3 shows in 3 days... Back on the touring "saddle", as it were...
Happy was I to find out that the first three shows of this new "tour" were going to be close to home. Jo and I left Rochester around five on Friday afternoon, making it to Utica before seven. While eating happily at the pizza place across the street from the venue, we met up with Mary Krause and Christine K (sorry, I won't even attempt to spell your last name :-)
Doors at the Rainforest Preserve opened promptly at eight. Quite a few people that I recognized were there. Hmmm... Let's see. We had: Katie, her boyfriend, and her mom; Clairice, Chris Bray (with his dad and brother), Jason, Rob, Leah, Lisa, Kelly/Mike, Jen and her boyfriend Chris, Chris/Moe, Dan, Jered, Spidey (and his parents), Sam Park, Mike Scialdone (who interviewed the Jian and Murray on the radio prior to the show), Tom Fazzio, and many others that I'm sure I'm forgetting (sorry! :-)
Things really didn't start up till fairly late. The opener, Rattlebasket, went on somewhere around 9:30 I think. They were very good; a LOT of energy. The female lead singer had quite a set of pipes on her, I must say. Rattlebasket was on the stage for about an hour.
From what I remember, Fruvous went on around 11:30. Cal couldn't make it for just this one show, so they had a guy from the local area doing sound. It made for an interesting show, to say the least. Fruvous came up a did a mixed hour and a half set, but it was very hard to hear what they were saying during most of the show. The crowd was decent, I guess, but sometimes that "spark" just wasn't there. Got to hear two new songs, which was cool; hopefully they'll hold their place in the set for this coming tour.
After the set, the guys came out (of course) to sign autographs and such. Little orange flyers were handed out at the merch table (where Murph is keeping the chair warm, still) that listed some new tentative dates coming up very soon. Jian mentioned some other dates during the set as well.
Jo and I ended up saying our goodbyes and heading out of Utica by 2:30, so we made it home by 4:30. Not bad. It's 10am on Saturday now as I'm writing this (do the math, not *that* much sleep, but I'll live :-)
Next stop, Ithaca!
From Mary Krause:
Okay, Zard, ask and you shall received (not to mention the people who bombarded my email while I was away for show reviews)....
But here's my disclaimer. I'm horrible at show reviews. My images of the show break down into single wonderful moments. So things might be out of order or skipped entirely because, well, I forget things easily.
UTICA Got to Utica around 5 pm with plenty of time to setup a radio to tape
Jian and Murray's interview. On the show, they basically bantered about the
new album and it's parental warning sticker. (Because Moxy Fruvous is edgy,
ya gotta watch out for those guys.) Around 6:30/7ish, Christine and I headed
over to the pizza place across from the Rainforest Preserve to meet Jo and
Chris. A good time was had by all, except perhaps the other diners who had to
put up with our loud conversation, punctuated with lots of laughter. Finally,
ambled over to the show and met up with Katie and Chris and Moe, plus a ton
of other folks. Jason, Lisa and Rob came in right as the opener was starting.
Rattlebasket came on stage and sounded pretty good. Lots of energy, but VERY
loud. And after a long delay (brought about by the fact that Rattlebasket has
a ton of instruments and the lack of Cal), Fruvous hit the stage with Poor
Napoleon. Nice. Then they slipped into Mistra Know-It-All (I LOVE this song).
The new songs were both Beatle-ish numbers. I love Sad Girl. I like the
message, but mostly I just like the way it works for Jian's voice. Sort of
like Poor Napoleon quality-wise. There are just some songs that were made for
a particular singer and that's this song with Jian. Other interesting notes:
Jian - guitar, Mike - bass, Murray - drums, Dave - keyboard. The second new
one was "Sleepy Drinker" with Mike on lead. As the title implies, it has a
nice, easy feel to it. Sort of bluesy like the slow version of Boo Time. I
liked them both. And I finally got to hear "Life is Fruvous." yay. Another
interesting moment from the show was a "drum" solo played with brushes on the
heads of the people in the front row.
Some other tidbits from the performance include:
Back to the tour dates 1998 page
