I Can Feel Your Heartbeat
Hush
I'll Meet You Halfway
No Bridge I Wouldn't Cross
Point Me In The Direction of Alberquerque
Do You Believe In Magic
How Can I Be Sure
Summer Days
Ain't No Sunshine
I Saw Her Standing There
Cherish
Rock Me Baby
I Woke Up In Love This Morning
Band Intro/C'mon Get Happy
I Think I Love You
Cry
Hollywood Nights
Gail, or anyone else who was there, if I've missed any of the songs in this list, please tell me... I was kinda lost in the David fog.
Aura
Lancaster is only about an hour and a half from my house, so my mother and I got there fairly early in the day, around noon. (Though the drive from my house is a bit messy, especially when attempting to work off of a map of Pennsylvania and a set of Mapquest driving diresctions, which were not clear to say the least. Most of the drive for me was following route 222, but that gets complicated since the directions didn't always indicate if we were taking 222 itself--which goes through towns and hits a lot of stoplights--or the freeway bypasses around the towns.)
When we arrived, we stopped at Lapp's Family Restauraunt for lunch--although Mom's food was better than mine. The tomatoes in my salad were kinda icky--but at least in Lancaster they can make really good bacon dressing.
After that, we checked into our hotel. Neither of us wanted to drive home at night after the concert, so we decided to get a room at the Econo Lodge. We unloaded our bags and went back out.
Since we had time to kill, we decided to go shopping, since there are two outlet malls along the Lincoln Highway--the American Music Theatre was right across the street from the big one.
I totally changed my mind about what I was wearing for the concert after I went shopping, since I managed to find some really good deals on clothing and shoes. I got a silk peasant-type blouse and a silver shawl really cheap, so I wore those to the concert instead of the outfit that I had planned. Found a copy of David's "Classic Songs" CD really cheap too. I know it's not his best work, but I couldn't resist buying it when I saw it.
We knew that we had most of a roll of film to use up before the show so that we could put the 1600 speed film in the camera. (I always use my mother's camera because it's one of those little ones with the zoom lens.) So I was leaning out the car window taking pictures of the farms and we stopped in front of the American Music Theatre around 3:30 so that I could take a picture of the building and one of the sign out in front--it said "American Music Theatre" and had a small light-up bit that said "David Cassidy 8PM". That was when we noticed that the battery meter on the camera was blinking "Battery Low".
Well, theoretically, "Battery Low" should not have been a problem. Because of the zoom lens, the camera eats batteries like crazy. The battery in the camera had died when my mom and I were on vacation in Baltimore over the summer (Incidentally, I bought albums of Rock Me Baby and Shopping Bag in Fells Point on that trip and nearly got blown into the harbor when the bag caught the wind like a sail...) and Mom had bought a pack of six batteries at the camera shop in The Gallery, which is a big mall near the Inner Harbor. Anyway, Mom thought she had brought the batteries along--they came in a little black case that she thought she had put into the suitcase we brought along.
We went back to the hotel, dug out everything in the suitcase and Mom's bag...no camera batteries. That was when we realized that we had left the spare camera batteries (all five of them) sitting on the kitchen counter at home.
Okay, *now* we had a problem. The camera battery was in dire straits, and the camera doesn't work without a battery. So we go down to the front desk of the hotel, planning to ask the person at the desk where we can get a camera battery of type CR123A. We get downstairs, and lo and behold, the office is locked and there's no one at the desk. Right when we're about to take our chances looking randomly around for someplace that sells camera batteries, the lady who was at the desk came back.
She directed us to the Wal-Mart about a mile up the highway from the hotel--a Wal-Mart that we had missed entirely while driving in. The time is now 5 PM, I plan on being at the theater by 7:30, giving us two and a half hours to find a camera battery in a Wal-Mart approximately the size of Rhode Island, eat, get changed, and get to the theater.
So we head into the Wal-Mart, and head for the area where we know the photo section is located in our local Wal-Mart. No luck--this one has a *huge* section of shoes. So we keep on looking and eventually find the photo and electronics section, and a display of camera batteries--except none of type CR123A. There was an Energizer of type 123 that looks the same size, but it's not a CR123A. We track down the guy in charge of the photo section, who was having some crisis with the photo processing machine, and he told us that the battery companies were dropping all of the letters from the battery type numbers, so a 123 was the same as a CR123A.
Battery crisis resolved, it was now time for dinner. Mom's friend had recommended a restauraunt called Dienner's, which supposedly had good food at reasonable prices--but it was a couple of miles away on Lincoln Highway, the same road that we'd been driving back and forth on all day. We drive down there, and get out of the car only to discover that the place was absolutely packed with people waiting in line to get in--mostly senior citizens. Okay, the time is now 5.45, and there is no way we are getting in to eat there anytime soon. So we leave and go back down the road toward the American Music Theatre, looking for a place to eat that isn't full.
We found a Ruby Tuesday's in the Rockvale outlet mall across the street from the American Music Theatre that took us right away at 6, and we had our dinner and were eating by 6.30. We managed to get back to the hotel to get changed for the concert by 7. My makeup took longer than planned, however, and I had to give up without doing my nails. I also ended up loading the 1600 speed film into the camera in the car while we were driving to the theater.
We got to the theater by 7:45. I took a quick look around, and was disappointed to find that they weren't selling T-shirts; I would have loved to have gotten another David Cassidy T-shirt. Once I discovered that I wasn't going to get a T-shirt, we went into the theater. My seats were about 5 rows back in the left-hand section as you face the stage. Gail and Donna and everyone else were all over in the section all the way to the right. I went over to see them quick before the show and said hello.
A fair number of people there were really excited. Frank Fabio came out before the concert started and was testing something with his bass and the amps that had been set up (something which seemed to be generating a bit of smoke) and certain people started cheering and clapping for him. Some of them are members of this list... Also, when the guy who had the job of putting out the set list for David came out, he got cheers and clapping too.
I'll have to continue this in another message--I'm running out of space and I haven't started on the concert yet.
Aura
Anyway, the house lights went down and the concert started at eight. They had a guy come out on stage who announced David and gave the usual spiel about no audio or video recording being permitted, but then he announced that flash photography *was* allowed!
David came out singing "I Can Feel Your Heartbeat". He was wearing a bronze-colored shiny shirt, but he wasn't wearing his nice tight jeans this time. David was wearing dark gray pants that were a bit looser and which didn't really show off his butt or thighs the way that those tight black jeans did.
However, the gray pants did show off something else *very* nicely... There was a very nice package in the front of those pants--Mr. Happy was very visible. My first reaction was to miss the way that his jeans had fit his legs--and then I think I almost drooled when I realized what the gray pants did for other parts of David's anatomy.
In the beginning of the show, most of the people were kept in their seats by security. Most of the people who came down the aisles near where I was sitting were quickly sent back to their seats and the area in front of the stage was kept clear--except for the area over by Gail and company, where it appeared that there were just too many determined women for security to handle. Gail handed David her scarf and he wore it for one song. I think I have a picture of him wearing it and maybe one of him handing it back, but I'll have to wait and see how they came out. The film goes out Monday morning, so I should have it back by Tuesday and have pictures scanned by Wednesday.
David got into the show, and was clearly enjoying himself. After the first three or four songs he talked to the audience for a bit, about how he came from New York and how he's grateful to us for sticking with him. The fans from New York cheered when he mentioned growing up there. While he was talking, someone ran up to the stage and put a stack of pictures near his feet. David picked them up and looked through them, commenting on some of them. One of them got the remark "If I didn't know that was me, I'd swear it was a chick". And then he got to one where he made a bit of a face and said "This is me naked in my bedroom. How did you get a picture of me with my shirt off? Never mind, I'm not sure I want to know." He showed the picture to Candace and Lisa and Candace said "He IS naked!"
He seemed almost surprised at the number of fans who came to see him in Lancaster, as though he didn't expect all of us to go into the depths of farm country to see him. He should know us better than that. And the audience was better-behaved than usual, maybe in part due to security keeping us in our seats for the first half of the concert. He even seemed kind of disappointed that there weren't more people up and dancing during "Hush" which was the second song that he did.
There was an intermission halfway through the concert when I went back and said hello to a couple more people from the list. Back over on my side, my mom got into a conversation with the woman next to her who had a bad leg and couldn't get up and dance. She had never been to see David before and had driven to Lancaster from Ohio to see him. She got into a conversation with my mom and was startled to discover that I was the David fan, not my mom.
When David came back onstage he was wearing the same gray pants with the glittery black shirt. During the second half, he actually encouraged us to come down to the front, and told us that security wasn't going to make us go back anymore, so evidently he had a chat with security during the intermission and told them to let us come down by the stage. Unfortunately, I couldn't get out of my row, since the woman on one side couldn't let me out and several people who wouldn't let me out were on the other side.
Once people were actually up in the front, someone in a seat near the front started yelling at them to sit down. David took it in stride and told her to stand up. I did stand up, but I had to stand in my row and I couldn't even really dance there, because someone behind me had spilled something and one of my feet was sticking to the floor.
Once the fans were up and dancing in the front, people began giving him the usual stuff--underwear and flowers. He even signed a few things, some smart people had brought along their albums and pens and got him to sign the album covers. He stopped for a bit and talked to the audience again before he did "C'mon Get Happy". That was when he recognized Janie and said that he didn't know her name, even though she had been to so many concerts. He also recognized that a bunch of the people there had come all the way from the UK--that was when he made the comment about this turning into a big international love-in, and that he found it flattering that they had all met through him.
That was also when someone asked him if he would hug a mommy-to-be. The mommy in question was Donna, of course, and once he found out that it was a miracle baby, he asked Donna to tell her whole story, and then she got a hug!
Then David did his usual intro for the band, and when he got to the new guitar player, he added a bit about "he reminds me of a guy named Jimmy..."
After the band intro and "C'mon Get Happy", David did "I Think I Love You". He did his usual intro bit about this song being the reason that he's here today, and added a bit about how it's now in a commercial fro Cheerios. Someone on the other side of the auditorium got out a big sign that said I think I love you on it in big letters, and someone else in the front row had one of those big boxes of Cheerios that had been emptied and flattened and started waving it. She had put pictures of David on the back of it. At one point during the song, David took the Cheerios box and gave it a closer look, noting the pictures of himself on the back of it, and looked a little bit embarassed. He left the stage after "I Think I Love You".
The audience did the usual thing and started chanting David's name, trying to get him to come back for an encore. David did come back out to do "Cry" as an encore, but had somehow lost his microphone. He had run off the stage with it when he left after "I Think I Love You" and actually started doing "Cry" without a microphone. He had started the song and had stopped to ask if the people in the back could hear him when a member of the stage crew gave him the microphone back.
David did "Hollywood Nights" after "Cry". By that time just about everyone who could stand was up and dancing--except for the people next to me, so I still couldn't get out of my row. But it still turned into a giant party. Everyone seemed to be having a really good time, and I didn't see any of the fans really misbehave, even during "Hollywood Nights", and by that time just about everyone was up and dancing around.
Hollywood Nights was the last song that David did. David and the backup singers left right after "Hollywood Nights", leaving the rest of the band to finish up. They brought the house lights back up while the band was still leaving the stage.
Mom and I had some trouble when we left the theater--there had been an accident near our hotel and the road was backed up pretty good. But we got back and relaxed. We did a little more shopping today at the farmers' markets before coming back home earlier this afternoon.
And how's this for an interesting fact... approximately four miles from the American Music Theatre is the little town of Intercourse...
I want his black jeans back... I want to have that good view of his butt again... but other than that, it was a great show.
Aura