"I thought it would be OVER by now!"

A note about this trip report: It kind of serves double-duty. If you are interested in Six Flags Darien Lake, read the sections marked "===SFDL==". If you are interested in Moxy Fruvous, you can skip the Darien Lake stuff and look for the sections marked "===MMJD===". For those of you reading this on a.m.m.f, first of all please forgive the intrusion, and second, please send any comments via email as I have a hard time getting that group as it isn't on my news server.

After seven hours of driving, I arrived at Darien Lake just before Noon. I got to thinking about it, and this is the first coaster trip I have taken this season where nobody went with me and I didn't expect to meet up with anybody. On this particular day, it was wet, grey, and cold.

I kind of like the way Darien Lake's parking lot is set up. Much of the parking is to one side of the gate, and even though I was in one of the last rows, it was still a shorter walk to the gate than from the closest space at Kings Island.

===SFDL=== Although it was rainy and cold, most of the rides operated all day long. In fact, I got a real shock as I walked down the entrance midway towards the center of the park. To my left I heard a distant crash. I looked in that direction just in time to see the dumping bucket on top of the Hook's Lagoon play structure reset. Not only was the thing operating, but lifeguards were standing by. With an air temperature approaching 50 degrees, two-thirds of the waterpark was open. It was vacant, of course, but it was open.

Instead of heading straight for Superman, I went the other way, through the nearly vacant midways and around to where I could walk on to Viper, their 5-inversion Arrow multielement looper. This is the original Viper, built before Six Flags started using the name for a coaster in every park. See, Darien Lake was an obvious candidate for a Six Flags conversion, as the park already had a ride named Viper. This Viper begins with a mine-train start...a short drop, a hard right turn, and THEN the drop. This is where the mine train analogy falls apart, though, as the drop is followed by a vertical loop and a boomerang, then the mid-course brake which hits rather harder than I remember. This is followed by the full Corkscrew and helix, half of which is tunnelled beneath the queue. Viper is an excellent Arrow multi-looper [Footnote 1], well worth a ride, particularly under these walk-on conditions. But re-rides on this thing are a particular pain in the neck because the ride entrance and exit are on opposite ends of the park, it's uphill from the exit to the entrance, and if you don't know what you are looking for, the entrance is really hard to find. The exit is easy; it's right next to the lift hill, adjacent to the ride. The entrance is up the hill, tucked away between two joints and partly hidden by the UFO queue house. More about this lunacy later; for the moment I was more interested in riding the Mind Eraser.

The Mind Eraser is, in this case, a Vekoma SLC with a 10-car train. It's one of the better-running SLCs, but it isn't quite as good as Geauga Lake's Serial Thriller. The ear pads on the shoulder bar for this one are, IMHO, a Very Bad Idea. They're probably appropriate on T^2, but on this Mind Eraser they serve only to interfere with riders' ears, and to *increase* the amount of noted head-thwacking. See, the lateral forces on this ride to which one's head is subject are small enough that if the pads were gone, there would be no head-thwacking...but the pads reduce the clearance enough to turn the rider's ears into a pair of targets. Sorry, Vekoma, it's okay for T^2, but on this Mind Eraser it is a solution in search of a problem and it causes trouble. Apart from that, I do actually like the Vekoma SLC's. Particularly for the pop of airtime on the station fly-by and for the some of the most insane visuals of any steel coaster. Perhaps this is because my first SLC was on the Mind Eraser at Adventure World, before the ear pads were added.

The exit for Mind Eraser goes through a building which obviously used to contain on-ride photo stuff, but that hardware was missing. I don't know if that is a permanent omission, or if photos may return to this ride. Now that I think about it, the Viper photo booth was present but closed...the only place I could have bought an on-ride photo was Superman: Ride of Steel.

Which was as good a place as any to head next. But to get there it is necessary to pass the Predator first. Predator has received substantial retracking and some new structure on the final turn. Darien Lake is taking good care of the track on this ride. Unfortunately, all the trackwork in the world won't save this ride from a really rotten pair of trains.

To begin with, the coaster should have lots and lots of airtime. It does have some, but not nearly so much as it should have because of the brake on the first drop. Now, call me crazy, but in my opinion, of all the places on a ride where you could place a trim brake, the top of the first drop seems to me the absolute least logical place for it. I mean, why bother with such a long drop if you're gonna slow the train when it is supposed to be falling?? Wouldn't it make more sense to just cut down the lift hill to a smaller size?

Second, the ride has PTC trains. So far, so good. They do have headrests, but those headrests (and everything else on the train) are nicely cushioned. Okay, so this doesn't sound too bad. There isn't any high-density foam in sight, which is also a good sign. But the train has electric ratcheting lap bars which have...are you ready for this? **NO** return springs at all whatsoever. When the operator hits the lock button, be ready to catch the bar or it wil fall all the way down with a right nasty ball-busting CRUNCH. But wait! It gets worse!

I only know of four PTC trailered trains still in operation. They proved to be an engineering disaster, they track poorly (or more accurately they don't track at all), and most of the ones that were put into service were subsequently retired. Hercules, Thunder Run, and Texas Giant all did once, but do not now, run these awful trailers. Four, so far as I know, remain in service. Two are on the Raging Wolf Bobs at Six Flags Geauga Lake. On that ride, the curves are banked in such a way that the trains can kind of work. Unfortunately, the other two are on the Predator. Predator's more conventional curve design means that every time the train goes around any curve, the train wiggles and shuffles like crazy. The problem with this train design is so painfully obvious it is almost sickening. To see what I am talking about, take a look at http://capital2.capital.edu/admin-staff/dalthoff/coastercar.html . I'd so love to join forces with an engineer and rework the trains on Predator and Raging Wolf Bobs and make them work well, but for the moment, those rides just have to suffer the indignity of rotten trains. Needless to say, Predator has a lot of potential, a really nice layout, and it runs poorly. To make matters worse, on this particular day, it was raining and the rain was rinsing the lubrication off of the track, making the ride shriek loudly. Ugh! I so much want to like the Predator, but it is simply not a very good ride right now. I'd rather ride Superman: Ride of Steel.

Fortunately, Superman is right down the midway from the Predator. The zig-zagging exit ramp from Predator leads directly into Metropolis, an area which two years ago was outside the park. Parallel to the Predator is Superman: Ride of Steel, Intamin's first "mega roller coaster". With one train running (I noticed that the covers were missing from many of the lap bar mechanisms on the blue train) it was about a half-hour wait all day long. I took my first ride of the day in the back seat. The trains got new seat belts this year that match the ones on Millennium Force, complete with the unusual European buckle. The train cruises up the lift and over the top. From there it is an impossibly steep drop, with loads of forceful airtime so that I was riding the lap bar all the way down. At the bottom, the train goes into a ground-level banked turn where the gravel seems to be really close as it goes by really fast. Superman is a strange looking coaster as the first drop and second hill are at right angles to one another. The faster-than-a-speeding-bullet turn is followed by a leap over a tall hill in a single bound. Lots of airtime on the down side of that hill, then a long flat stretch leading to the gigantic helix. A sudden transition jerks riders sideways for the double helix. The train really spends too much time in the helix, doing nothing but cruising around the curve, going and going and going, then levelling out for a low, straight run to another giant leap. The leap is followed by a second, mercifully shorter helix, then a really exciting dip-turn and rabbit-hop turn that combine extreme airtime with a lateral kick that tries to throw you out of your little grey folding chair. Two more little hops provide for an exciting finish, though a very strong trim brake on one of those hills really feels like an interruption. The effect, though, is to bring the train to a much smoother, much less sudden stop on the final brakes than last season.

The obvious comparison is to compare Superman: Ride of Steel to Cedar Point's Millennium Force. Superman has a lot more high-intensity airtime on its drops than Millennium Force, but I think I have to give the edge to Millennium Force, which has a more inspired layout. The helixes on S:ROS do very little for me, while Millennium Force has those up and down actions on its overbanks which I find to be much more interesting. On the other hand, Superman has more sudden transitions and better airtime, so to say Millennium Force is a better ride should not be interpreted to mean Superman is at all a bad ride, because it isn't. In fact, Superman is an excellent ride.

As I exited Superman through its gift shop, I got a chuckle when I looked across the midway. Directly across from the entrance to Superman, in the shadow of the Predator, there is a public telephone. My immediate thought was that this walk-up telephone enclosure is entirely wrong for Metropolis. Superman can't make use of that...they should really consider replacing that walk-up phone with a proper telephone booth/Superhero changing room. 8-)

Well, I think I said something earlier about not meeting up with anyone at Darien Lake. So you can imagine my shock and surprise when I looked across the midway and spotted Paul Lancaric. He was in the park showing the place off for a friend, and was actually preparing to take another Superman ride and take off. What? Leaving, so soon? Ah, well, with the crummy weather I could hardly blame him.

Okay, so by this time it was about 2:00pm, and I had ridden all of the coasters except the Boomerang and the Brain Teaser. Well, the Brain Teaser was out of the question as that Zierer junior coaster does not accommodate adults at all. So I headed over to the Boomerang. Little did I know how much time I would be spending here today. Of the Boomerangs I have ridden, Darien Lake's is one of the best. It's a nice smooth ride, and the Vekoma train operates very nicely. I think I slightly prefer the one at Geauga Lake (when it is operating) because the front edge of the car on the Darien Lake Boomerang forms a nearly circular curve that I always end up banging my knees on. The Geauga Lake train is a little more like the Arrow trains, and doesn't have this problem. I'm a little puzzled that the motor on the second lift does not start until a few seconds after the train stops; I would think that it would be preferrable for the train to catch a moving lift chain. Hmmm...

===SFDL=== ===MMJD=== The Boomerang is very nicely situated on the edge of a lake, opposite Darien Lake's signature Ferris wheel. The odd thing about Boomerang's location is its position relative to some fences and such. Near the Boomerang is an ampitheatre which this day was occupied by a variety of Canadian independent musical acts (more about that later), the entrance to the campground, a nice-looking rustic-style sit-down table-service restaurant, and something that looks surprisingly like a park entrance gate. Darien Lake did something interesting in that while they are a traditionally gated POP park, the park includes a resort hotel and campground. Unlike other resorts I have visited, Darien Lake moved fences around so that the campground, hotel, and theme park are all enclosed within a single gate. No handstamps to go to the hotel or campground. The result is that the park has a little more breathing room, and the whole back corner of the park near the Boomerang is a very relaxed and laid-back place. Darien Lake is also the only park I know of that has a full-blown convenience store inside the park...complete with a delicatessen, coffee bar and beer cooler. I did find it interesting that the coffee bar and deli included a couple of tables while the sign inside the door to the building said, "NO EATING OR DRINKING IN STORE." Interesting.

===SFDL=== Darien Lake also scores for having a few pinball machines in the arcades. No "Cyclone" or "Comet" though...but I did see one of the "Pinbot" sequels.

The new ride for this year is a Huss Top Spin, called "Twister." The ride operated in yo-yo mode all day long, in fact the board in the Guest Relations office indicated that the ride was out of service. I did see it operate, though. The landscaping isn't quite done, but there is a row of fountains in front of the ride. I wondered if those fountains, on a warmer day, might serve to drench riders unexpectedly. I asked the Dippin' Dots guy [Footnote 2] at the stand adjacent to the ride, but he didn't know...or he wasn't telling. There is no "YOU MAY GET WET ON THIS RIDE" disclaimer at the ride entrance.

I don't know if it is familiarity, or if Darien Lake is fiddling a bit with the park layout. In this back corner of the park, it seems that things are slowly becoming easier to find. I noticed that most of the rides have queue houses, which is apparently one of the signatures of the Duell Corp. design work. The park is kind of forced into a gigantic loop to begin with because it has this big lake right in the middle, but Premier has added on to the loop in a far more logical fashion than we see in parks like Canada's Wonderland and Busch Gardens Williamsburg. I think much of this is because the lake forces such a large loop. But it is a small lake, and by opening up the back corner where the campground gate once was, Premier has made it possible to walk all the way around. Still, some form of in-park transportation might be useful...how about a train or monorail with stops at each end of the park, the hotel, and the campground?

In spite of the cold, I still had to have a cone of frozen custard. Darien Lake has changed vendors for the custard, but it is still a local delicasy, and the new brand (I think last year it was Kohr Bros. This year it's Perry's...I saw their logo all over Western New York) is still pretty darned good. Unfortunately it was also cold and offered little sustenance. I admired the sign on the bumper cars (showing a bear head-butting an antique car), took a ride on Viper, and found a fresh-cut french fry stand. Another neat feature of Darien Lake is its sheer number and variety of food joints. Last year I had a really good chicken wrap sandwich in Metropolis which proved to be a very good value. This time I was not so hungry, and after investigating several options I finally decided on the fry place. I noted several menu options, and the lone attendant seemed a little surprised when I asked for both chili AND cheese on my fries. The fries were well cooked, still hot and tasty, *not* undercooked and soggy as is often the case with fresh-cut fries. The attendant put a serving into a cup, added a ladlefull of chili and a ladlefull of cheese sauce. Our transaction finished, he handed me the fries. I looked around the stand and realized the fries were impossible to eat.

See, this is an altogether too common problem, and I want to be careful not to single out Darien Lake here because it has happened to me in other parks, including Cedar Point. When hot fries are covered with hot chili and molten cheese sauce, trying to pick up and eat any fry is sticky, messy, and potentially dangerous. So why is it that I had to walk half way around the park before I found a food joint that actually had forks available? Why are forks not standard equipment at stands that carry chili cheese fries? Am I simply asking too much?

The temperature was falling, but at the same time the crowd was growing larger. Interesting, considering that the weather had not improved significantly, and the evening admission wouldn't kick in for another hour or so. Even so, the lines remained short as I rode some of the park's unique flat rides. The Mack sleighride seemed better than I had remembered. The two Fahtz rides, a Paratrooper and an Enterprise, are generally unlike any others I have ridden. The only other Fahtz ride I can remember seeing is a kiddie tracked car ride at Playland in Vancouver. Oddly enough, those two rides do not have queue houses. Two that do are the UFO and the Swing Around. In fact, those two rides flank the entrance to Viper, with the UFO entrance one of the more difficult entrances in the park to locate. The more recent ride installations still have queue houses, but by and large the newer rides have entrances that are more logically positioned than the old ones. I remember spending an inordinate amount of time on previous Darien Lake visits trying to figure out how to get to the entrance of any given ride. I don't understand why the common tactic is to make the ride exits plainly visible and hide the entrances.

Getting back to the flat rides for a moment, Darien Lake's Mack Seesturmbahn, which they call the Raging Seas, was sporting an entirely unnecessary sign reading, "Sorry, Ride Closed Today." Well, I thought the sign was unnecessary, with no tubs on the ride, wires hanging everywhere, bits of the ride strewn about. Clearly the off-season rehab for this ride includes an electrical overhaul, and probably mechanical repairs as well. When they get done, this will probably run like a new ride, which is a good thing since last year it wasn't running well at all. But for the moment it is not in operating condition. This didn't stop a young boy from walking up next to me as I was shooting some video and asking, "Is this ride closed?".

The ride that should have been closed was the Wave Swinger. From the time I sat down in my seat until the ride started, the ride rotated about a half turn. This is the only Wave Swinger I have seen that does not come to a complete stop, and it's been like this for a few years now.

By this time I had ridden most of the rides and seen most of the park. Had the weather been reasonable, I might have visited the waterpark, but today it was too darned cold for that...and getting colder. Fortunately, a diversion awaited to keep me busy before I took a night ride on Superman: Ride of Steel.

===MMJD=== I headed for the "old" ampitheater. Located across from the Boomerang, this is where the park does its nightly (in season) laser show, and is not to be confused with the Performing Arts Center, up by the Viper, which is itself an extra-pay attraction. When I arrived, the stage was set, an album of *crap* reggae was playing over the stage speakers, and a queue was forming down at what appeared to be a concession building. But there were no beer sales down there...instead, it was band merchandise. Fruheads were lining up and buying...no...it can't be...IT IS!! The new album, "C", advertised on the back of "Thornhill" and Not Available In Stores, was here, available for the first time, at Darien Lake. I bought a copy, and I've been listening to it for a week now, enough that I am wondering such things as why there isn't a King of Spain riff (as well as a reference) in "Beware The Killer Tents" and whether one of the last lines of "Heatseeker Boy" was put there to make all the people who spend the whole song thinking "This sounds so familiar..." suddenly go "A-HA!" [Footnote 3].

The stage setup for a Fruvous show, for those of you who are not familiar, is unmistakable, mostly because of Jian's unusual drum kit. To the left is the bass guitar rig, upstage and to the right of that is a pair of hand-drums, in front of those is a drum kit consisting of kick drum, hi-hat, cymbal and snare, then about a half a dozen guitars plus a banjo, an accordion, and a couple of keyboards. All in all, far too many instruments for a four-man band. Partly this is because they are all multi-instrumental. Partly this is because they are really rough on guitar strings.

The shed is a large lawn with a fairly large building at the bottom center. The building has a stage on the front of it, and a large supporting structure in front of the building accommodates a retractable projection screen for the laser show. The shed is surrounded by speaker equipment, presumably for that show, and a control building sits at the back edge, right in the middle. For tonight's show, however, a portable stage had been erected in front of the screen, and a tent had been located in the center of the lawn for the sound mixing gear. There are apparently conduits serving that tent from the stage, since there were no hoses extending from stage to control tent. Either that or they had sunk into the inches-deep mud where the grass once had been. I live in Columbus, Ohio, where brown grass is a common sight, particularly in the late summer. But here, brown grass is usually dead grass due to a lack of rainfall. The grass in the Darien Lake shed was brown beause the mud was no less than an inch deep, and the rain was still coming down. Fortunately, an asphalt path runs across the front of the shed, another across the back, and two more radially from the gates down to the stage. Initially, at least, I tried to stay on these paths while I waited for the show to start.

And waited.

And waited.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, Moxy Fruvous has never started a show on time. I can remember one incident back when I was working for a radio station when they trotted into the building at 2:55 when we were expecting them to do an on-air concert in the 2:00 hour, and we had to hit network at 3:00 [Footnote 4]. If a Fruvous show ever starts on time, I'm certain it will be a sure sign of the apocalypse. That bit of background notwithstanding, their tardiness this time around was far from the habitual operation on Fruvous time. Rumor has it they were having sound difficulties, and in fact a Darien Lake maintenance man told me his understanding was that Cal, the band's sound man, was "the pickiest man alive" as he had already gone through everything twice and the crap reggae album was on its third repetition.

I was getting cold and tired of standing around. I decided to ride the Boomerang for a while. From the top of the first lift I could hear the crap reggae, and if it stopped, I would know that the show was finally going to start.

And start it did, almost 90 minutes behind schedule. The large number of people who stuck it out in the rain and the cold told me this would be a gathering of Fruheads, not just random music lovers gathered off of the midways. Finally, the band appeared on stage and opened with an apology for the delay. Then they suggested it wasn't sound problems, just that they wanted to prove we would wait for them. They plugged the new album, then launched into a rendition of "Sahara." It's an interesting song for them to start with, as it isn't exactly a "Meet The Furlads" kind of song, but then, it does have a lot of energy behind it. During the guitar solo, Dave broke about nine strings on his guitar, which was an interesting trick considering that it was only a six-string guitar. It wouldn't be a Fruvous show without a few broken strings, but this display of destruction was significant enough for Jian and Mike to call attention to it. The incident kind of set the tone for the evening. I wasn't keeping count, and from where I was standing near the sound board it was hard to see, but I know the guitar tech (Toby, I think) was kept busy. Every time I looked towards Stage Left he was switching out another guitar. It must have been the cold, which is interesting considering they did not play "It's Too Cold" for this show. The other one I half expected to hear was "Fly" since we were literally in a roller coaster's shadow...at unexpected times we could easily hear the Boomerang cut loose and thunder through its course.

The big problem was the rain, though, and at one point the band recruited a fan from the front row to grab a towel and keep the stage dry. He didn't do too bad a job once he got the hang of it. First time I can recall seeing a band hire a roadie in the middle of a set!

Due to the inclement weather I didn't have my computer with me, so I didn't write down a set-list, but I am sure somebody did. The show was full of Fruvous favorites from all the various albums...BJ and River Valley from Bargainville, Horseshoes from Wood, Johnny Saucep'n from B, Michigan Militia from You Will Go To The Moon, Half as Much from Thornhill, Heatseeker Boy and Pisco Bandito from C. Could we have possibly asked for more??

Well, as a matter of fact, we could. Which is why we got a tremendous encore including Disco Video Bargainville, the full version of King of Spain, and the short version of Green Eggs & Ham, followed up by The (obligatory) Drinking Song. At times it seemed that all four were occasionally stumbling over the odd lyric (I think Jian reversed a couple of lines in Psycho Killer, and Mike made a similar error earlier in the show) but who can blame them? It was cold and miserable and they still put on a first-rate show. "Playing the park" isn't really that much different from any other outdoor venue. With the right crowd, the rain and the cold really didn't matter. Best of all, once The Drinking Song was over and the crowd began to disperse, there was still some time left. I headed for Superman.

===SFDL=== I knew that Darien Lake often closes the queue for Superman: Ride of Steel early, so I was quite happy when I was stil able to get in line at 9:30pm. Just as the park closed, I sat down for a back-seat ride on this unusual coaster. The rain had stopped, but because of the high humidity and low temperature [Footnote 5], there was a thick, high fog (or was it thick, low clouds?) hanging over the park. S:ROS is illuminated by floodlights shining straight up from below. This serves to really show off the ride structure on any night, but on this particular night the lights lit up the sky as well. As we climbed the lift I realized I was seeing something really neat in the sky overhead. The cloud layer acted as a projection screen, and overhead the shadow of the track was clearly visible. Not only that, but the shadow of the train ascending the lift was also visible. What a neat sight! Yet something else to look at while ascending the lift. Then, a few moments later I was wrapped around the lap bar, cruising down that amazing first drop. I can't think of very many better ways to end an evening.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Footnote 1: I'm sure there are a few of you who didn't believe such a thing could possibly exist...

Footnote 2: Really! I'm not kidding!

Footnote 3: Funny thing is, it isn't A-Ha! but rather Roberta Flack...

Footnote 4: They were on the air long enough to promise to drop by the following morning, which they did.

Footnote 5: Of course, with all of those shallow lakes, it is always humid at Darien Lake.

From Brian:

Well..since (t least i haven't gotten it ehre)...noone has commented on teh Darien Lake Concert I guess i will...

It was last night (saturday May 20th)...and they ahd the "C" Album for sale for the first time (listenin' to it now)....it was kinda mussy and a little drizzly, around forty degres...not too bad though....They took like almost an hour to get out (they kept playing those four bad songs over and over again!)....They opened with Sahara...actually they played a lot from "you Will go to the Moon".....This is only my second Fruvous concert though, so i don't know what to expect of that.....I can't really come up with any order, but ehre is some of what they played (I know i had to have omitted a lot)...

Sahara
Pisco
Heatseeker Boy
Horshoes
Johnny Saucepan
King of spain
Michigan Militia
Lazy Boy
Kick in the Ass
Psycho killer
Green Eggs and Ham
BJ
Video Disco Bargainville
Boo Time

I must have forgotten a lot...oh well...I enjoyed this concert more than the one at the Tralf (1/1/00), but that's just me....and anyways, i was up on the platform and not in the crowd as much for the Tralf concert so i wasn't as into it....I also got a Frujersey and have been wearing it ever since.....That was the concert.....they played for about 1:40 or so..not as long as the Tralf concert, but i still enjoyed it...

From Rachel:

Paul, as per your request, here's the Darien Lake set:

Sahara 
1/2 as Much
a little banter about what happens when Jewel or Fiona Apple breaks a
guitar string ("No, she doesn't stand for that"), occasioned by Dave
breaking two (?) strings during the previous song and playing the solo
nonetheless
short improv involving the boomerang roller coaster and Ferris
(Bueller/Wheel)
Horseshoes
Heatseeker Boy
Sad Girl
La-Z-Boy
KITA
Boo Time
BJ
banter as designated volunteer mopper Mark took the stage
Michigan Militia
Johnny Saucep'n
Pisco
little snippet from Rainbow Connection 
I Will Hold On
River Valley
Get in the Car
Your New Boyfriend (dedicated, sort of, to Rudy Giuliani)
Psychokillah
King of Spain, Green Eggs and Ham (short)
Disco Bargainville
Drinking Song

We (Meghan Grammer and I) got to Darien about 10:30 a.m. and met up with Kim from Syracuse and Stacey Ragone at the front gate. Lots of rides (gotta love Predator!), an abundance of skeeball games, some blue hair dye and a lot of rain later, we gathered by the stage. The show started on Fruvous time--OK, actually a little late. So by the time the lads appeared we all knew the CD of lame filler music that had been playing since the previous band left the stage. (The Magnum P.I. song rocked, though.) Here's my of-the-moment setlist. I know I missed some things, so if anyone can fill in the blanks I'd be thrilled.

Sahara (one of the songs I was really hoping to hear)
1/2 as Much
a little banter about what happens when Jewel or Fiona Apple breaks a
guitar string ("No, she doesn't stand for that"), occasioned by Dave
breaking two (?) strings during the previous song and playing the solo
nonetheless
short improv involving the boomerang roller coaster and Ferris
(Bueller/Wheel)
Horseshoes
Heatseeker Boy
Sad Girl
La-Z-Boy
KITA
Boo Time
BJ
banter as designated volunteer mopper Mark took the stage
Michigan Militia
Johnny Saucep'n
Pisco
little snippet from Rainbow Connection (yayy!)
I Will Hold On
River Valley
Get in the Car
Your New Boyfriend (dedicated, sort of, to Rudy Giuliani)
Psychokillah
King of Spain, Green Eggs and Ham (short)
Disco Bargainville (well, I was hoping for Dancing Queen, but this was
fun)
Drinking Song

I could have wished for warmer weather and a little less mud, and I know that there were some sound problems off and on, and people forgot words occasionally, but doggone it, this was the most fun I've had anywhere in quite a while. Maybe it was getting the C album. Maybe it was the people on the rollercoaster screaming in the background. Maybe it was the fact that this was the first time in a few shows that I actually got to talk to band members. Maybe it was spending a whole day with some very cool people. At any rate, I had a fabulous time. Thanks. When I move this August, I'm going to go into Fruvous _and_ Fruhead withdrawal.

From Jill:

From the little blue notebook of Jill:

5/20/00
Darien Lake
SAHARA
1/2
Darien Lake improv
HORSE
HEATSEEKER
SAD GIRL
LA-Z-BOY
KITA
BOOTY
BJ
MICHY
SAUCEP'N
PISCO
Rainbow Connection tease
IWHO
RIVER
GITC
YNB
PSYCHO
------------
E1 KoS
GE&H
E2 Disco-pyrotechnics & fog machine
TDS

Hey all! It's that time again!

Ok, so let me state for the record that I had no idea I was going to this show until about 5:30pm on Friday. I called my friend Kevin b/c of some issues that had cropped up, and next thing I knew I was asking my mom if I could go to Darien Lake. I hopped on a train, and met him and our friend Amanda in Philly so we could drive up.

A 7.5 hour drive later found us at the only hotel in western NY with an empty room. We crashed at 6am (yes, AM), then got up around noon. We had lunch at the Applebee's across the street, then went back on the road for Darien Lake. As we approached, we saw the track of Superman:Ride of Steel looming in the distance. I knew it would be a good day.

When we got there, we ran into Angie almost immediately, and she dragged Kev and Amanda and me to Superman. (Was I complaining?) A few more rides and some wandering later, and a group of us went to the ampitheater. A note about the ampitheater: it wet. It was muddy. *VERY* muddy. My pants haven't seen mud like that since Ani DiFranco at Battery Park in '98. Ironically, it was the same pants. This time, however, I wasn't in Birkenstocks.

Früvous was late coming out even by Früvous standards. And I swear, if they played that awful reggae CD one more time, I was going to kill Cal for not killing the Darien Lake sound guy. For a very big change, I stood Stage Dave fairly far back. Actually, at the beginning I was extreme stage Murray, but the view sucked so hard I decided to go back to Stage Dave where Angie, MC and Kath were.

Seeing Sahara as an opener ROCKED. I haven't seen Sahara since the second Westbeth show. Sahara sans dumbek is interesting, but still very enjoyable.

Sometime after Heatseeker, a bright yellow light was turned on behind the guys, and the crowd nearer the stage booed it. Jian asked that the light be turned off as "the people had spoken."

Lazy Boy was just adorable...Jian seems very comfortable with his haircut, and you can tell by the way he dances. He always danced a lot, but now it's like...magnified. I guess 'cause his hair isn't as distracting.

After BJ, Jian and Murray asked for a designated mopper. A young man by the name of Mark, no wait, Bill, wait, strike that, wearing an Andy R. Tops nametag came up on stage to mop. According to Jian, Mark wasn't well-schooled in the ways of being a subtle mopper, and that he should watch tennis ballboys for pointers.

Saucep'n. Well, all I can say is wow, I have never heard so many people know the chorus to that song. I freaked my friend Erin out by knowing the chorus back at Irving Plaza, but it was kinda spooky being in a large crowd who knew it. It was loud.

Pisco was as usual, adorable. I got a weird twighlight zone moment when Jian started singing Rainbow Connection. This was strange because on the Fruhead Continuum's possible request list, RC was on the list. Last we heard, Jian didn't know anything about that...

Psycho Killer rocked. The crowd caught on to Jian's directions very quickly. This was a treat because I haven't heard it in months. Also, there were two punkers standing a bit behind me, and I watched their reactions all throughout the set. (They'd obviously never seen or heard of Früvous before) When they saw the Talking Heads cover, they were impressed and approved.

Green Eggs and Ham was awesome. According to Mike, he sees dead people, and Dave owes his grandmother $60 for some reefer. ; )

Disco B'ville was OUTSTANDING. Murray was sporting a pimpin' brown psychedelic shirt, and it was just...wow. They had a fog machine and pyrotechnics. I told Murray after the show I dug it, and he drew a little bomb going off on my C album to represent the pyro.

After the show, Jian came out wearing this orange leather jacket. I have that jacket. : p

All in all it was a GREAT show. I'm very glad I went, despite the overly long drives, and the fact I was going to go right back to Rochester on Monday. The C Album rules, as do the new "MF" baseball baby tee shirts. Kudos to whoever designed those lovely pieces of merchandise. Ok, this has been the Leopard Lady Review. I'm the Leopard Lady, and that's that.

From Maggie:

foreword: it's 12:25 am, i just got home, been up *way* too long. i'm tired and crampy so deal with me. (big smile)

today was a fun day! no sunburn, no überlong lines at the fun little Six Flags Darien Lake park. very good. our fantastic little group (me, Melissa, Sarah, Amy, Nichole, Katie and Mike, the token male) arrived at DL around 12:30, went on Superman and by some great miracle of fate ran into Melinda, Anita, Matt, Shan, Beth and Liz as we exited. :) YAY! we went on some rides, saw some nifty people and headed over to the "ampitheater," or, more accurately, mudhole.

yes, this was definately the first FrüStock that i know of. mud and straw all over. luckily we got there early and were right up front, which *never* happens for me but it did today. those fates are really great sometimes, eh? the opening band (i think the Reverends) were pretty cool, i was diggin' em.

they opened with a disco version of Sahara, which was VERY cool. i won't try for a setlist, i'm bad at remembering this kinda stuff. there was a fun little improv about the Boomerang/Darien Lake, which i thought should be used in a commercial for DL if someone recorded it. :) umm, we got Kick in the Ass (three shows in a row for me! woohoo!) River Valley, Get in the Car, Michy. fun stuff. Boo Time was much fun, this is definately one of my favorite live songs. Disco Bargainville was *awesome*, just awesome. just before Murray did his solo he took off the fleece he was wearing to reveal that polyester, he stood there with the bass hanging at his side, he unbottoned the top few buttons, put up the collar... wow. [1] and then there were fireworks! :D damn!!

the stage was so wet from all the mist that was going on they decided a mopper was needed after Jian slipped a bit. Mark was chosen... i think that was his name. they had a little power trip with him, explaining how and when his mopping skills would be needed... it was at least entertaining.

ummmmmm... i can't think of anything else, really. good show. $25 well spent. i had friends, früheads, rollercoasters, cotton candy and Früvous. it's all ya need in the world.

1. god*damn* this was a sight to see!! but i digress...

Thanks to Joe for this one (taken by Paul):
• Mark, Andy & Joe mopping the stage
  Thanks to Christine for this one:
• May 11-17 Artvoice Ad (Vol. 11, No. 19)

Some other tidbits from the performance include:

• Feel free to help contribute to this section!