Ozric Tentacles, Nov. 1-4, 2000

Words really can't express my emotions from these three days -- suffice it to say that I've been treated to a wonderful, if a bit grueling experience that really "makes" my year. Cheers to our Ozricles, who are all the soul of kindness and courtesy -- well, except perhaps when you bring their tech, Joe the bar-tab. :)

First, here are the pics I took at all three shows, along with some commentary when needed.

Atlanta, the Variety Playhouse, Nov. 1st

For the Atlanta show, I was going to meet my friend Dirk at the Variety Playhouse venue at around 3pm, and I got there a tad early. Dirk is the chap from Tennessee who got me into the Ozricles in the first place, so massive love and respect to 'im. :)

No sign of Dirk yet, but there's the bus with the trailer attached. A bit old, a bit worn; I was sure it had to be Ozrics' bus. :) I went around front and snapped this photo of the marquee. It's a bit dark because the sun is right behind it. I'd have taken a pic of the other side, but it still showed the listing for the previous night's show. :(

Ozrics' bus driver, Lindsey, is tinkering with the bus and hunting for a water tap, so I watch his tools for him whilst he goes inside. (He ended up doing a lot of tinkering on the bus by the time this tale concludes. :()
I'm leaning against my car when John, Ozrics' frontman, emerges from the side-door, and immediately spies the Erp-shirt I'm wearing (from their online mailing list). "Ahhh, an Erp-shirt!" So he comes over and we start chatting for a bit, as if we'd been friends for years. (John is like that.) A minute or two later my friend Dirk rolls up in a rental car, and John recognizes him immediately. "Ahh, Dirk, you made it!" You could Feel The Love. :)

Dirk opened up his trunk ("boot" to you Brits) to get something out, and almost sheepishly produced his battered old backpacker guitar. John played on it for a bit; here's a pic. John's quite good, too -- at the show in Charlotte he was wailing away at one point on a mandolin in the club after the show.

We followed John inside and hung out during soundcheck, during which I took this pic. Meanwhile our friend Scott and his wife had arrived from Tennessee, and we trooped downstairs to the little backstage room, where I took this pic. Dirk is on the far right in the mirror (hiding his face, I think), and Scott is in the middle. You probably already know the kind gents on the couch. :)

After a very pleasant time chatting backstage about various and sundry topics, we go our separate ways to find something to eat. My friend Phil Carter had arrived, so I went with him up to the Square in Little 5 Points and into Little 5 Points Pizza, which has this sign hanging on the wall near the register. "Waiter! Check, please!" :)

Back at the club, I contribute in a small, heinous, yet very helpful way to the Drug Problem in America :), whilst also bouncing around between the front and the back of the club, noting the smaller size of the crowd as compared to last time Ozrics played.
Turns out they were up against Moby the same night, a sold out show at the Tabernacle, and clearly many Ozrics fans had gone to the other show. There was also the Athens Ozric show on Friday night, only 70 miles away, which also hurt sales. A pity!

My metal-reviewer friend Jim Raggi arrived, and I got him into the show since I was on the guestlist....well, three of them, apparently. :)

Show time rolls around -- here are the pics I took during the show. They might even be in rough camera order. :)

Zia, John, Seaweed, Seaweed, more Seaweed :), John and Rad, John, Ed, John, Seaweed, Ed, Zia, John with arms wide, Ed, John, John and Rad, John, Ed, John, Ed, Ed and John, Zia, John, Rad and Zia, Ed, Ed, John and Rad, Ed, Seaweed, Ed, John, Rad and Zia, John gazing skyward and Zia and Seaweed. At one point, someone in the audience passed up a Virginia license plate to John. It reads OZRIC - 10. John set it down next to the drum riser, and quick action with some duct tape by one of the crew put the plate in its rightful place.

I asked Joe, one of Ozrics' crew, for a copy of the setlist, and he carefully pried it off the stage and folded down the tape so it wouldn't get messed up. Very thoughtful. :) Here it is.

As previously mentioned, there was a much smaller crowd for this show than the last one, and we all concluded it was mostly because of the conflict with Moby; that show had been announced for many weeks, whereas the Ozrics gig had not been announced until about three weeks before the date. Still, it was an excellent show and I had hella fun pounding on the front of the stage. :)

After the show we all clumped around the backstage entrance and, just like last time here, John came out and rescued us from the overzealous security goons, taking a big pack of us backstage, including Dirk, Scott and his wife, Phil, Jim and a bunch of other people. More fun chatting ensued. I truly wish I remembered it all. It'd be fun someday to bring a tape-recorder and record it. :)

After a while the venue folks came down to clear us out, and out into the parking lot we went. We chatted some more until the crowd dwindled. Finally it was just me, Dirk and Rad. I mentioned I'd be at the show the next night in Charlotte if my car would make it, and Rad waved his hands in the direction of my car and blessed it so it would make the journey. Looks like it worked. :)

Charlotte, the Visulite Theater, Nov. 2nd

Seaweed playing darts before the show (caution: "Harlow Man," Ozrics' delightful merch guy, is dangerously good at darts :)
Two pics of a club employee's dog running around before the show, here and here
"Harlow Man." :)
long shot of soundcheck
Audience pic from the front. Note the sizeable crowd :)
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Zia waving; shows over :)
John's stylin' new skateboard shoes, which he bought in Atlanta. His 16-year old son had asked him to bring a pair back, and John got himself a pair because they last a long time. :) As he put it after he bought them, "Mission accomplished." :)
The weird winged critter over the stage ("ahh, must be the wild, elusive visulite!")
"Ginger snaps, pizza and Ozric Tentacles cereal make Richard a happy Harlow Man." :)

Athens, the Georgia Theater, Nov. 3rdst

A poster done for the combined show by Jomo Entertainment, who booked it
Marquee of the Georgia Theater
soundcheck (a long shot)
Gig pic (no flash on this one, but I used the flash from here on out)
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Zia waves again -- show's over :)

General show comments

Charlotte

Whereas Atlanta had a smaller than expected crowd, Charlotte had a much larger crowd (at least double, perhaps triple). It was "the only show within the Carolinas," as I heard more than one patron comment. The owner of the club told me he'd booked the gig because he liked what he'd heard from Ozrics and just wanted to see them. :)

We were all rather pleased with the venue. The Visulite isn't truly a theater, but actually a large bar with a stage, but the staff there were all extremely cool. They had a surprising selection of UK brews, as previously mentioned, and as you can probably tell from the pictures of Richard, the fearsome Harlow Man, in his natural inebriated state. :)

The band vibed off the crowd more than in Atlanta, so the performance had that extra "shine" to it. This was the "White Rhino/Throbbe" Encore edition and splendid indeed it was. (There'd been loud shouts of "White Rhino!" just before. :))

With little sleep after the Atlanta gig the night before, I'd very nearly turned around after 45 minutes on the road to Charlotte. But.... I'd felt I -had- to continue. The band were expecting to see me in Charlotte, and besides, Rad had waved his hands and blessed my car right before getting on the bus in Atlanta, so I had this karmic urgency to get to the show. :) I had arrived realllly wired from the road, hands shaking, etc. ....And the show made it all worth it. :)

I'd hung out with the band quite a while in Atlanta, so I gave them a bit more space in Charlotte. (Besides, that backstage room was tiny! :)) So I hung out a lot with Richard, keeping an eye on the merch table when he had to step away, and encouraging people to buy CDs. ("All of these on the table are great, but if I had to pick two...or three...") Richard is truly a cool chap. If you see him on a tour, drop by and say "hi" to him for me. :)

I've no idea if the Ozrics will tour with the Star People yet again, but if they do, also say "hi" from Paul to our friend "Anthony Kiedis," from the Starps' road-crew (long, dark, straight hair, hence his monicker on the Erpnotes mailing list :)). His real name is James and he's a cool guy, and he was tickled to death when I told him about his new nickname on Erpnotes. :)

After the show the venue, being a bar, was not cleared for a while, and everyone just hung out for a while, chatting with fans and drinking a bit. Really cool. Watched the bus roll away at about 3am, and went to my hotel room to crash. What a GREAT evening!

Athens

Thanks to the maid waking me early I didn't get as much sleep as I'd wanted, so I was still quite tired during the drive to Athens. Happily the drive wasn't as long as I'd been thinking; Athens is an hour closer to Charlotte than Atlanta, and I made good time. So I rolled down Hwy 441, thinking that I'd find the band and the bus long-arrived at the venue; after all, they should've arrived at around 6 or 7 am. I found the Georgia Theater (with help from Mapquest:)), but no sign of a bus. What's worse, Athens has a Parking Problem. I'm looking desperately for a nearby parking space, circling the block in heavy traffic on one-way roads, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but....the bus and the trailer, gliding by ahead of me. I was so tired I thought it was a mirage. :)

I hastily found a place to park and ran back to the venue. Turns out they'd stopped on the way for yet more bus repairs (does this sound familiar?) and then they'd come down US Hwy 441 just like I had.... But the directions they'd been given forgot to mention one low bridge on that route the bus wouldn't fit under. Ooops! To his credit, Lindsey, their bus driver, found a way around, but that took more time.

The Georgia Theater, despite its storied history ("Gee, dude, did you know R.E.M. recorded their so-and-so video on this very stage?" "Really? Gosh. That's neet. How did they fit all their gear on THAT stage?" :)), is.....a bit of a shithole. Nothing about $50,000 wouldn't fix, but the chairs in the balcony are so old there are mold colonies growing in the tattered 1930s-era seat cushions and conducting spore-wars between the seat-rows. The venue was also a lot smaller than I'd expected.

So we arrive and check out the venue (it's an odd feeling to walk in with the band). Seems the Biscos are.....hard to work with. I was chatting with some of the venue folks and they remarked on this a lot, in more unprintable terms. A shame, really. Their soundcheck sounded decent and I liked some of the Biscos' MP3s I'd downloaded from Napster, but.... I'm a bit less inclined to seek their stuff out since they were tough to work with. --And I haven't gotten 'round to the -really- surly guy who was driving one of their trailers....

The stage was way too small to accomodate both bands' equipment, and after much cajoling (I have no doubt), the Biscos consented to have their drum kit shifted over so Rad's could be placed. You can see from my pics how small the stage was; even from my close vantage, about 5 feet back from the edge (there were big monitors right along the front), I could still get everyone in the frame.

Sometimes adversity inspires greatness, and this was a good example. A very sizeable crowd -- mostly Biscos fans, looked like -- had gathered by the time Ozrics came on at 9pm. (Wish it could have been a bit earlier, for Ozrics' sake and mine!) It almost seemed like our Ozricles reached back for a bit extra. I'd joked earlier with the band and crew about the Disco Biscuits and how we'd have to, err, "bake their dough" with an especially good show. Well, Ozrics did. :)

It was clear from watching the audience that Ozrics really made a great impression. The Georgia Theater allows you to leave and come back in with a hand-stamp if you want to, so anyone who didn't care for Ozrics' set could have left if they'd wanted to.....and very few of them did. With each song the cheers and applause grew; I saw kids wearing Bisco t-shirts really vibing and grooving and dancing along. Just a terrific show, and I think they made quite a few friends there. It's a real shame Richard had to take down the merch table early; they'd have done VERY well indeed with sales.

After the show, they were in such a hurry to get stuff off the stage that it all got piled on the sidewalk outside the theater. Knowing the Ozrics were due in Michigan (a 13 to 15-hour drive) the following night, I had offered earlier to help get stuff off the stage, but I'd have just been in the way.

I chatted with some other Ozrics fans after the show and looked for Richard, but he had already taken down the merch table. After a while I went outside and just chilled by the bus, thinking "okay, looks like the stuff is all loaded into the trailer, they'll be rolling out any second...." Remember, they had to leave ASAP to make it to Michigan....
First there was a truck-n-trailer in the way, one of the Disco Biscuit's trailers, blocking the bus in from the front. One of their roadies grumpily comes out and moves it so the bus can leave. Then it turns out that Ozrics' bus, which had already had generator problems (or "genny" as the Ozricles called it) now has a problem with the water in its radiator. So we all go scrounging for water bottles to fill up the radiator in back. Meanwhile, the Biscos' driver is giving us pluperfect hell, because he'd moved their truck-n-trailer and we hadn't left yet. Finally he threatens to park it right back where it was, blocking in Ozrics' bus. (My comment: "Charming, this roadie. I wish I had a daughter so I could forbid her to marry him." :))

At last, the bus is topped off with water. All ready to go! I climb on the bus real quick and say goodbye.
-- Except now the engine won't start? "Paul, can you give us a jump-start?" So I wheel my Ford Escort around to the front of the bus. This is a bit like a mouse jump-starting an elephant :).
"No, wait, it's just the headlights." Which weren't coming on. This bodes ill.... After much experimentation, fuse-replacing, etc. it turns out that it was a loose connection in the fuse panel and they were finally rolling toward Michigan at 01:15...an unwanted delay, but at least it gave Richard a chance to slip across the street for more whiskey and the crew more chances to ogle Athens' collection of good-looking college chicks. :)

Just before leaving I spoke with Haggis and told him I'd post a note to the Ozrics' Erpnotes email list advising of their late departure. "Cool, good idea, mate."

I climbed on the bus again and said goodbye again...and this time Richard and I exchanged a goodbye hug for good measure. It was definitely past time to get the hell out of Dodge! :)

So the bus is finally rolling. I followed them out of Athens (heck, I wasn't precisely sure of the way myself :)) and then led them for a bit. I wanted to make sure the bus headlights were working okay. I didn't notice any flickering or other problems, so after a while I flashed my lights a few times, waved, and accelerated ahead toward Atlanta to send my promised email to the Erpnotes list.

Later we learned from Simon, at their UK label, that they had NOT made the Michigan show. Apparently, at some point during that dark night, the headlights failed again. (I'm just glad the bus didn't roll off the highway.) They -did- make it to Michigan, but not in time. The tour continued from there, but the bus failed completely and had to be replaced. Grrr. Moral: don't ever rent a "low-budget" bus from Star Coach Rentals. What's really criminal is that this was the SAME bus Ozrics were given for their Summer 1999 US tour -- the one that failed back then! Seems like Star Coaches had a year to fix the damn thing, and didn't do it right.

So our story has a bittersweet ending. As I write this, the tour is in the process of concluding. They'll be returning for some US dates, presumably West Coast, sometime during 2001; "time approximate after drummer-swap." I'd love to see them again, but finances and leave-time from work will be the deciding factors, unless they play some E. Coast dates when they arrive or depart, which would be cool. :)

Wrap-Up

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