I was at the 7-1-99 show at Starwood Ampitheatre in Antioch, TN. It was the second show of the tour and the first of eight shows that I would be seeing that summer...I was stoked!!! Second set saw a lightning storm overtake the he boys were jamming off the lightning and Kuroda's lighting combined with spectacular lightning strikes behind the stage were almost more than my tripping eyes could take. The second set was cut short due to rain, and my soaked-to-the-bone group of friends began to make our way back to our cars. My friend and I (who had driven up from Atlanta) were parked in a pretty far lot, at the bottom of this long hill. The lot was chaos. I lost a sandal in the mud and wound up sinking into the mud and hearing a crunch. I had stepped on a bottle and cut my foot pretty badly. Our car was hopelessly stuck in the mud, and in our mental state we were pretty incapable of dealing with it. After many hours of wandering in the rain, waiting for a tow truck to get us out of the muck, I could barely walk. My tee shirt was wrapped around my profusely bleeding foot... I was hurtin'. It was about four in the morning when I hobbled up to the venue and sat down on the ground. The cleaning crew was coming out of the darkness and rain in ponchos to clean up the lots. One guy walked up to me, saw what a miserable state I was in and asked if there was anything he could do. he told me he couldn't count how many times he had been sitting where I was sitting. I looked at him and knew he understood how I felt. I replied that I would love a cigarette (hadn't been able to find a dry one in hours). He told me he'd be right back. Twenty minutes later he reapears out of the darkness with a ziplock bag with a cigarette and a book of matches. It sounds stupid, but it was possibly the coolest thing anyone has ever done for me. As we finally drove out of Starwood an hour later, I saw the guy simply sitting on top of a statue that overlooks the entrance into Starwood. It was pouring rain, I was trippin' hard, and the scene was simply surreal. I remember thinking that the guy must be the guardian angel of heads... maybe Jerry come back to look out for us.
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