Well, I must say, it was a complete thrill being one of 10,000 people at the Molson Amphitheatre on Saturday night. It was my first Canadian show and a total thrill. As Sean stated (paraphrasing) in the GBS Live video, “There’s a rush with 10,000 people singing General Taylor at you.”
I wonder why they want to come down to the 150 seat venues down here and play. The biggest audience I have seen for GBS was on the Uprooted tour at Wolftrap. There were 4,000 people there. That in itself was a tribute to the b’ys because it was the first Independence Day after 9-11 and people were staying away from Washington DC in droves. For them to schedule a show the night before July 4th seemed like venue suicide to me. But the fans prevailed and 4,000 people went home happy.
But 10,000 was overwhelming for me. I was just proud to be there. I hope they were proud too. With all the SARS show stuff going on and the ticket giveaway and whatnot, I thought it might be a dud of a show attendance-wise, but absolutely not. Sunflower and Andi accompanied me to the show and Sun said, “they gave a show like they had something to prove, and prove it they did! They came out with the mission to capture every heart that wasn’t theirs yet and they did. They fairly COMMANDED the audience to enjoy themselves and manipulated the songs, mood and show so they could. Not jut Alan, but each one of them worked at making sure we all went home happy. Sean was dancey, Bob was smiley… They reeled you in, hypnotized you and threw you back out to have fun! Geez! I am beginning to sound like Lynda. LOL!
When 54-40 began their set, the audience was less than half full. As they played, (not my cup of tea at all) more and more drifted in and by the time the b’ys played their 3rd song, pretty much all the 10,000 people were there. The big fish backdrop looked really cool – until it got knocked out of whack and taken down. We saw several people from the OKP greeting Bea, Alison, Jacqui and Wendy. In front of us a few rows sat Jan, Tristan and Angela who were wearing homemade GBS t-shirts. I had sort of met Tristan when I was behind her at the merch table. She was wearing a nice photo of Bob. Jen wore Sean and Angela sported Alan on hers. I really did take their pics but at 2 AM accidentally erased it so you get the one from the front. LOL! We also met Dave and Lennart from Guelph. It was fun to sit with them. They were both as enthusiastic as we were and nice to boot. Sun and I were sitting stage Bob – way over stage Bob and Andi’s seat was in the middle. Don’t ask. I could only see Bob and Kris most of the night, so my photos are overwhelmingly Bob – SURPRISE! Sunflower, however, did have a better camera and got some absolutely b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l shots of everyone. * sigh * Her camera is beyond wonderful. Alan may envy Sean’s boat but I envy Sun’s camera.
I missed most of the sparse banter because of the sound quality on the side. It was lousy to say the least. Everyone sounded muffled. Andi says she could hear perfectly from the middle though. I will not complain too much about our seats though. They were right next to the dressing room entrance and I watch quite a few musicians walking in and out. Not the least of which were at least 2 of the BNL guys. It was fun to people watch.
When the guys finally came out, they were dressed in summery clothes, except for Alan. He wore a blue and red long sleeved shirt with a lady on the front and dark jeans, Sean was resplendent in a dark blue shirt with huge white flowers and jeans, Bob was sporting a light blue and white shirt (looked like popcorn all over it) and black pants, Murray showed off his orange dress shirt and dark pants and Kris had on a maroon dress shirt with jeans. They all looked good. |
