10,000 maniacs & red sox

[Valerie Nozick <VNOZICK@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU>]

what a weekend!  first going to fenway park for the first time, and then seeing
10,000 maniacs in concert.  geesh...is this what it means to be a graduating
senior?  shame it only happens once in your life.

friday night was the red sox vs. angels game.  10 people, 1 an angels fan. 
needless to say, after the angels' 3-0 loss, i was eating crow.  everyone see
meredith gloat.  see meredith gloat.  plpth!  but what a field.  i'm only used
to anaheim stadium, a very modern ballpark.  so it was exciting to see baseball
pre-million dollar salaries.  and even a home run over the green monster!  and
abbott vs. costello...oops, that's abbott vs. clemens.  :-)

then onto the 10,000 maniacs concert this afternoon.  natalie merchant and gang
gave me one of the most entertaining afternoons in a long while.  

me, meredith and shura (meredith's housemate) left at about 10:30 this morning. 
after buying the requisite french cheese & crackers (it was an outdoor
concert), and fretting over what state to buy the bottled water from (maine won
out over vermont), we were off to exciting and beautiful danbury, connecticut. 
the charles ives entertainment complex is the sort of place begging for a
rennaisance fair...lots of bushes (would be easy to sneak in) & shrubbery.  our
friend tom tried to sneak in a tape player, but got caught, so no record of
this one.  :-(  so we finally got in and found a place to sit...about 50 ft.
from the stage, and in the center.  the stage itself was beautiful.  it was on
a lake, and was separated from the shore by a moat filled with lots of green
gunk which natalie called life.  i wasn't able to get a t-shirt, since they
were sold out by the time i got to the line :-(, so we sat down and i checked
out the lighting.  (this is a tradition with me and concerts).  silly, since it
was a daytime, ouutdoor concert, & lighting was unnecessary and unused.  but it
was neverthe less fun.  so the music started.  but it wasn't natalie yet...the
opening band was 'the heartbeats', who were introduced by a nameless person as
'my favorite group'.  how wonderful.  luckily natalie was sitting near the
stage playing with a kid and talking the whole time, so i watched her instead. 
she picked at the tree, played mindgames with the kid, and generally had a good
time.  actually, she seemed to be having a good time with the kid, it's just
that she played the 'now you see it, now you don't' game with her.  

finally they came onstage at about 2:45pm.  lots of new songs, and almost
everything from 'in my tribe' was played, and thankfully almost nothing from
'blind man's zoo', plus some earlier stuff.  they played one great song without
lyrics...afterwards, natalie explained that it was called 'tolerance', and that
it was spelled wrong on the play list.  so our buddy meredith asked if there
were lyrics for it.  natalie responded that it did, but that she wasn't able to
play the piano and sing it at the same time.  (but jerome can play drums & chew
gum at the same time...even in beat!).  luckily natalie didn't have this
problem with several other songs.  not long after that natalie ran out into the
audience for 'my sister rose', then berated them (she only went into the
dancing section) for not forming a dancing chain to run around the fields in. 
seems they all just wanted to ask her for her autograph.  a pretty popular
pasttime for all  of us there!  then she tried to sing another song at the
piano, but stopped in the middle...she thought there was a tick on her.  but
she decided it was only a gnat, so she continued on like a trooper.  other
crazy incidents involved her spotting of a cure t-shirt in the audience...i
quote:

"robert smith!  robert smith!  love me! (imitating robert smith) oh, don't love
me.  i'm rich and famous, my life is miserable (etc.)"  then she sang from
'boys don't cry', doing a really great cure impression.  maybe she should
consider it for the next album :-)  actually, she mentioned that today was
their day off from recording the album, so in a couple of months watch your
favorite record store.  

it was the day for bizarre questions...one person carrying a reporter's
notebook asked natalie what she thought about capital letters in the english
language.  she merely stated that she never was the type of person who wrote in
all lower case, and denigrated us lazy ones.  so someone asked what she thought
about pronouns.  her response:  "babies are never referred to by he or she.  we
call them it for so long...that's what i think about pronouns."  odd.

they played several encores, with it turning into request hour.  included (not
a request) was 'starman' (it sounded fantastic) and several songs which she
couldn't remember the lyrics to.  it's okay...the audience helped her.  finally
she ran off stage (after deciding not to sing someone's request of the star
trek theme) and got them to turn the music up *real* quick.  otherwise, the
audience would have pulled her back and never let her go.  

then came the attempt to meet her.  after lots of 'should we go back there? 
should we?', we finally tried.  we got the autographs of a couple of members of
the band, and tried to walk into the building with natalie in it.  nope...5
feet away, and i was stopped.  :-(  i begged, pleaded and stopped just short of
seducing the dude in the neon orange shirt, but all he would say was that
natalie couldn't sign autographs for the general public...it was against her
contract.  ble.  so off it was, into the wild blue yonder they call wesleyan,
and the end of a great day.  



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      Valerie Nozick            "And if I die today, I'll be the happy phantom"
vnozick@eagle.wesleyan.edu                           --Tori Amos

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