Up at 9:00 for breakfast and
a quick shower and last minute packing. We were meeting Stacy at Mom and
Dad’s house at noon for a ride to the airport, and amazingly enough, we were
awake and alert and ready to go. The flight to Burbank was uneventful as was
the trip to the hotel. Ana Marie reached her friend Sally who would be joining
us for the show, and we quickly changed and freshened up before Sally arrived
to drive us over to the show.
We got to the Greek Theater
in no time at all, and went to meet up with all the So Cal folks—some we were
meeting for the very first time. Besides seeing Cat again and Michael (oh
webmaster of all that is good...) we met Miles, one of the Journey Forum
moderators, and his son Mikey (absolutely adorable) and a good dozen of the
Forum regulars. As it turned out, I would be spending considerable time with
this group over the next few days, and I really should have learned actual names,
but 20 people introducing themselves as “LA Woman” or “Nutz4Neal” makes it hard
to get real names straight!
When you start going to many
shows, you start running into people you’ve met before all the time, and this
night was no different. Once inside, we ran into Mark and Jae—the couple
sitting next to Cat, Mary Ann, and me in Sacramento. Hugs and hellos were
exchanged and it was time for the show to begin.
Per usual, Ana Marie, Cat,
Sally and I found seats together near the front for Waite and Frampton and
boogied on until it was time for Journey to hit the stage and we all had to go
to our real seats. When I got to my seat (alone, off to the side, sniffle) I
started chatting briefly with two women sitting behind me. They asked the
inevitable question so many have asked—“Is this new singer as good as Steve
Perry?” I assured them that yes, Steve Augeri was terrific—I wouldn’t be at my
10th show of the tour if he wasn’t! They were suitably impressed by
my insanity, and then went off to places unknown. The show started and I
adjusted to the fact that my seats weren’t as good as they had been for pretty
much every other show on the tour. I wasn’t too bummed though—10 shows in and
this was the worst it got? 13th row of the 2nd section,
slightly off to the side...no big deal. Besides, I had a fan club seat for the
next night’s show, and the fan club seats had been great thus far. Mid-way
through the show, the two women behind me who had disappeared earlier returned.
One of them tapped me on my shoulder and as I turned around, stuck something on
my shoulder...it was an after show pass! The other woman gave her pass to the
fellow sitting behind me, and during the break before the encore I tried my
darnedest to talk him out of it so I could get it to Ana Marie. He wouldn’t
bite, dang it all. Alas, after the show ended and my brain started functioning
again, I realized it had a PF stamped on it...it was for Peter Frampton’s after
show, not Journey’s...bummer! But an unforgettable gesture nonetheless.
After the show some of us
trooped over to Mel’s Diner on Sunset for dinner (at 1:00 a.m...oh well...)
First, for the record, the original Mel’s in San Francisco is much
better. Second, Tuesday night, after midnight and the place was packed...ahhh
Hollywierd...While we were waiting for a table (yes waiting at that
hour!), Ana Marie checked her voice mail and found messages from Cheryl and
Emerson—the Stevie Nicks concert she was to fly home for in the morning had
been canceled!! She decided then and there she’d stick around for the Journey
show the next night and find a ticket in the morning. By the time Cat arrived
on the scene, it was close to a done deal, when she mentioned that she had an
extra fan club seat that night. Woo hoo! It was settled.
Sally dropped Ana Marie and
me off at the hotel close to 2:00, and we both felt badly for Sally—unlike us, she
had to go to work in the morning. Once back in our room, Ana Marie got on the
phone to make the necessary changes for her return home. Wednesday morning was
a fairly quiet one, fortunately, which meant we could rest and recover a bit
from the night before. Cheryl was flying down from Oakland, but wouldn’t be
arriving until 3:30, so we had most of the day to kill. While Ana Marie was
taking a shower, I hopped on my computer to check my email and post a review of
the previous night’s show. That’s when I found that someone had done an
interview with Journey’s former manager, Herbie Herbert. I lost track of the
number of times I shouted to Ana Marie “Oh my god.. you have to come out here
and read this!”...I was quite certain that a furore was on the horizon
among the many rabid on-line Journey fans. Herbie was saying things that had
been mostly rumor and speculation for years, and here it was in black and
white. Oh the next few days were going to be interesting!
to be continued...
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