Duran Duran Road Trip 2000

8/1 Events leading up to, including, and after the Atlanta show

I am going mostly off of memory for this adventure. There's a lot of things about this one that I don't have a fondness for unfortunately, not the least of which was getting involved in a bad situation that had nothing to do with me, and that I promised I wouldn't say anything about (I regret what happened and wished I hadn't been stuck in the middle), and my dislike of Chastain's ticket sales policy. I sure wish they would play The Tabernacle instead. One funny thing I forgot to mention from the driving home from Charlotte, was that we discussed the Fuck Off incident. I joked that wouldn't it be funny if we could present Simon with some and we decided the best way to do that would be to buy a can of deep woods off and put a label on it to change the name, and make jokes about using it to keep away groupies and such. Laurel had said Joey could help her with this. He did a fabulous job. He put our picture on it from the $1 store when we bought the ducks and bubbles and the lettering was fabulous!

SuSaN drove to my place the night before the show to get some shut eye while I went to school. I came home right after class was over and we went and grabbed some lunch at Max & Erma's. Since we had quite a bit of time before we were scheduled to meet up with the other bubble girls, we decided to drive out to the hotel one of our friends told us the guys were staying at to see if we could catch them pre- show. My Jeep had been acting up a bit, so I was hoping it would get us safely there and home again (which it did, thankfully). At any rate we went into the hotel and were sitting around scoping the scenery when we ran into Angie, the lady we knew from Charlotte. She was staying at the hotel and was heading out to get some dinner. We chatted for a bit and it turned out she was hiring a limo for herself and her friends to take them to the venue (Chastain Park). She asked if we wanted to go up and see what one of the rooms was like, so we did that. We talked for so long she didn't end up getting dinner. She invited us to go along for the limo ride (splitting the cost). We thought it would be a lot of fun so we agreed. She got ready to go. You know, kind of glamorous, plus I was happy not to drive my Jeep any more than necessary.

So, we didn't end up seeing the guys pre-show after all. We got into the limo and of the three other ladies that got in, I recognized two of them from Charlotte (Tracy and Sharon). I hadn't met their other friend before. Everyone was dressed to the nines and looking forward to the show. We helped ourselves to some drinks from the bar (bottled water for me) and kicked back. It was so nice not to have to fight the nasty Atlanta traffic! As soon as we got there I spotted Sharon Beauboef, Laurel, Angela, and Lisa, while Angie and her friends went into the venue SuSaN and I stayed with Laurel and company. We discovered, to our chagrin, that Angela, Lisa, and Sharon had all gotten 7th row seats. Since Laurel had worked on a deal with someone for slightly better seats for us, we had to wait for him to show up. Angela had this great idea pre-show to get bubble guns so we wouldn't have to blow them manually, so she picked up a bunch and we paid her back when she distributed them pre-show. Angela asked us to sell her (Row A, I think) ticket and went inside with Sharon and Lisa. We were approached by someone wanting to sell tickets closer to the stage, but initially declined. After a few moments thought, Laurel and SuSaN decided to chase the man down and got the two tickets for, ironically enough, 7th row. It was wildly expensive, but we were excited about the seats. It began to rain, so SuSaN decided to go inside with one of our other tickets (around the main pit). We had a nice conversation with Gramps the "Rhodie" about the amusement park venues (he said they were a pain to set up) and he said that Vegas was going to be a lot of fun. That set me to thinking about whether I really wanted Atlanta to be the last show or not. In the meantime, the deal Laurel had worked out with the guy was going to be a potential problem. Also, we were trying to find Sheila, Brenda, and Malinda. The guy finally showed up with his girlfriend (I want to say his name is Jason?) and they were both very nice. Laurel had to explain what had happened with the tickets, but that we would do our best to sell them for him. So they both went off in opposite direction to try and sell them while I chatted with the girlfriend. It was an uncomfortable situation. At long last Sheila and company spotted us and were able to purchase Jason's two tickets and one of my tickets. That left me with one ticket and we still had Angela's as well. It was still raining and since neither Laurel or I had an umbrella, we got pretty soaked. We made a last ditch effort to sell the tickets. I got lucky and sold my ticket because it was near enough the pit for the young lady to sneak up front. We had no luck with Angela's because the rain seemed to chase people away, so gave up and went into the venue. We, unfortunately missed the opening act, Tsar, whom I had enjoyed seeing in Charlotte.

We were able to find our seats and our friends seats (including Lori), then chit chat awhile before DD was going to start. We got SuSaN to come down and join us in the pit since security seemed to be pretty lax. Not long after that, we noticed there were several empty seats in the rows ahead of us, and jumped forward with Laurel leading the way. Angela and company wound up in the front row because those seats were unoccupied at the time. Lucky ladies. I was happy to have better seats than I anticipated. We waited some more until we finally heard Elvis over the loudspeakers with his Teddy Bear song after which we knew the boys would be onstage.

Set List

Fragment

Kiss Goodbye

Last Day on Earth

Hungry Like the Wolf

A View to a Kill

Mars Meets Venus

New Moon on Monday

Big Bang Generation

Save a Prayer

Pop Trash Movie

Skin Trade

Too Much Information

White Lines

Ordinary World

Come Undone

Rio

Encores

Notorious

Girls on Film

Additional Encore

Lava Lamp

The Reflex

I really don't remember much about who was wearing what other than Nick's "Jesus" suit and I believe Joe was wearing black leather pants with white stars down the side. The show was incredible, we blew a lot of bubbles with our guns during the slow songs (I had to ask Laurel how to work the stupid thing LOL), and danced our butts off. Two guys flirted with my friend SuSaN, which was pretty cool. One said to her, you can tell everyone "you got hot and sweaty with Duran". There was one irritating thing about where we were sitting and that was the fact that people kept wanting to walk in front of you to go get beer or whatever. Very distracting. I noticed that Joe had some problems with one of the cymbals and at one point he was shaking his hand like he had hurt it, but I forgot to ask him about it later. After the show we all resolved to meet up at the hotel. The bubble girls took off in Lisa's van, Angie said we could bring Lori with us because she had asked for a ride to her friends house from me. It was so nice to drink some water and sodas and not worry about the traffic. We did a little of freshening up in Angie's hotel room then went downstairs to wait for the guys to show up. They were more prompt than usual, I must say.

As soon as the bus arrived, I went outside to say hello to Joe. He was carrying a wine bottle and a glass of wine. He had on a black Vampyros Lesbos t-shirt and he was telling someone that it was an awesome soundtrack. He spotted Lori and chatted with her. I screwed up my courage and approached Simon for his autograph on the CD insert of Pop Trash that I planned to send to my friend Laurie (fellow Duranie from high school). He agreed, which made me very happy. Laurel tried to present her icon with the can of Fuck Off by holding it out to him and saying she thought he would appreciate this (and either he didn't get it or he just wasn't in a place to accept gifts), at any rate all he said was "No" and turned away. We were a bit crushed by this, but we know how Simon can be. (Laurel later showed it to Joe who thought it was hilarious and then Dave, who also got a kick out of it. Apparently, she gave it to Dave.) I went back inside to catch up with Nick, who was surrounded by fans trying to sign items while balancing a glass of wine. Too cute. He was also a tad tipsy, which loosened him up. I got him to sign my friend's CD insert and while we were both holding it up for him to sign, my knuckle brushed his knuckle and I had an impression of incredible softness. I was breathless. He was wonderfully kind. SuSaN approached him for a picture and no cameras were ready so he held her tightly to his side kind of dancing around asking who was going to take the picture. I ended up getting two. Here is one of them: Tipsy Nick He was so cute. I was unable to catch up with Warren or Wes this time. I talked with Joe a bit more. He said that we are 'hard core fans' to which I replied that "we're determined fans". Then hung around Dave a little bit. Dave complained about being wet and I said something about getting wet and he said "Simon has that effect on women" to which I retorted "Simon isn't my type, I like Joe". He seemed taken aback by this and looked around saying "Where's Joe?". I said "He's inside I talked to him earlier". Then Angie, SuSaN and I went to the Waffle House (Awful Waffle) for a bit of food. She graciously paid for our meal, which I thought was nice. By the time SuSaN and I made it home it was like 4 in the morning and I had to get up in a few hours for school. It was worth the lack of sleep, though.