Arrived pretty early, and had a chance to chat with Marcus, while Lisa showed him some good photos. Found out that Deedee had hit 18 stamps - first one yet! We located Jason, who had snagged a pretty good seat to the left of the stage. This was the first show where we actually had our ng buttons, and we were supposed to look for Victorria, but didn't see anyone approaching her description around the back bar, and we felt a little funny flaunting our button-bearing chests in everyone's face, so we finally went back to sit w/Jason. (I should say that I attended all but one of these Fruvous events with Chris Traugott. She's usually the we in "we".)
The opening act was local, and pretty fun, and Jian and Mike were hanging out in back listening. When the Neilds came on, there was a big rush to the stage - it was a pretty Neilds-loving crowd. We were actually sitting with a woman who was a Neilds fan; I think she also converted to Fru-dom that night. They were pretty good, but the sound was SOOO loud that it was kind of hard to appreciate them, which continued with Fruvous. (Why do small spaces with bad acoustics insist on cranking up the volume, so everything just reverberates? You miss so much that way. Alas, I'm spoiled.)
After the Neilds, I managed to squirm my way up to the front, where, instead of finding a lovely dancing space, I found a cattle fence holding the audience separate from the stage. I spent the rest of the evening pushed up against this, with my arms hanging over doing most of the dancing on their own. Hrmph! But the crowd was a good, Fru-ey crowd, and I had Lisa and friends on one side, and what I found out was Eric (from Wilkes-Barre?) on the other side, so the atmosphere was good despite the metal bars.
The show was pretty good - more of an old style show, ending with (as I remember) King, GEH, Potion (?), and Drinking Song. I could be wrong, so don't quote me. As I said before, volume levels were too high, but the guys were tight. (high and tight, Chris?!).
After the show we hung out chatting, and ended up meeting Kevin from Bottom Line,
who recognized the ng pin, and our names, from the ng! We eventually
stumbled back to Jason's, where we stayed up until 5 am listening to
tapes.
Some other tidbits from the performance include:
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