7.21.2001
"Goin' down groovin' all the way"

Woooooooooooo!!!!! MONKEES ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) Right, anyways... Just got back from seeing THE MONKEES in Buffalo, NY, at, what, the Bisons stadium?[Later note: Dunn Tire Stadium.]
Alright.
If y'just wanna read about the concert, skip down to the ********** part. (Warnin' ya, tho, you'll miss the soundcheck! *g*)
10:00 a.m. My alarm goes off. Fall back asleep.
10:05 a.m. My alarm goes off again. Think I turned on some music to try and wake up.
10:10 a.m. Finally drug myself outta bed, realising I had less than an hour to get ready and be at Daf's. Stumbled downstairs, took a shower...
10:30 a.m. Getting out of the shower when my sister informs me that it's the episode of Digimon with Matt and Ken in it...
10:35 a.m. Watching Digimon while combing hair. (Look, it was Matt, alright?! ...it's the sleeveless shirt, I'm tellin' ya... b'sides, he's a rock star! *g*) Come boring battle scene, I run upstairs to get dressed, grab some beads...
10:45 a.m. In front of tv (tho Matt-part was over :( ), trying to untangle beads.
10:50 a.m. Finally give up trying to untangle beads, just go with Indian-type necklace (from Canada, go figure). Rush around like psychopath trying to get ready...
11:00 a.m. I'm supposed to be at Daf's.
11:10 a.m. I get to Daf's. ;)
@11:20 a.m. Daf's mom drives me, Daf, and Zinni to pick up Laurel, which we do...
@11:35 a.m. Stop back at Daf's to pick up cell phone.
11:40 a.m. Reach school, where we're to meet up with Ms. Zicari. See a buckled platform shoe on the edge of the sidewalk by the parking lot, have no clue as to its purpose there. Camp out under tree 'cos building's locked and Ms. Z.'s not there yet.
@11:47 a.m. Ms. Zicari shows up, we introduce her and Zinni, she chats with Daf's mom, who keeps commenting on how brave Ms. Z. is to be taking us. Ms. Z. gets rather excited when she finds out that David Jones will be there. :)
Bit later a.m. We leave for Buffalo!!! We play Monkees on the car stereo the whole way there, Ms. Z. gets a bit frightened when Daf and I sing *all* the words to "Goin' Down". Chat about random stuff, relate tales of Monkeeathons.
About an hour later a.m./p.m. Get to Buffalo, have to follow little green signs with arrows to the ballfield 'cos none of us know where we're goin' (tho we go by HSBC Arena... woo! Happy memories there! *ahem* Anyways... yeah, I also get harrassed again for accidently calling Micky "Larry" at the last Monkeeathon - I really really truly meant Micky, guys, c'mon!).
Probably around 1 p.m. We park. Get out of the car, and someone, Laurel, I believe, looks down ("and look down / diggin' the sights all around..."), and we see a band on a stage down below us. Laurel's like, "Hey, it's..." then trails off, saying that she never trails off, but she thought it was them but Ananda'd said otherwise and it couldn't be... then Ananda looks again, realises Oh my God, that's Micky and Peter!!!!!!!!!!! We'd all said that we wouldn't be psycho obnoxious fans, but... you forget sometimes. *squeeeeeel!!!* You guys, it's them!!!!!!!!! Yeah. So we stood up there, great view, took pics, watched in sheer adoration... and then Pete saw us. And waved! And later... he blew a kiss, whether to Daf or her and Zinni or all of us, it's a subject of much contention just now. There were these kids doing Irish dancing nearby, we noticed Pete watching them at one point (and Micky's part Irish, and it was Irish day, so I think I had an excuse for some U2-ish-ness.) Then Laurel and Ms. Z. disappeared, we looked about for them, then I saw them below us, so we hurried downstairs, and went up to the gate fencing off the stage. Somewhere in there, however, Micky'd left.... :( :( :( But we still got to see Peter. He had spiky hair, it was really cool, looked very nice. (He was also wearing all black... which Daf found very attractive... tho it just reminded us of, erhm, "Aubrey", having worn the same thing often...) So Pete hung around some, we distanced ourselves from some psycho fans (an older woman and her daughter? She was around our age, but... they were psycho fans. We didn't want to be, or be associated with, psycho annoying screaming fans 'cos we didn't want to bother and annoy Monkees 'cos it's just not nice and then they don't like you.). But we hung about and watched Pete walk around and stuff 'til he left, then we watched the limo go by... and while Daf, Zinni and I were trying to see if we could see in tinted windows, Laurel caught part of the license number.... I was all for chasing the limo back to wherever it went, but then we realised that that might be a psycho-annoying fan thing to do... and certain members of our party didn't want to get in any trouble. Hung about and watched Irish dancers, inc. Ms. Z.'s niece, for a bit, 'til they were done... then Irish-type band came on, I woulda liked to watch for a bit - they had bagpipes, and the guy playing them was wearing a kilt! ;) ;) ;) hehe... (Kilts are just...cool.)
Probably someplace around 1:30, 2 p.m. We headed to our seats, to see where they were and stuff, but didn't even stay 'til the game started. The four of us wandered off, in search of Monkees tour stuff, which we found.... and the t-shirts were $35. "That's as much as John's raccoon!" ~Laurel CDs of them playing live in Las Vegas were $20, and there were little stuffed monkeys with Monkees shirts on them, I don't remember for how much. But... it's a Monkees concert. What're ya gonna do. We wandered off again, to decide what we were all getting. Found a sign down the, I dunno, what do you call that place, the area around the edge of the stadium where it's enclosed and you walk and there's food and stores and stuff? Well anyway, we walked to the end of that, and found a sign that said the Monkees were playing July 21, took a few pics of the sign and each other (I wanted to use up the roll of film I had in so I could get a fresh roll for the concert so I wouldn't have to change film in the middle). Walked back, we each got Monkees shirts - I got the black one with their pics (from '60s) and coloured flowers on it 'cos it had tour dates on the back (I've 2, now!), everyone else got the blue tye-dyed ones. Decided we'd come back later maybe and chip in to buy the cd together.
Sometime during the 2nd inning Headed back to our seats, but didn't stay long 'cos it was in the full sun an' waaaay too hot... also 'cos we really couldn't've cared less about the game. Stayed long enough to put on face paint - orange Peter-flowers for Daf and Zinni, a green one for Laurel ('cos she wouldn't let me do a green wool hat) and a blue one for me ('cos we couldn't think of anything else that wasn't too far out that we could do... an' Pete's our second fav, right Laurel?). Oh yeah, then they played part of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" over the stadium pa, and I got yelled at for singing. (They play clips of songs for each of the team members that come up to bat.) The dude that'd come up to bat's name was Kevin somethin' or another, which was fun. His birthdate was March 13 - Daf and I're like, Adam's birthday! --no, wait, a month after Peter's birthday! His, what, runs from hits? I dunno, some baseball number ratio-thingie was 22, which was also fun. I dunno, it was weird, but cool. Anyways, so then we walked off again, wandered around, going past the Oldies station booth we heard them playing "Words", we sung along but kept walking, then headed back that way for lack of anything else to do... A few girls stopped us, and told us the station was giving out passes to go down on the field for the concert!!!! Whoever you were, THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So yeah, we got tickets, tho they gave us www.bisons.com t-shirts we were gonna hafta wear the whole time 'cos they were gonna be taping some of it... bleh. Eventually we made our way back to Ms. Zicari again, or wait, didn't we only go back twice? Oh wait, yeah, we didn't go back to our seats, but we headed to the outside booths and stuff 'cos that's where she was, (heard part of "Sweetest Thing" on the way over, I think I got yelled at again, had to start singing "Sweet Young Thing",) went over to tell her what was up, she said to go to the restaurant-thing and order food and she'd meet us there. So we headed up, took the elevator, which went down rather than up at first (thus sending me and Daf back into singing "Goin' Down"). Made it upstairs, where it was soooo nice and cool...! Sat on nice big comfy sofa ("no, not the comfy chair!!!" *g*) to wait for a bit, then got a table, ordered drinks ('cept me 'cos I'd forgotten Ms. Z. said she'd pay for food and I didn't want to use up what little money I had left 'cos I wanted that cd! -food is not important next to Monkees. *g*). Hung about for quite awhile waitin' for Ms. Z., talked about random stuff, told lady at table by us about the field-tickets (and felt quite nice about paying it forward *g*), she went off after them :) Eventually Ms. Z. showed up, we ordered some food, I wasted some film, waited and waited and waited for food to come, tried to figure out which inning it was (bottom of the 6th, turned out)... when food came wasted more pictures on Laurel's attempts at cutting her lettuce into 1" squares, and then blue-cheese covered salad ('cos we hadn't had any blue-cheese dressing when we re-enacted the salad incident the other night - hey guys, why didn't we take pictures?! *G* ...prolly 'cos no-one woulda let me... *g*). Lessee... yeah, so ate our food, then took elevator back down - Laurel re-itterated her fear of elevators after we saw liquid in where the up button was (which just seemed strange), I think Daf and I sang "Goin' Down" again. Went back to our seats, grabbed our special tickets and t-shirts, touched up face paint, then went to where we were supposed to meet to go out on the field (even though we were like, an inning and a half early or something). We got there, met these two girls in giant platform shoes and bright pink feather boas who were also crazy Monkee fans like us (*somewhat* psycho-annoying, but not entirely), who were as set on getting up front as we were. Hehe, they asked us what our fav songs were! We're like, ehmmmmm..... all of them!!! (They like "Pleasant Valley Sunday", we're like yeah, that's a great song, but then again, we'd say that about any of them...) So we talked a bit, got our stupid shirts on, some dude told us to come over to this other area, which we did, hung around, 'til the dude and some other dude briefed us on what was up and stuff, found out we were gonna be on tv... Non-chantlantly (or as close as we could come to it) we all (us four and the other two girls) made our way across the corridor to the doorway to the stadium. Bit later, dude took us down to the field, where the Irish dancers were finishing up. Got onto the field. Waited. Waited. Then announcer-guy says Monkees are on the way, back-up band starts setting up and everything.... and announcer says it's a beautiful day, and before I could even start singing... they played "Beautiful Day". !!!!!!!!!!! How frickin' crazy awesome is that?!?!? Yeah, it was great, Daf and I and Laurel were singin', we were all gettin' all psyched-up and excited... then they let us loose, there's a rush towards the stage... dude, we were closer than the speakers. Seriously, like, 10' back, an' that was it. No security fences, just a couple of guys keepin' us back from the cloth-stuff they had draped out from the sides of the stage, tellin' us to back up a bit and spread out (which we sorta did...)... but I'm like, sweet, this's awesome, it's like the open seating at the U2 concert, only better! If we'd been at a real venue somewhere, we'd've been stuck in seats, not nearly this close! ***************** Warm-up band starts playing Listen to the Band...Clarkesville...Theme!!! Monkees appear on the screen, entering the field on a golf cart!!!! MONKEES COME ON STAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We tried to remember the setlist afterwards, but.. it just didn't work. We can't remember the order. Maybe it'll help when we get the pictures back to look at, but... I think we did manage to remember all the songs tho, so, in no particular order...
Clarkesville was first? "(Look Out) Here Comes Tomorrow", we're like nooooo, Daf's song!!!, but enjoyed it anyways. :) "Little Bit Me, Little Bit You", with, what, kind of a Spanish sound or something, it was kinda different... "She Hangs Out", which I thought was kind of an odd choice, not one you usually hear too much - I mean, I like it and all and everything, but... Micky introduced a song by mentioning The Beatles (woooo!), said they'd thrown them a party (at this point Ananda *squeeeel!!!*s 'cos she knows what's coming), "I don't remember much, but I was told I had a great time [...?] But afterwards, I do remember writing this song..." "Randy Scouse Git"!!!!! :) ..tho, unfortunately, Micky doesn't play the tympani part this time (he did the Monkees concert I went to in '97), but... still wonderful wonderful wonderful...!!!!!! "Mary, Mary", we glared at Daf in anxiety, but I think she was completely caught up in Peter at this point; Micky played drums - it was funny, y'know how in the show he's always ajusting his microphone while he's supposed to be playing? In fact, I'm pretty sure he does in "Mary, Mary"! Well, yeah, a stage-hand dude was adjusting the mike for Micky, while he was playing, while he started singing... *g* (Shoulda just fixed it yerself, Mick - you can play one-handed still, right? *g*) Oh yeah, and towards the end, they speeded up the tempo quite fast, like on Live '67... tho then they slowed it back up. "Valleri", thank goodness Davy ditched the garish pseudo-Mexican outfit this time! Davy and Micky were both playing tambourine, which was interesting. "Auntie Grizelda" was awesome, Pete was great the whole show! (I mean, Micky's wonderful too, but Pete was just so much fun!) Before the song started, Pete said something about him not getting to sing lead much, Davy starts the crowd going "Awwwwwwwww!", we all cheer when the song starts. During the song Peter was doin' this funky cool little dance routine, was great, did all these little motions throughout the song ('course, so was Daf *g*) and everything and it was so cute! *g* Really, absolutely kawaii. "Goin' Down", Daf and I were psyched, we'd been singing it alllll day, and knew alll the words... and then Micky skipped two verses!!!!!!!!!!! We looked at each other, we're just like, no way! Crazy. (Coulda been the time constraint, or he coulda just forgotten those two were there... or maybe he forgot the words! Dude, he coulda had us come up on stage, we knew it! ...ooo...daydream material there... *g*) He didn't really do much of his cool dance-thing from the show, tho, I was a bit disappointed... but not really, 'cos it was Micky, an' he must've seen me, I was right there in front, man!!!!! I seriously, watched him like, almost the whole time, 'cept when I watched Pete sometimes... it's really kinda funny, none of us watched Davy like, at all... *g* But I sang all of the Micky-parts to things, knew all the words to everything they did, just sang and danced and kept my eyes on Micky... *siiiiiiigh* ...and I'm sure he saw me, I think he looked right at me a few times (but it's hard to tell 'cos he's got such small eyes...they're very nice, I'm not complaining, but...)...I know Pete saw me, anyway, saw all of us, dude, you guys, we've seen and BEEN SEEN by MONKEES!!!!!!!!!!!! Wooooooooo!!!!!!!!! (Yeah, can ya tell I'm still a little bit hyped?!) Right. Anyways. "Steppin' Stone"! Wooo!!! ..I always forget just how much I love that song... they start playing it, I'm like, Dude, guys, if they do "Elevation" in the middle....! They didn't, but it woulda been like, so crazy awesome... (U2's concert in Irving Plaza in, what, December, I think?, was broadcast on the radio, I listened and taped it... and in the middle of "Elevation", Bono starts singing "I-I-I-I-I'm not your steppin' stone..." !!!!!!!!!! So crazy....) "That Was Then, This Is Now" I don't think Zinni and Laurel were too sure on, tho we'd just heard it in the car on the way there; I was surprised, I think I actually remembered most-all of the words! But that was fun; it's still very '80s, but fun. Alright, the last three songs we think we've got right, anyway... "Daydream Believer", we're like Yeeeeeaaaaaaa!!!, tho it's not really my favourite favourite, Pete played the piano bit, everyone was very happy, 'cept Daf said afterwards that Pete'd been yelling at Davy 'cos it was too slow. "Pleasant Valley Sunday", one of the pink-feather-boa girls turned around to grin at us and *squeeeeel*ed, tho I think we all cheered 'cos we like that one.. Pete did some more of his little motion-things, I sang Micky's part, even tho I don't always 'cos it's high, it was all great fun. Think they'd said that it'd be their last one at the beginning, but then they closed with "I'm a Believer"! Woooooo!!!! 'Course, Ananda sang the fan-girl edit: "Then I saw his face, now I'm a believer... I couldn't leave him if I tried", looking at Micky all the while... Then... they came together in the middle of the stage...and bowed...and left the stage. Noooooooo! I'm like, dude, guys, why aren't we following them backstage?! ...Then they were back on the screen again, in the golf cart, I'm like, dude, where are they, they're still on the field! Then we saw them coming around, driving by the stands, we all moved over to where we could see them, tho it didn't look like security wanted us out in front of the speakers so we didn't try....we just watched the Monkees go....around the stadium...then to the limo(s?).... *sniffle* *sniffle* And they didn't throw drum sticks off the stage this time!!!!!!! *Ananda begins bawling*

*sniffle*

*sniffle*

I'll be okay, I think... once I get my pictures developed. :) :) :)
Lessee... alright, rest of the concert bits that I don't remember what song they came from and stuff. Like I said, Pete was so fun to watch... there was this one Davy song, Davy was strutting across the stage like he does, an' then Pete comes up behind him, like, mocking him, Davy turns around, sees Pete, Pete does a little "oops" look and goes back to stand by his keyboard. :) He and Davy did these little funky walk dancy-things, so cool... I dunno, we were talking about it afterwards, wondering about how well they're really getting along now.. and we realised that while Pete and Davy kept doin' all this stuff together, no-one really came over to Micky's side much. I mean, I think they did once or twice... and I think Micky was first off the stage, while Pete and Davy stuck around for another few seconds... hmm. Maybe Micky just wasn't feeling well today. *shrug* (Please don't suggest any horrible things, I'd like to stay optimistic here still.) Oh, but Micky had on like, the frickin' awesomist shirt!!!! It was so cool!!! It was a short-sleeved shirt, with like, the criss-crossed tie-thingies at the top (like his in Instant Replay pics?), and it was like, a crushed-velvet-looking material in multiple shades of blue! Oh, it was so cool! *g* Pete had on these really funky-cool red plaid-type pants, and a lower-cut (or maybe just partly unbuttoned?) white shirt, very cool. And his guitar strap had like, Japanese characters on it (which my sister thought was cool when I told her about it later, go figure). Davy had on a loose white shirt, kinda satiny-looking, and like, what, black leather pants, I think? (Go figure.) Back-up band was great, there was like, 5-10 people or something... a woman on keyboards/saxophone/back-up vocals, guy on keyboards/back-up vocals, guy on guitar, guy on drums (when Micky wasn't playing them which was most of the time - he mostly played an acoustic guitar), and three guys on brass-stuff (tenor sax?, trombone, an' somethin', ask Daf). Pete alternated between keyboard and guitar, mostly guitar, tho, I think, taking on some of the lead parts (but not "Valleri"). Davy mostly paced the stage (hey, 'nother Bono connection!), but also did random tambourine and guitar. Pete mentioned a Letterman Top Ten for Best Male Tambourinist or something, Davy'd come in... what'd he say, 7th and 4th? Somethin'... it was really hard to hear what they said whenever they'd talk - stadium sound systems are so bad, clarity-wise, anyway, and on top of that, we were down front in the oft-screaming crowd. So yeah. We missed a lot. But yeah, Micky played drums on a few songs, I think "Auntie Grizelda", "Mary, Mary", I'm not sure what else. As I said, he played acoustic guitar on a bunch of other stuff, for like, "Goin' Down", maybe another too?, he just sang. Oh yeah, his hair's short now, it basically looks the same as has the last few years, but without the ponytail at all. Davy's hair...well...is a lot lighter than it used to be. Like, grey-lighter. By quite a bit. *evil li-uhl laugh* It's not as poofy as it was last time I saw him, though ('98? Teen Idols Tour, NY State Fair - no frickin' security, it was great! *g*). Pete's hair we already covered - kinda spiked, very cute tho, suits him well.
The whole thing was like, maybe less than an hour, we're not really sure ('cos who's gonna look at a watch at a time like that?! ..no, wait, Daf and I did, when something about time was mentioned in a lyric, forget which one just now). But really, if it'd been a real concert, y'know, an actual venue as opposed to a post-ballgame-thing, we wouldn't've gotten that close. Not by a long shot, I don't think. We could easily've gotten stuck in seats, maybe even security to yell at us if we stayed down front takin' pics (like when I went in '97)... but we did catch some of the soundcheck, and got all these nice smiles from Pete, and I think I might've gotten a smile from my Mickybabe... oh wow, how long is it since I've called him that?! ...too long, too long...but it comes so naturally.... ;)
Well, after they left, we left the field, I took off the dumb bisons shirt before we'd even gotten that far... found Ms. Zicari, were all gushing about concert, found Monkee-stuff-selling-place, each chipped in $5 for the cd, then split, all still psycho-happy... listened to Monkees whole way home, took more silly pics to try an' use up film... made a few Leo club plans etc... Ms. Z. brought us back to Daf's (@6? 7? 8?), we thanked her profusely, and went and gushed about concert to Daf's parents. Then I came home, all set to continue gushing... I'm like, Hi, I'm home! Hello! ...hello?...hell-ooo-oooo?...hello?...yo, anybody home?....hellloooo?... The only one home was my cat, an' I didn't think he'd really care. There was a note from Dad on the table, but it didn't help me much, looked like it said something about goin' to SRS, I'm like, what the heck is SRS?! So, started wandering around, about to go waste rest of film, then Dad pulled in. I asked him what the heck SRS was..... he said the note'd said he'd gone to get gas. (An' y'all thought my writing was bad!!!!!) Then I gushed about concert. :) And since I've told Dad all about it and Matt some about it (Mel's at the grandparents' tonight), I've been down here, in my basement ('cos just sitting in my room changing film, I was sweating earlier!), typing up these silly notes and ripping our Monkees cd, then finding out it's 17 frickin' seconds too long for my blank cds!!!!!!, then checking in on our blog and yeah, I think I'm off to bed now, it's like, heh, 12:30... ;)
Just semi-proof-read, checked some stuff on the other cpu...an' "It's one a.m.!" Okay... goin' to bed now.... hopefully some nice Micky dreams tonight! :)

Peace and Love,
     ~Ananda Daydream

 

"Goin' back back

Back home..back back back home..." ^_^

Back to my friends...back to Goofy the tooth.... Oh no.. that'll be stuck in my head allll night now.... *sigh* MICKYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!! ;)