people i had had lunch with in Birmingham last month. the restaurant was taking FOREVER with our food, but we were able to scarf down our food and make it to the show with about 7 minutes to spare. none of us had been to the theatre before, so we made our way through the throng of people who were trying to get that last mixed drink or can of beer (they had CANS of beer) before the lights went down. i bought my poster for the night and made my way down to the 2nd row.

the first set was good, and i really liked the new songs, especially Born Into A Light and Sink Ships. my friend David had gone to the Dallas show, and told me how much he liked Stop, but when they played it i didn’t really like it that much. the organ they used sounded like a baseball organ, and i couldn’t hear the lyrics very well. upon hearing the studio version (legally!) i have changed my opinion. it’s so heartwrenching! btw, i thought the steel guitar during Shakedown was brilliant.

the people next to me did not show up until the 3rd or 4th song. how does that happen? if you have 1st or 2nd row for a show, why would you show up that late? it was a guy and a girl, and the girl kept climbing over me to go get another drink, and when she’d come back, she’d try to pretend fall on her b/f(?), but she also kept falling on me. i didn’t get it, but i guess after the 6th time, she apologized, as if at that point an apology meant anything. i didn’t ask them about their tickets, and once everyone stood up and moved up front for the 2nd half, they were gone.

about the moving up, when the band came out for the 2nd set, Ryan said something like if it was okay with security, everyone should come up to the front and fill in the space between the front row and the stage (which was probably 10 feet). of course as soon as he said that, everyone did, i just moved further towards the middle of the 2nd row. i’m kind of over the standing amongst a large group of people if i don’t have to.

one of the highlights of the 2nd set was Meadowlake Street. the way it started off so slow and soft and then crested with the entire band was amazing. they also played Note To Self, which was one of my favorites off of Rocknroll, and i loved hearing it live. Cold Roses also was great, esp when Ryan hit his guitar pedal for the last solo. they ended with Crossed Out Name and that was it, two and a half (roughly) hours later. seriously great stuff.

you can listen to any and all of the Tuscaloosa show here.

so on my way home tonight i stopped to get my haircut for the first time since June i think. i’m going on Ryan Adams Road Trip 2008 starting tomorrow. it’s going to be awesome. i’m not sure if it can approach last year, especially Dallas, but maybe that’s my way of keeping my expectations down. anyway, about the haircut….i stopped by the haircut place by my house. they take forever, but they’re right close and they do a good enough job. there were 4 people in front of me on the sheet and only two ladies cutting hair. it took a little over 30 minutes for my name to be called. i thought about walking out and just going back tomorrow, but then i’d go “i’ve already been here for 15 minutes, it’s gotta mean something!” there were a couple of people there getting their hair washed AND cut. if you’re a guy, and your hair isn’t complicated, you do not need to get it washed! i think his sister was getting her haircut. i noticed she had blonde hair, but it wasn’t really blonde, it was DYED. she took off her rubber band to let her hair down so the lady could wash it and cut it. HAIR DISASTER! her very dark roots were showing. i noticed the blonde wasn’t really blonde, but more like a pale yellow. AWFUL. i wanted to make a comment about it, especially after i learned her brother was the one that dyed it, and he is a hairdresser! WTF?!? a cruel joke on her i think.

this year’s RA Road Trip will begin in Tuscaloosa. i’ll be hitting up the show tomorrow night with a 2nd row ticket. the people next to me will be people who bought their tickets off ebay, or at least from a broker. i kind of want to ask them about it, but i’m just hoping they’re not annoying people who think Tim McGraw wrote When The Stars Go Blue. (cleanse your ears by watching this version if you’re into covers, or the original).

i’m spending the night at a friend of a friend of a friend’s house. my friend CJ was supposed to go to the show in Tuscaloosa also, but she chose Mexico. she gave the tickets she won to two of her friends who i met in Birmingham. one of the guy’s is staying the night in Tuscaloosa at a friend’s house, and i’m staying there.

on Friday, i’m meeting up with a friend in Birmingham and going to the ATL show. we have 4th row tickets. it’ll be the final stateside show for the Cardinals before they had across the pond (and to my friend Chrissy) so hopefully it’ll be “we’re done with this part of the tour let’s play 4 hours” craziness! two shows in two nights. after hopefully being able to watch the GT/Clemson game in peace with Jeff and Adriene, i will venture home to hopefully end up back at my house by midnight. should be a packed weekend, but i wouldn’t have it any other way.

today there was no carpool, so it was just me in the car on the way to work. i FINALLY broke out my FM transmitter for my Nano to use in the car. i’ve been struggling with the radio lately, even the classic rock radio, because it seems they play the same 50 or so songs. (a lot of AC/DC for some reason). yesterday i uploaded a lot of songs to my iPod and almost filled it, so i have about 600 songs. anyway, on the way to work this morning, i had the songs on shuffle and Yellow came on. in the serene morning on the bridge, it felt like the perfect song for that moment. i remembered the show i went to in Houston hearing Yellow and how everyone collectively smiled, how Yellow was the first Coldplay song i had ever heard, how at that concert i felt a part of something bigger than just me, blah blah blah.

(why oh why was Viva La Vida so bad?!? i really wanted to like it!)

after this past weekend’s college football games i don’t know what to believe anymore. i remember back in my Catechism days, we had a retreat and we played this game called Backpack Mess Up. it was something where everyone would be categorized as something normally found in a backpack. then the person leading the game would call out items and those people would have to move around. then if the person said backpack mess up, everyone had to move around. come to think of it the game wasn’t that much fun, and it doesn’t really make any sense as i described it. so this weekend in college football felt like backpack mess up. four top 10 teams lost, including UF on a blocked XP (wtf?). Clemson blew an easily winnable game that defies logic. everything i thought i knew was turned upside down. except LSU won, and that was the one thing all weekend that made sense.

the Saints game on Sunday made me feel great. it felt like 2006 again. hopefully it’s a sign of things to come for the season and not an aberration. welcome back Deuce!

so i’m starting to enter ryan adams fanboy mode. i’m reading everything i can about the tour and the upcoming album. i’m even going to the TM pages for the shows i went to just to see what kind of tickets could be bought now. i was poking around on ebay for different things today, and decided to do a search for RA tickets. i came upon this auction (linky linked). these seats are next to my seat for the Tuscaloosa show. literally, i have seat 14. guess i’ll have something to ask my concert neighbors about when i get there.

in other news, work today was long. i’m back in the deep end of the pool as far as what i’m doing, and i’m trying my best. it just feels like i’m spinning my wheels. tomorrow should be a good day though, and i’ll have things taken care of before i go out of town this weekend, and vacation/evacuation since Gustav still wants to come here on Monday.

best line of the day….i asked “since when are hurricanes named with Russian names?” my friend Kenny said “well, if it’s Russian, it’s going to go to Georgia.” it was fantastic political humor at 7:52 am. unfortunately, it does not appear to want to go to Georgia…..yet.

so i didn’t exactly wake up as planned at 1:30 this morning to watch the gold medal basketball game. i had set my computer to tape the game though, and when i was awaken by a video message on my phone at 6 am, i couldn’t go back to sleep because i had to know how the game turned out. i got out of bed and began watching the game. it was amazing, esp how i actually cheered for Kobe Bryant as he took over the game in the 4th quarter to put the game away. it was great!

later in the morning, i went to watch the water polo final, after avoiding finding out a final score. i went to the NBC website to watch the video only to see that the headline on the video was “Hungary defeats USA for the gold medal”. WTF? i’m trying to watch the game in suspense, and the only way i can watch the game is telling me what the end result is. thanks a lot NBC jerks! oh well. it’s still cool that the USA water polo team got to the final. the more i watched some of the sports, the more amazed i was when a US team would do really well in spite of not having a professional league like other countries.

so the Olympics have finally come to a close, and i can’t remember watching and being more involved in an Olympics before. i watched everything i could live or online, and it was great. i had discussions with a friend to go to London in 2012, but we’ll see if that actually happens.

in other news, the video message mentioned earlier was from my friend Marika who made it to the Ryan Adams show in SF last night. she sent me a 15 sec clip of a new song. this got me thinking, i should look on youtube for clips of new songs. i ended up during my search finding a video of a band (Company of Thieves) doing a cover of a RA song. i checked out more of their stuff on their myspace, and am thinking about buying the album.

speaking of RA, it’s about a month and a half until i see him in Tuscaloosa. he’s been keeping a blog, that gets updated at a frenetic pace. he posts videos sometimes of new songs, or old songs, or random stuff. recently he posted a version of my favorite song, and it’s below….enjoy.

Sylvia Plath cover by WereWolph from Wilson Wolf on Vimeo.

last year i took to the road to see Ryan Adams three times in three nights. this year he’s going to be touring again in October, and i’m lining up plans to go to two shows in two nights. the Texas dates probably won’t work out at all, but the shows in Alabama and Georgia will. i bought my ticket yesterday for the show in Tuscaloosa, and i got 2nd row. however, the base price of the ticket was $35 and my total for ONE ticket had an $11.80 ‘convenience’ fee. to make up for completely gouging me, ticketmaster sent me a code for a free song off iTunes. thanks i guess. (i ended up getting that new Madonna song “4 Minutes”)

i’m off work today, but i ended up sleeping in rather than watching the water polo. however, the USA didn’t need my help and are playing for the gold Sunday! incidentally, it’s going to be about an hour after the basketball gold medal game tips off, so i’m not sure how much sleep i’ll be getting.

speaking of basketball, the US team beat Argentina today. it was supposed to come on around 9:15 am, but no, the NOLA NBC station tape delayed it so they could show the Today show in its entirety. it’s a known fact the Today show does not get good viewership in NOLA, but they tape delay it everyday maybe thinking no one will figure out that Today shows times in ET not CT. so today because of their ridiculous planning, i had to watch the basketball game an hour later than everyone else in the country. in addition to the tape delay, they cut in almost every 15 minutes with a weather update to show TS Fay will probably come this way by Sunday or Monday. they didn’t do a split screen or anything, they just skipped ahead during the game, one time with 3 seconds to go in the first half. what is wrong with them? the ironic thing is that the affiliate’s slogan is “on your side”, but in this case they were not. the main thing though, is that the US team has finally made it to the gold medal game, which is awesome.

last night i skipped out on being a youth counselor to take in another show. i had heard Brooke Fraser was supposed to be super great, and opening for her was William Fitzsimmons, who i had also heard good things about. tickets were pretty cheap, so i had it on my radar. Sunday afternoon, i realized i should go since i’ve been into a few female vocalists lately and would kick myself if i didn’t go see BF when she was playing the small Parish Room at the HOB. i called up a couple of people and away i went.

Blind Melon was playing the main room last night, so there was a mixed crowd milling around outside. as we walked by the BM tour bus, we saw a girl dressed in a bee costume sitting outside the door. at first i thought she might be with the band in some capacity, but as i looked back to make sure of what i saw, the Chinese symbol tattoos on the back of both of her thighs made me think she was just a super fan, and she is stuck in 1993.

I know BF was headlining, but I think I liked WF better. He was pretty funny, and made good comments between songs. He was telling the story about he had just shaved his head, because the long hair was bothering him, and he was thinking of shaving his beard (he has a long beard). He started talking about how he hates eating Ramen with it, he gets stopped in airports all the time, then kind of stopped himself with “Get the terrorist off the stage!” anyway, I thought he was funny. He had a vibe of a guy who should have been on the Garden State soundtrack, which i thought was an amazing soundtrack.

BF on the other hand, I really liked her voice, and her songs were great, but when she started talking she sounded trippy. she made Ryan Adams sound like a member of MENSA (i love RA of course). she blamed the heat and humidity of New Orleans for her strange tangents. Before she played “Albertine”, she told the story about her writing it and her trip to Rwanda. It was pretty cool to hear, and it kind of made up for the previous nonsensical banter.

The one thing that maybe started me off not liking her was someone up front [about 5 songs in] asked her to play a song (I couldn’t hear it, it was a small venue so the guy was literally a couple of feet away I think) and she went off about how she wouldn’t play it and she “doesn’t go to your church and sit in your pews and expect you to play a song”. the BF crazy reaction just kind of went against the vibe of the show. It seemed most people knew she was with Hillsong, so you have most of the crowd who’s normal, then you have parts of it who are the Christians at a club for the first time, so they’re trying to act cool…..then you have the people who are there because it’s the HOB and they didn’t have the money for Blind Melon. Anyway, after WF, everyone was in a good mood, and BF comes out with her sultry voice and is crooning. Her reaction to the song request was like when a record stops suddenly, you know? I thought she could have handled it a little better considering the show.

(sorry, no pictures yet cause my phone sucks at taking pictures, but i’m supposed to get a couple emailed to me)