From: Joel Siegfried Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 03:40:31 -0700 Subject: Road Trip Musings - 7 Concerts This has been the most incredible time for me. Just two short weeks of following Tori Amos around the West Coast, but memories to last a lifetime. So, what were the highlights? With one concert to go in Seattle on the 14th, I have managed to meet Tori 5 times, always outside the stage door, in a dark alley, with somebody's elbow (I hope) sticking against my ass, and jostled by other adoring fans. In fact, the only times that I didn't get to talk with her has been after the UC Irvine concert when she was not feeling up to stuff and just went straight to her limo, but did wave and smile from the open window, and after the San Jose concert when I was under the weather (and under threat of banishment from my hostess). The times we did meet were in Las Vegas (just a handshake, hello, and see you in San Diego tomorrow), San Diego (flaming cupcakes with wind-tunnel resistant candle inside the theater at the first encore; birthday card, along with message to call my friend Ilka in Germany at the Torifest next week outside the theater AND a big embrace -- she is SO tiny and fragile), Los Angeles (I handed her a copy of Harville Hendrix's book "Getting The Love You Want", with a card inside, murmured sweet nothings as she leaned over and pecked me on the cheek -- she doesn't seem to wear any perfume or have any scent at all, very mysterious), San Francisco # 1, (she was very pressed for time, but her security person steered her directly over to me, where I handed her a children's book about faeries that my friend had priority mailed to me, and tried to have our photo taken together, but my marvelously, expensive Pentax auto-focus would not fire because we were just too blasted close to the camera, and there was no place to back-up to), and San Francisco # 2, when Tori came over to me, either seeing or sensing that I had been crying during her singing of China, something she had not sung in over two months, because she had written it for Eric Rosse, they had separated (as she said in San Diego), and she couldn't get through it without stopping, and had vowed never to sing it again on this tour; she asked ME if I were OK! Can you believe that? As I thanked her for an incredible performance, AND for all the shows that I had seen her perform, she took my hand in both of hers, squeezed it, and said "ooogh". I'm sure I was levitating. Actually, I felt higher than a kite, and just as light. I told her I would see her in Seattle, we tried again to get a photo taken, same dismal results. I got a ride back to Moraga (no one knows where it is) from Barry, a graduate Electrical Engineering student at Berkeley who was amazed to learn that I was joel@cyber.net ("I've read your posts and really like them!"); we chatted about the wonderful, incredible second SF concert, about really deep thoughts, such as the exponential growth of technological advances in the last century, and the no-growth, no-progress in human evolution during the same period of time, and pondered the "whys". We got lost, literally. But he got me home safely. It has been an amazing time. Tori is an incredible performer, subject to the same pains and disappointments that all of us feel. But to listen to her, even on a bad day, is a wonderful treat, and to hear her perform at an exceptional moment, is nothing short of a transcendental experience. I have never cried at a pop concert, until that moment, and can't say really that I understand what was going on, but it was really something wonderful. The adventures in Vegas, hiking back to the strip on a full-moon night from the UNLV campus, the cake-walk in San Diego, the Juan Fazio/Sterling Moss buzz up the freeway in 2-hours flat door-to-door, followed by a jaunt down Hollywood boulevard, shopping for used cds, looking at the names on the stars in the pavement, ending up at the Mann's Chinese Theater, and getting tickets to see Pat and Vanna doing Wheel of Fortune, was almost a surreal experience -- they did look so plastic in person; the 110 degrees inside Crawford Hall at UC Irvine, packed into a basketball gymnasium with 5,000 sweaty little bodies and a 17 year-old woman-child named Heather as my date, no ice for the soft-drinks only of course; narrowly avoiding being arrested by the over-zealous UCI campus police woman, who insisted on shining her fucking flashlight in my eyes even as I was walking away from the limo site, as I was ordered to do for no apparent reason; the ticket fiasco in San Jose (we had row 21 orchestra seats and encountered a lad selling second row tickets for a piddling $20 each, less than face value, so I grabbed them, not realizing that no one would even be willing to take my back row tickets for free); the incredible San Francisco experience, topped off by surprises -- talking to the woman on the bus back from the Exploratorium who had seen Tori perform in Vienna where she was a Fullbright Fellow; having Drambuie after Drambuie in Armani's Emporium, while plied with smoked salmon, Promiscutto-wrapped melon balls, jumbo shrimps, little cheese doo-dads, and oysters which were all left-overs from a private party, as I tried to stay sober with intermittent cups of expresso, talking with Kimberly on my right (she sold wedding ensembles) and the Dennenbergs on my left (they sold Picassos) before stumbling off to the first SF concert. All of it was magical. Was it really happening to me? You bet your life, it was... More later, I hope. Joel joel@cyber.net - - +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Joel Siegfried San Diego, California - USA Voice (619) 222-9236 | | Internet addresses: joel@cyber.net Joel.Siegfried@esbbs.esnet.com | | "But I haven't seen Barbados so I must get out of this." - Tori Amos | | "It's easy when you're blessed with money, love and sex." - Heather Nova | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+