Well, I'm awake and functional after a late night of Fruvous frivolity! And this really has to be one of the greatest shows I've been to…out of the six I've seen. Let me give a quick moment of backstory before getting into the meat of it all. At the June '99 show in Santa Cruz, my friends Dave and Sharon both came with me, met at the show, and (as the song goes) fell in love. So the SF show this year is unofficially their one year anniversary. As a surprise I emailed the band asking if they could possibly say something before Horseshoes, since that's Dave and Sharon's favourite song. I didn't hear anything right up until leaving for the venue.

Okay, now that we have that out of the way. My Fru-virgin friend Katt and myself went up to the city early and wandered around her old neighbourhood. If you ever want a great and cheap Russian meal, check out the Tibliski at 19th and Geary! We walked and walked and walked some more. Let's just say I was already hurting before getting in to groove. But as we were waiting outside the Great American Music Hall we got to see Drea (birthday girl) and parts of the Toronto Crew, Nicole, Josh Woodward, Elena, and a few more before Dave and Sharon arrived. So we've got the crew together, we're inside, I've already gone to see Tobey to say hi and buy C, and we're chilling stage Murray during the opener, Nicolle Hampton. Not awesome, but definitely not awful. So we made our way through her set before Fruvous comes on around 10pm! I really gotta remember that any show at the Great American Music Hall will be a late one.

The show just starts off great! I made sure to get some earplugs from Nicole this time…didn't realise how close we were to the amps. They make a huge difference! So we're all there and grooving out, but when they play Horseshoes Dave and Sharon are standing there rocking back and forth and getting a little kissy-cozy. In a moment of incredible serendipitous Fruvian luck, Jian starts bantering about them being all gushy during the song and how the person next to you just might be someone you can get snuggly with during the next song. This leads Mike into an altered cover of If You Come to San Francisco (the hippy song about wearing a flower in your hair) with lyrics about meeting and getting cozy at a show. Very few people at the show had already heard a copy of C (nudge nudge Toronto Crew), so it was cool to hear Heatseeker Boy and Guinea Pig. Other cool bits of banter include the whole Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera battle and who's better. And that took them into one verse of Baby One More Time. Oh my god…the crowd was rolling with laughter during this…and the scary thing was that we all knew the words too!

Boo Time got a potentially cool start, Mike says "There are 3.8 million people (in the city)" but the last part is drowned out by feedback. "This story's about feedback," he continues. Some other banter , actually just before the nod to my friends, surrounded how San Francisco is a better city to visit than LA. Heehee, sorry LA crowd. Jian had to go through the opener to Disco Bargainville three times before he was satisfied. Then the fun began! Mike and Murray's dueling banjos (err, instruments) was just intense with Mike plucking the strings with his teeth and Murray tossing his bass up into the air and catching it. Okay, so it's not Darien Lake pyrotechnics, but it still rocked! Michy, again, had the crowd jumping despite Mike's trouble with both the megaphone and his keyboard. And no show is complete without mentioning that their live album should have been called Fruvous Comes Alive, in homage to Peter Frampton. Pisco followed and for some reason I keep forgetting this is a Murray song. I dunno why I forget that, we could blame that on anything.

Jian's new hat, courtesy of rummaging around in their practice space, led into a political diatribe of Western ideals influencing Persian/Muslim fundamentals…in good fun, of course. See, the cowboy hat still covers the head properly and all that. Oh, and we all learned that, if a Persian cannot be there to tell the joke himself, there should be a sympathetic Persian within 40 feet or a non-sympathetic one within 60 feet. Important lessons to learn. They also played a new French song, I have no idea what the title is (I'll let someone more cultured post that), but it was really beautiful! King of Spain followed with the who Elian saga and how bearded leaders are all evil, which of course led to a short discourse before the epilogue about why the King was kicked out of his country and Mike too a moment with the bongos to do a quick reprise of "These Are the People in Your Neighbourhood," a Sesame Street staple. However, I wondered why they're still referencing Yeltsin when Vladimir Putin is president of Russia now.

I really don't like having to take people to task on things, especially in a review, but during Green Eggs and Ham the "We Love Dave" boys were in the audience again (as the were in Santa Cruz last October) and it just irks me to no end that some people can't put aside the fact that the band's trying to get through this thing and it's like people are heckling them! Okay, so there's my rant…if you guys read this, hush up already!

For an encore they played Guinea Pig which was so hilarious! It's really the kind of song I could picture hearing on Malcom in the Middle. Then they played Darlington Darling which I've never heard live…so that was my treat for the night. After that the crowd was treated to Believe and once again it was scary just how much of the song the audience knew, but it was nice to see Cher get the banjo treatment! Truly, the best part of the evening…more so than saying hi to Jian and introducing Sharon and Dave (and Katt, who certainly caught his eye)…more so than saying hi to Dave and having him recognise the Tacky Hawaiian Shirt [tm]…was having Katt say at the end of the night that I've made a total Fruvous convert of her!

So, the set list plus banter looks something like this:
Substitute
Horseshoes
NorCal better than SoCal (banter)
Fruheads in Love (banter)
If You Come to San Francisco (improv cover)
Heatseeker Boy
Pete Seger's Boy (small improv)
Splatter Splatter
Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera = Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya
Harding? (banter)
Baby One More Time (small improv)
Sad Girl
Lazy Boy
You Will Go to the Moon
Dave's Search for a Huckleberry Friend (banter)
River Valley
Your New Boyfriend
Boo Time (with jazzy intro)
Disco Bargainville
Michigan Militia
The Banjo Song (banjo noodle that sounds kinda like the Dukes of
Hazzard)
Johnny Saucep'n
Frampton/Fruvous/Hampton Comes Alive (banter)
Pisco Bandito
Jian's New Hat, the Persian Cowboy (banter)
I Will Hold On

King of Spain
Green Eggs and Ham
Love Potion #9 Medley
--
Guinea Pig
Darlington Darling
--
Believe
The Drinking Song

Thanks to Johnathan for this one:
• Dave's setlist

Some other tidbits from the performance include:

• From Johnathan: Also, in Taylor's review of the 5/25 show, he makes reference to "the banjo song" - actually, it's called "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" - I know because I requested it :)