My post to the Sloan message board

- If It Feels Good, Do It (After Consulting Your Physician)
- (Arthritis) I Can Feel It
- Can't Face Up (Someone Get The Nurse)
- A Long Time Coming (Talkin' Little Blue Pill Blues)*
- Stand By Me, Yeah (So I Don't Fall In The Tub)
http://yupislyr.com/sloan/index.php?showforum=5

So on to a 38 year old's teenybopper night with her best friend from college. Back in the days of our youth, my best pal Nina and I played groupie to many a Canadina band including our first tour bus with Eight Seconds, A drive through the most horrendous storm to get to hang out with Glass Tiger, a memorable evening hanging out with Eye Eye in Windsor, all I can say is it's a shame we never got to Haywire... Well anyway, I stayed in the music business, she went on to life with kids etc.. I decided to take her to see Sloan figuring we could relive our glory days...
Once we finally got up to the stage area during the OJays, we wandered around looking for refugee from the crowd and walked right back to the backstage area and saw Grinder walking right by us. I asked Nina if the elevator Grinder came up was the only place the band could have come up from... She and I went to broadcasting school together and I swear she put on her investigative reporting shoes and went walking around the entire backstage area. She even pretended to be talking on her cell to look like she belonged back there. Brilliant. She reports back that indeed this appears to be the only place a band can enter. We decide to sit on this grassy area near there. I decide to be a compete geek and make signs (Actually I had Nina's daughter color them for me) I have never held a sign at a concert in my life but something on this message board made me think it would be fun. I wasn't sure I would actually have the nerve to hold them up. So as we sat chatting, I had the signs leaning on my knee. I am in the midst of telling Nina about a cruise my husband and I are going to take that features a bunch of Tempe bands and I see someone looking at the signs out of the corner of my eye. Oh boy...It's Andrew and not only is it Andrew..It's all four of them...I will never get that vision out of my head...just the four of them walking tightly together as if in sync... There was just something that screamed rock stars. I couldn't finish my sentence and Nina kept asking which bands are playing on the cruise... Chris was smiling, Patrick looked a bit distressed, Jay did too and Andrew just kept looking at my 500 Up sign.. We watched them walk in the venue and I just yelped because it was so hilarious... Not two minutes later Andrew comes out to smoke a cig amd Patrick is back out on his phone. Jay was out later to meet some fans, he was the only one who spoke to any fans before the show. We stayed back there until they were about to go on, we just kept chatting with each other so as not to disturb any pre-show rituals...it was fun observing though! I also have to tell you I have one friend texting me to tell Patrick about the fact that Sloan inspired me to write a novel and I have my sister in law texting me to talk to them as I was chickening out as the night went along...
OK, sorry this is getting so long... So on the stage they come...if it was a bad show I didn't notice. I think the sound was messed up but it didn't matter. We didn't know how to get into that area Anne mentioned but I was fine behind the fence. Nina started screaming before they started and I felt ok to dance and sing the whole show...I decided to hold up the signs but got neither of my requests played (Hollow Head and 500 Up) I had written "Patrick don't stop writing rock songs" on one of them. The first time I held it up he walked forward, squinted to see it and waved to us. Now I'm just pre-teen mush... Nina is waving away and I'm hiding behind the sign. I had so much more nerve 20 years ago... btw Patrick said they would have done one of my songs had they known I came all the way from AZ. Next time...I will pack my signs for next time...
Show's over, we head back to our grassy spot to watch everyone talking to Chris and Patrick. This is when I met SHP, yours kids are great! I am pretty sure Chris was teaching them guitar while we were having our marathon discusson with Patrick. I told Nina we would wait out the crowd a bit. I was definately losing my nerve to talk to them but finally I said we better do this now... So we approach Patrick, listen to some guys go on to him incessantly about ipods...By the way, I heard Patrick make a mention to the guys about messages boards and how the fans don't understand they need to do things to make money so they can keep doing this for a long time....finally I interupt and ask Patrick if I can have my photo taken with him... (no, I look too much like the dork I am to post it) Yeah! I tell him I'm there from Phoenix...and he asks me if they have played Phoenix lately... Um yeah...last year on the Jet tour without Jet...that was my first time I met them and was charmed enough to inspire me to write a novel about "girls and bands.."
Patrick proceeds to tell us a tale of some trouble he encountered in my hometown back in 1993...Nina and I agreed it was like meeting a new friend and having a great first conversation. She said I kept apologizing for Phoenix. Well I got the courage to tell him that their show last summer flipped a switch in me to write a novel about all the things I have seen bands go through in my career in radio, although I certainly stumbled trying to explain why Sloan spurred this. We went on to talk about all sorts of nice things like his son and dealing with being away from him. I end up telling him he should write more, like I'm some expert or something... I can only conclude by saying the night was inspiring on many levels and a great chance to meet someone Nina and I will remember as a super sweet guy who gave some old college pals a chance to be pre-teens again, except now we have conversations with band members about our kids and lives. Much nicer than Alan Frew..hahaha!