Okay, Friday night in Richmond was a huge disappointment through no fault of the band. After a 4 hour drive (one hour of it lost in Richmond due to bad directions) I found the club around 10:00. I went into the club and saw John. We talked a little and he took me on the bus to say Hi to the rest of the guys. Spacey was playing Area 51 on the Playstation (all this time I thought he liked space aliens and here he was blowing their heads off). Anyway, about 12, the local opening band (a pop-jazzy, Dave Matthews wannabe - nothing special) finishes up. Then one of the bartender's get onstage and announces that a transformer outside is leaking and VA Power is going to be shutting off all their power in 30 minutes so there will be no Dirty Walt show. You could see all the soldiers faces drop. I hung out for a little while hoping for a miracle or at least a Dirty Walt - Unplugged but no luck. So I drove home.

Sunday night in Blacksburg was much better. The place was tiny but by the time Fishbone got onstage it was packed. There was no Blowfly or Dirty Walt, just the opening band Infectious Organisms (pretty good, although they were no substitute for Blowfly and Walt). The band tore into the music like their lives depended on it. I don't want to sound like I'm reading too much into it, but I couldn't help but think that recent events (World Trade Center, War and Brian's death) seemed to fuel an aggressive set. I don?t have an entire setlist but here are some highlights (in no particular order):
Party at Ground Zero
Ma & Pa
Bonin' in the Boneyard (so stank-ass funky I'd be surprised if several women
from the show didn't get knocked up last night)
Skank N Go Nuts
Heat of Anger
Black Box
Cholly
Ugly
Are You Wid It
Loose Our Minds
And We Fly
Riot
Deep inside
Alcoholic
AIDS and Armageddon
Shakey Ground
Freddie's Dead
Servitude (absolutely blistering)
Fishbone is Red Hot (encore)

When they first got on stage, Norwood is riffing on the bass and some Obnoxiously Drunk Guy (ODG) next to me is trying to shove paper and a pen in his face. Norwood just keeps smiling and playing even funkier. The ODG does not take the hint so finally Norwood steps up to the mike, "After the show I will be back at the merchandise booth and I will sign anything you want. But right now I'm not gonna stop playing bass to sign your fucking autograph." The whole crowd laughs, except for ODG obviously. He flips off Norwood and leaves the pit. One less drunk asshole to run in to, damn. He did come back later, so either all was forgiven or he had a lot more to drink. Angelo was a mad crowd surfer. The crowd was pretty good at keeping him up and at one point he managed to grab hold of the balcony and pull himself up to the second floor. I was a little worried at one point because he was hanging upside down Spider-Man-like and looked a little precarious. Then he jumped off the balcony into the crowd and surfed back onstage. He also walked out along the bar several times for more crowd interaction. One thing that struck me was the band seemed to be having a great time together. Even John was smiling at times throughout the show I don't know if I'm describing it effectively, but while parts of the show were very intense, there also seemed to be an ease to all of it. If someone did seem to make a mistake, they looked at each other an laughed. Not saying that the show was sloppy - far from it. It was just nice to see they are enjoying
themselves.

I got to speak with D-Breaks on Friday and Sunday. I told him I was gonna keep following him until I got more barbecue. When I told him I would be at the show in Raleigh, that's when he said he was gonna kick back and enjoy some real NC barbecue and learn from the masters I don't know how much more he can learn - the food in LA was the bomb!

trip