I rolled into Ann Arbor at about 7:06, and by 7:10 was standing in Schoolkids' Records. Luckily things hadn't gotten rolling yet. The crowd was disappointingly small, so much so that I think the guys were starting to worry about attendance for tomorrow night ("Come tomorrow and we'll pay your way, and give you that lollipop that we offered you earlier!"). Still, a small crowd was probably best for the amount of room which that particular store afforded us. The guys seemed to be in rather good spirits, and a talk with Marcus before things got going revealed that Jian is feeling much better, although Dave is starting to take his turn with the "Cold of Doom." He seemed fine in performance, however.
I'm straining my mind to think of some of the intra-song repartee, but unfortunately I was just so pleased to be seeing them again (and still a little shocked from almost wrapping my car around a guard-rail on the way there) that I didn't really commit them to memory. Murray started a theme for the night, "We've all got to go sometime," which was brought about by Jian's compliments to the store ("It's the kind of a store where, once you've found it, you've got _YOUR_ record store until you die."). On a similarly moribund theme, according to Dave Robertson Davies still needs a grave. We were treated to the megaphone during Darlington Darling, and a game of "Let's pick a Random CD from Somewhere in the Store and Equally Randomly Place it in Some Different Bin" from Mike during the middle break section of 'Spiderman.' (Gotta love those cordless Mikes...er, mikes)
All in all it was well worth the trip. Scoped out the location of the Ark for tomorrow night's show (ticket prices were not posted, however the show time is confirmed at 8:00). It's a breeze to find, at least if you're coming from my part of the state: 96 to 23 to Downtown Ann Arbor. The road which you get off on is Main. Stay there. About 2 or 3 blocks after you reach the downtown area, the Ark will be on your right (directly across from the M Club). Large marquis, difficult to miss.
I hope to see many ng'ers there!
Some other tidbits from the performance include:
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