The Planning Begins
October-December 2002
October-December 2002
After the show in Konocti, we had to really kick it in to gear. The plan was to have the plaque ceremony occur the same weekend as the California Music Awards. Traditionally, the awards (formerly known as the Bay Area Music Awards or "Bammies") were held in April, but the plan for 2003 was to move them to May -- during Memorial Day Weekend. Journey was still on the "Under the Radar" tour while we began figuring out when the event would take place and what we hoped to see happen.
By mid-November we had a rough plan, but we needed to talk to the band and their management directly. Fortunately, the band was playing a show in Reno that (naturally) we were planning on attending. The best thing about shows at casinos is it's easy to find the right people at the right time.
We held our second planning meeting in the lobby of the Silver Legacy in the afternoon before the concert. We already knew that the band had arrived at the hotel, so maybe we would get lucky and John Toomey (JT) or one of the guys would walk by and we could snag them for a minute to let them know we'd like to discuss what we were planning. We lucked out. About 15 minutes in to our meeting, Jonathan Cain walked by! We asked him if he had a minute to talk and reintroduced ourselves and told him what we were working on.
This is when our idea of having a plaque installed before the California Music Awards and then having the band show up at the award ceremony went from something small and simple to the beginnings of a major production. Jonathan's first comment was that he wasn't sure if the band would be available Memorial Day weekend -- they might be on tour by then. Then, thinking out loud, he mentioned possibly doing a benefit concert -- something similar to what they had done a few years earlier for suicide prevention. Naturally, we were very receptive to that idea. (Like we'd actually turn down a Journey concert!) Jonathan's next suggestion was something that would never had occurred to us though.
He mentioned having gone into the Hard Rock Café with his kids and not seeing one piece of Journey memorabilia on the walls. The Hard Rock had just moved from its long time location on Van Ness Avenue to Pier 39 and in the move, the memorabilia that had been in the old site was shipped off and new items were sent for the new restaurant. We agreed with Jonathan that it was just wrong for there to be no memorabilia of Journey in the San Francisco Hard Rock Café. So we added trying to find out what had happened to Neal's guitar that had been in the old site and how to get something placed in the new site to our "to do" list. Jonathan then suggested the band might do a meet and greet at the Hard Rock. How we all managed to keep our jaws from hitting the floor over THAT suggestion, I'll never know!
Jonathan needed to leave, but before he did he invited us to sound check so we could chat a little more and check in with JT about whether or not the Memorial Day date was possible. We met up with the guys a few hours later and followed them over to sound check where we met JT. We told him who we were and what we wanted to discuss and he was very receptive but also very busy so he said we could chat a little after sound check. When we did, we learned that indeed the guys had a show planned for Memorial Day weekend. We said we'd bring that back to Dennis and get to work on figuring out an alternative plan.
The holidays began shortly after that and most of our planning was put on hold. We knew the band and management were taking a much-needed break after the long tour, so we just focused on what we could do for our fan gathering. We hoped we could double our attendance from 45 in 2002 to 90 in 2003 and began brainstorming what would be needed to accommodate a group of that size.
No comments:
Post a Comment