Coffee and Hairspray: The Chicken Quesadilla was a poor life choice

NOTE: I didn't upload the pictures through blogger because I'd already uploaded them to Flickr and it seemed like a serious waste of time to upload them all again. Unfortunately, blogger automatically crops the pictures so almost all of the pictures below are missing the far right side. For most pictures it's ok, but there are a few where Brian or Joe are cut in half. Click on the picture if you want to see the whole image.

I actually had to type out this entire thing twice, so y'all better like these pictures. At least lie to me and tell me you did. I just got this camera about two weeks ago, so I'm still getting used to it, which is why some of the pictures are fairly blurry. Also, some of the blur comes from the fact that I prefer shooting stage shots without a flash.

Anyway. The show, like always, was wonderful. My friend Abby and I got to the show very early, because we wanted to grab something to eat and catch up on gossip before the show started. This would turn out to be a very bad idea. The chicken quesadilla I had made me sick to my stomach for the rest of the night. I wasn't so bad that I was actually vomiting (I obviously wouldn't have stuck around if that were the case) but it was bad enough that I left not too long after the show ended instead of hanging out like I normally would have.

Let's just get on with the pictures/stories, shall we?

First up was Brian Wright. For some reason I have more blurry pictures of Brian than of anyone else, which you'll see. Even in pictures where everyone else looks fine, he's blurry. I don't have many pictures from his set because I took them all from our table because I'm lazy, so not many turned out decent enough to use.

The Tragedies' keyboardist taking a break onstage.

Here's a video of "Morning Cigarette." Yes, I filmed it from my table, which is why you'll randomly see people walk in front of me.

Next up was Tony Lucca. Before I go on to the pictures, I'll tell you a story about the Super-Drunk Lucca Superfans. This guy and this girl were obsessed with Tony. It was to the point of being weird. After the show Abby and I were sitting down at a table a few feet from where Tony was talking to some people. Mr. Super-drunk Lucca Superfan sat down at our table (uninvited!) and kept like drooling over Tony. "Dude, Tony Lucca is right there! RIGHT THERE! I can't believe you guys aren't excited... The next John Mayer is RIGHT THERE! Look, he's right there!" Eventually I got sick of his "right there!" shtick and bitched "Yeah, I have eyes. I can see him. If Abby were to fall over backwards, she would knock Tony over like dominos. Dude, just be cool!" I really wasn't feeling well, usually I just say the bitchy things in my head or wait for the person to go away, but this guy would just not give up. Even after I said all that, he still kept talking about Tony so Abby just started talking to me about whatever random shit she could think of (like her shoes and the MTV movie awards). As weird as Mr. Superfan was, Ms. Superfan was weirder, only because she was Super-super-Drunk. I'm surprised she could stand upright.

Anyway, my great view from the table that I had during Brian's set was blocked during Tony's set by a man that, I swear, had to have been 7 feet tall and 4 feet wide. It was ridiculous. So the only pictures I have are taken when I got off my lazy ass and went around to the side of the stage by the merch table.

Tony and a giant blue microphone

More of Tony and the giant microphone, and here his mic seems to be hitting him in the face.

Here Tony is in the process of being possessed by the ghost of Art Garfunkel, which is weird, because Garfunkel isn't dead.

I don't have any videos from Tony's set because I didn't feel like standing on the sidelines long enough to film one. But even though I couldn't really see anything, he sounded great.

While the audience dispersed between sets, Abby and I took the opportunity to snag a spot right up by the stage, so I got some really good pictures of Joe's set. I won't post commentary on all these pictures; I think they're fairly self-explanatory.

(This is the only example where the automatic cropping is actually helpful. In the full version, there's a creepy guy standing on the right that I really wish I would have cropped out before I uploaded the image to the internet.)

Tony Lucca is still being plagued by the giant blue mic.

I think this is Abby's favorite picture:

This one's really blurry, but it's one of my favorites

Brian "The Blur" Wright

You can't tell (and I didn't feel like taking a panoramic shot to fit them all in) but there are 8 musicians on the stage at this point in time.

Lap Steel, Lucca, Wright, Firstman, other keyboardist, bass, drums, tambourines. 8 musicians. If I recall correctly, they're playing 'Mrs. Rosenthal.' It was the last song before the encore. Also, Brian's right forearm has disappeared.

And, as I promised, here are the videos. If you are willing to wait 3x as long for it to load, you can watch the videos in high quality. (You might have to go to the actual page on YouTube for HQ)

"Fight Song" Fun Fact: at about 20 seconds in, you can hear Mr. and Ms. Super-Drunk Lucca Superfan shout something I can't understand at Tony.

"Breaking All The Ground" Fun Fact: Keep your eyes on Brian and Tony in the very beginning, they do a very entertaining little do-si-do.

"Saving all the Love" (partial) Fun Fact: At about 1:28, you can hear Abby say to me that this song is "another reason why I'm going to get kicked out of seminary school." Other reasons she jokes she'll be kicked out: swearing like a sailor and making fun of strangers. I'm very upset that my memory card ran out during the second chorus, but it has inspired me to buy a 4gb high-capacity memory card for the next time Joe (or, really, anybody) rolls through town.

Also, It's not Abby that yells "How Old?" in the video, it does kinda sound like her voice, but I distinctly remember that coming from somewhere off to my right, and Ab was to my left.

As much as I like all of my videos, had I known Joe was actually going to play a certain one of his requests, I would have saved the space on my memory card. Sadly, I missed my chance to get a video of Joe performing "Wedding Song." When I realized he was playing it, I thought about grabbing my camera, but it was inside its case which was inside my purse which was on the floor, and once I got it out I would still have to delete some stuff and by then we'd be pretty far into the song. But it was lovely.

Anyway, after the show ended, I got a glass of water and we sat down at a table to wait to say Hi to Joe (if you can remember way back to when this epic post started, you'll recall that this is when Mr. Super-Drunk Lucca Superfan sat down with us). I switched the memory card in my camera to the teeny one that you get when you buy the camera (you know, the one that holds like 12 pictures.) I still wasn't feeling well, and for those of you who are concerned about my health, these three pictures pretty much sum it up:

How I felt:

Putting on a happy face:

Done making faces:

Now, you may be wondering why I even bothered hanging around if I wasn't feeling well. One of the reasons is that Abby is the person who first introduced me to Joe's music. She saw him open for Jewel years ago and the summer we worked together at a camp (we were also roommates) she played his cd for me and the rest is history. So I owe her a lot. This is the first time she's seen him since that first show.

She did get her picture with Joe, but I won't post it because I haven't had a chance to ask her if she would want me to post it.

And, despite my protesting that I didn't want my picture taken because I would look sick, Abby and Joe insisted that I looked fine and so these pictures were taken, with Ab giving direction:

"Look sick!"