this is going to be one long post, so
be ready..................
The weather had been intense all day,
lightning at times, threatening, and then sunny gorgeous.....a storm in
Atlanta, folks....perfect for the Verve's first US tour date in two
years....nature was talking to us....
Devin came by my place before the
show.......he gave me my trp shirt and we talked about verve for a long
time, about what it meant to us, etc.
We headed downtown towards Buckhead
around 3, listening to Hultsfred 94, it was the coolest thing because it
started pouring and the highway was misty but then the sun came out and we
were listening to the sun, the sea.....yesterday was just one huge
metaphor......
As we were driving towards Buckhead, we
saw this giant bus and we followed it and when it stopped, I got out and
pounded on the door.... the driver told me that Verve was in the Roxy doing
a soundcheck...so we went inside. Oh my god, I heard A Northern Soul and I
got to my knees and listened to it.....some security guard said are you
with The Verve and i said yes. She told me that I wasn't and asked me to
leave. At that moment Christopher, who is the band's photographer, he did
the black and white photo on UH, came out and I walked right up to him and
started talking to him, so she couldn't toss me... I told him that Verve
had been my life for the last little while, he told me that I needed to get
out more often... Devin had brought a bag with 10 trp shirts for the band
and we gave it to them with a card that had two joints in it too. Chris
thought it was cool and he promised he would give it to the band...
We met up with Cole, Gavin, and Misty
at the Hampton Inn.....it was so cool to meet some devoted fans like
them....people willing to go across the country to see the verve......you
guys rock......
We smoked, drank, walked around
Atlanta for a little while and Douglas met up with us too before the
show....
We took the hotel shuttle over to the
Roxy, these guys were in the shuttle and we told them that we were going to
see Verve, they said, oh, i've heard of the Verve Pipe...we started messing
with them, saying, oh yeah, Verve Pipe is just so much better, we are all
going to be at that show too....HA!
the Atlanta show was made mostly of
Verve fans, very few BSS-heads, so to speak....the doors opened at 7 and
there were probably 50 people inside waiting.....
i hung around near were all of the
band people were going in and out, i guess i was making a nuisance of
myself, but it paid off folks....Cole made this really cool glass hand that
he brought to give to the band and he wanted to give it to them, but
security was being a bitch....so I waited and waited, i saw Kate Radley
leaving and I stopped her and i said, you're Kate Radley aren't you? My
friend needs a little help, he made this gift for the band...so Cole
explained his situation and she took the statue....she said that we could
speak to the band afterward, she said ok, Cole and Laura, Cole and
Laura.....
I still hung around though, talked
with Pete, their producer/stage manager or something....I begged him to
give me a copy of the setlist, he said just to be at the front after the
show and he would do that, he was a man of his words my friends.....
I was up very close to the front and
eventually got to the very front....
oh yeah, i met Enoc, Eric Wagner, and
some other listees too, very cool people, sorry i didn't get to talk with
you more, i was kinda flipping out...
here is the set list
A NEW DECADE
SLIDE AWAY
THIS IS MUSIC
LIFE'S AN OCEAN
ON YOUR OWN
TDDW
A NORTHERN SOUL
MAN CALLED SUN
SONNET
ROLLING PEOPLE
STORMY CLOUDS
---------
BSS
HISTORY
LUCKY MAN
COME ON
it was like the a northern soul
tour....i admit, i had been neglecting ANS for a little while, but i can't
even begin to describe how the show was for me, my first time ever seeing
the Verve live, i remembered all of those songs, all of the people, places,
and events i associated with those songs....to hear Slide Away, ahhhhh,
shivers, i was so happy to hear something from ASIH....i was crying during
on your own because that is where it all began for me, i remembered how
that was my first verve song i ever heard, how the band has been my
mouthpiece for my soul, expressing things in ways that i can't express myself
in, how much the music has meant to me....
i was yelling at Nick McCabe, i
started the nick McCabe appreciation cheers, he was happy for that, i
think....that he really meant a lot to us and that he came back to make the
verve happen again...
oh yeah, that was me, floating in the
air at times courtesy of Douglas, so if i was ever blocking your view at
times, sorry....
a northern soul was very
intense....great....i admit i am a Sonnet basher, but it is so different
live, it is not as cheesy sounding live as it is on UH.....they kind of did
the stormy clouds reprise after stormy clouds.....
one of the things i noticed was that
Richard Ashcroft didn't interact with the crowd that much....essentially,
the set list was the same as hammersmith except for sonnet and lucky man
and lucky man was added i am sure because of the single's release.....
I can't even begin to describe how
great the show was.....very intense, the crowd for the most part were Verve
fans, so it was a good atmosphere....
We had hoped that they would have kept
playing but we were pretty much pushed out after the show....Pete the
manager guy was true to his word, he put the set list directly in my hand
over everybody else who was grabbing for it....it was Nick's....
I went around to the back in hopes of
talking to the band....I was threatened to be arrested if i didn't move to
the other side, I told her "one way to go".....she said, yeah,
that will be the way you are going to go...she didn't get it, obviously....
There were autograph seekers waiting
around for awhile, but eventually they left....a few of us diehards stayed
around. I was there for 2 hours in the cold and rain. I got my set list
autographed, but i didn't really get to talk to the band. the band minus
Richard came off the bus and went into the Roxy, nick acknowledged me as
the crazy who was like Nick McCabe is the verve, i shook his hand....
these kids from South Carolina stole
nick's bag with his clothes in it, so nick will be pretty pissed i think
for the rest of the trip....
All in all, my life has been changed
forever. thanks to the band for putting out real music, for all of the
people that came to Atlanta, for all of the people who waited in hopes of
talking with the band. you all made it a very special day for me.....
Just got my first night of real sleep
since the show last weekend.
As Cole mentioned in his review the
vibes were with us in the flight over from San Francisco- there was a storm
in heaven that night as we flew above the electrical storm on the way to
Atlanta. The Roxy was the perfect size place to see Verve -they said it
held 1300 but it looked a lot more like 900-1000 capacity. The Roxy is an
old art-deco movie theatre that has been converted to a live music venue in
Atlanta's Buckhead district-very cool. We milled around the hotel talking
to Verve fans before the show- it was especially cool for me to finally
meet Devin W. from Ohio who I have been friends with via telephone for
almost two years now...... after spending time with the Verve fans I went
to an early dinner at a Barbeque place across from the Roxy, I finished
eating and went out to have a smoke- there were some roadies for the band
eating there and I struck up a conversation with the soundman- I asked him how
everything was going-- he told me that Verve would be back to the states in
the spring for another headlining tour... As I was finishing my
conversation with him I saw the band getting off the bus , I cut across the
parking lot and I guess nobody saw them so I walked up alone to Pete, Nick
Mc Cabe, and the two Simons'- I just said right on- they turned and said
hello- I told them I flew out from San Fran to see the opening night and
Simon Jones said "thanks alot man" and shook my hand -Nick nodded
his head and smiled- what gents- very cool indeed. The show was amazing!!!
The set list was the same as the summer shows with the addition of lucky
man....it was easily the best performance of the 3 times I have seen them
play live....The pre-show was great with 2 screens showing slides of the
Band and various other images, the DJ was great- he played a great set of
Funkadelic, T.Never Knows, and 2 CAN SONGS!!! The Verve have a full blown
production crew this time with their own sound and lighting crew- the lights
were fantastic!! The show was amazing everyone was just screaming when they
came on, Richard did many of his "come on's!!!" Best song of the
night was Rolling People, for me..... We heard that Richard had a touch of
flu, but you could not tell.......
I was, and still am, recovering from
my weekend. In fact, I stayed in from school yesterday, and I almost went
today. Missed an exam yesterday, but I really can't be bothered to drive
the 15 minute drive to school. I'm sooooo sore. My arms and back and knees
and neck. I didn't sleep at all this weekend.
Oh yeah, the Verve. Did I tell you
that I saw them this weekend? We got an incredible hotel room about a mile
down the road from the Roxy, where the show was. It's in a part of Atlanta
called Buckhead, which is comparable to Camden. It's the Camden of Atlanta.
Wall to wall bars and clubs and and drunks. It's nice. It's kinda up scale
though. Lots of rich people driveing around in their Benzes and BMW's
trying to avoid running over the drunk people. Elton John actually lives
there most of the year, as do many other rich, gay celebrities. So I guess
it's not that similar to Camden. Where as Camden has students and kids,
Buckhead has yuppies and frat boys. It's nice though.
Anyway, like I said, we got a
extremely nice hotel. It had one of those fish ponds with the giant
Japanese goldfish in it on the bottom level atrium, and an indoor and
outdoor pool, hot tub, sauna, free made to order breafast, and a beautiful
view of the city. It only cost us $129.00 a night, which divided up among
all of us turned out to be nothing. We ate about $500.00 worth of free food
alone. And they had an OPEN BAR between 5:30 and 7:00, which we took full
advantage of. We got one room for all of us, which turned out to be about
15 or so people. It was a big room. It had a big living room with a fold
out couch, a bedroom with with two double beds, and two bathrooms. All of
the times I've been to England, they've charged us by the number of people
in out hotel room, which was odd to us. Here, if you're discret, you can
jam as many people into a hotel room as possible, which we did.
So during the day on saturday, we all
stayed in the hotel and drank and drank and drank and went for a swim and
drank and got in the hot tub (which Gib and Wes sick in) and then drank
some more. By the way, all the kids who went with us were Me, Isaac, Jena,
Gib, Wes, Zack, David, Tara, Jen, one of Jen and Tara's friends, some
blonde girl I didn't know, Kurt, this guy named George (who is the coolest
guy I've ever met in my life), and a couple more I can't remember.
We made sure that we had plenty of
drugs. All different types. I took E, and I know someone else did, but I
can't remember who. A few other people took acid, a few more took DXM, and
we had an ounce of kind bud between us all, which we finished in one night.
Ok, so we consumed all this stuff, and
walked down to the Roxy. It was great fun trying to run across four lanes
of heavy traffic on E. It was raining, which made it even better. We got
there, and it was packed.
The Roxy seats about 3000. The
downstairs is standing room only, and there is an upstairs is a theatre
like balcony which hold about 1000. All of us who were on acid or DXM went
upstairs to sit, and the rest of us went downstairs to freak out, dance,
and act stoopid. There was no opening act, instead there was a slide show
which showed them making the new album intercut with pictures of George
Clinton, Pete Townsend, James Brown, car wrecks, camel races, naked women,
while all the time playing music picked by the Verve, I'm guessing. It was
kind of like Primal Scream's slide show, if you've ever seen that. It got
everyone, especially the people on drugs (about 75% of the people there)
really jittery and on edge. Then they finally came out at about 9:30 or
10:00 and everyone went nuts. Most of the people there seemed to be pretty
big Verve fans, singing along to most of the songs, and screaming old and
rare songs for them to play, which they of course did not. Actually, right
as they came on, I started jumping up and down so I could get a good look
at them, and then I put my hands on the shoulders of these two guys in
front of me, and then pushed off of them so I could jump about five feet
higher, and they got pissed off at me. I was too happy to really think too
much of it. The rest of the show was a blur. Lights, music, people,
screming, Richard jumping around. Towards the end of the show, he put on a
hooded sweat shirt, pulled the hood over his head, grabed his shoes off the
ground, and started smacking them together in the air, which I though was
funny. I wish I could tell you more about the show itself, but I just don't
remember much. They played all the songs that people expected. Closed with
Come On. It was one of the best shows I've been to in a while, probably
since I saw Beck at Glastonbury.
After the show, I spotted Laura, and I
waved her down. She introduced me to Devin, and (I'm sorry I can't remember
your names. The drugs, you know) a few more list people. When I said to
meet us outside, we all went out there. It was too crowed right in front of
the Roxy, we went across the street into that little park thing, and
started screaming for you guys. We never saw you, so we waited a few
minutes, and then we started walking back to the hotel.
We got back to the hotel, and there
was a bunch of kids who looked like ravers siting in the lower atrium of
the hotel drinking. Turns out Rabbit and the Moon played somewhere in town
that night too. They were about as messed up as we were, so we hung out
with them, and drank and smoked more. Then we found this group of high
school girls from Chicago who had never been to the south before, and we
invited them into our, um, well I guess by this time you could call it a
party. The best thing about this hotel was the fact that they were so
non-intrusive. We were loud, and we smoked out our room many times, and we
kept spitting over the edge of the balcony on people in the atrium below,
and the hotel managment never said a word.
We swam some more, drank, played video
games, played pool, danced, and had pretty hedonisic time. We eventually
met these drunk Irish rugby players, and we hung out with them. We took
them back to our room, and let them try inhaling some of our nitrous, which
they had never done before. One of them passed out, and we though he was
dead. All of his friends were so high on the laughing gas that they just stood
there and laughed while we though we had just killed him. He eventually
came to his senses, and we were relieved, as you can imagine. Killing an
Irish rugby player probalby would have gotten us in some trouble.
We put on the daft punk cd, and my
friend Issac totally lost his mind. He did some nitrous, put a platic bag
over his head, and started dancing around like a chicken who had just
smoked crack. I think that was the funniest thing I had ever seen in my
life. He dance for about 20 minutes, and we all just laid on the floor
around him laughing so hard that I sware to God I thought I was going to
die. It hurt so bad. I wanted to stop laughing, but I couldn't. My rib cage
was about to burst. The way he was dancing in perfect sync to daft punk
just killed me. He would do karate kicks, and break dance moves, and then
he got some glow sticks and strated whipping us with them. None of us could
take it. After that, the Irish told us that we were the weirdest people
that they had ever met, and we actually exchanged adresses. The same thing
with the girls from Chicago.
We kept all of this up for a few more
hours, until most of us passed out. I stayed up talking to the Irish guys,
who at first I thought were just a bunch of stupid rugby players, but who
turned out to be pretty intelligent. Then everyone woke up, we all down for
a big breakfast--eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, grits, pancakes, toast, bagels,
tea, and OJ. Then we cleaned up the room, took showers, paid for the room,
and went home.
There are loads of details that I've
left out, either because I don't remember them, or they were too
insignifigant (ie, all the times we threw up). All said, it was one of the
best weekends I've had in a while. The best thing about it was, as good as
the Verve was, they were only the second best thing about the weekend, the
first being all the things we did in the hotel. I doubt I'll do anything
like this for a while. Actually, Oasis is coming in January, and although I
don't really like them, most of my friends do, and I'm sure we'll go all
out for that one too. So I suppose I should start saving my money now.
Write back soon. I look forward to
your letters. They're about the only reason I still use the computer other
than for school work. Hope to hear from y'all soon
well, i'm back to my redundantly
mundane day job, and all i can think about is the vibe that continues to
run thru my brain. this weekend, and saturday night was all about great
things: great people road trippin' fer a great cause, in a great city, at a
great venue, with the sole purpose of creating a great vibe with a GREAT!
fucking band. the odd weather was poetic, and only helped to elevate the
greatness to a higher level. amidst the stormy clouds and grey skies,
laughter was plenty, and all smiles free(but you could get a real big smile
with stickers). that *look* was around,.... you know, the "i know why
yer here, and i'm here fer the same glorious event"-look. we even had
"a storm in heaven" on the plane ride from SF to atlanta! gavin
and i peered out the windows to see a blanket of cloud lit up by randoms
flics of nature's big-ass bic. and it was glorious; a light show to precede
the one at the roxy.
it's wonderful to know that there are
people who are willing to do things that most peeps(those who can't
understand passion and zest for doin what you believe in, no matter what
the costs) would consider wasteful.....what i consider wasteful is spending
all yer time and hard earned money, not using it to truly follow your OWN
heart. there were people who came from different cities, and all walks of
life to witness a *moment* in time where history was made. karma, smiles
and the occasional tears were flowin' heavy. it was very inspiring, and i'm
sure the verve felt it. they played the longest set i've ever heard them
play, and they were stoked the whole way thru(except nick, when his stuff
was buggin' early on). it was very communal, as i met lots of peeps that
had that common love for art.
i was reading a great(there's that
werd again:) book called "einstien's dreams" by alan lightman, on
the plane, and it truly spoke the words of verve....it's all about
livin'.....L-I-V-I-N!!!!
(laugh now,devin;)
and that passion for life; whatever
"life" means to you, was the binding groove that brought most of
the crowd to the roxy. it was pure beauty; to be there as the lights came
on and NO ONE left....to see peter's face scrunch up as he was about to
burst with happiness(more or less) while he pounded out the jams....to see
si's fist and opened mouth screaming loud and pround as he saw the power he
and his mates had over our souls at that *moment*.....having people i've
never met before give me things they knew i would cherish, and knowing that
i was doing my part to make that happen for others, too.....richard
screaming without a mic, standing,arms up high, on peter's drum monitor
during "come on". all in all, perhaps the greatest bout of
"livin" i've done in a weekend.
i know that was long, but it's the
condensed verve-sion of everything i was thinking(that the mushrooms didn't
erase) about my experience of the first live gig in america from a band
that called it quits a long 27 months ago. a big highlighted chapter in my
book of stories, indeed.
one bummer; the kids who stole nick's
stuff. however nice they were, that shit just wasn't right.and i wish that
i got to say goodbye to douglas(hope you made it home safe bro), and also,i
didn't meet up with captnswing and ryan collins(who i hear is a wild one;
if you and yer friends and me and my friends got together.....chaos theory
would have to take human form;)
lastly, there were a few peeps that i
know of that should have been there:john ricci, ajay sharma, and the ever wondrous
gina.....that vibe was meant for you.
it has
begun:):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)
most of it has already been said, but
i'll contribute mine:
After a bizarre day of meeting fans in
little five points and seeing flyposters for the show all over town,
chaunacey, colin and i got there at about 9pm...i wish we had gotten there
earlier to get in the front, but thanks to douglas ('you're from texas?
where? what does vmg.co.uk mean to you?' :P) i ended up there
eventually...the whole experience was a bit overwhelming, since i'd been
waiting four years to see them, so when we finally got inside the roxy i
had to stave off tears of happiness...it was truly great to finally hear
and see them live, although i handily agree, the roxy sound man should be
SHOT. best songs imo were rolling people, life's an ocean, and come
on...potboilers all. i couldn't help but be a bit disappointed with the
loud crowd response to ddw and sonnet and the almost complete lack of ASIH
songs (the ones that got me into verve), and the inclusion of 'lucky man'
made it really evident that this is a 'business' tour. but it was still
worth the plane ticket. :) afterwards by the tour bus it was great to
spread more vervelove (we met some guys who *drove* from dallas at
wax'n'facts in little five points and they hung around longer than we did),
laura, douglas, cole, etc. and simon waved at me like the cute little
awestruck kid he is. :) i would have liked to have been really off my
rocker psychedelically speaking for this gig, but that's what the tour
early next year is for! (and an aside - if you go to a gig and can't
remember any of it because of how fucked up your are, maybe you should
reevaluate your priorities. :) ) and a word of advice to those seeing them
on the rest of this tour - especially if you've never seen them live, get
there early and get to the front, it's a much more enjoyable experience
than being squashed a few rows back. and i say this even though when i got
up there i had my eyes closed most of the time anyway! :) anyway, vervelove
and all that
Joanna
Comments? Questions? E-mail me below. Thanks....Matt.
