I thought Guster was alright. I found it interesting that they had 2 guitars and a drummer who only played bongos [no drum set]. But i was waaaayy to exctied to pay attention to Guster. The drummer man had his hands all bandaged up and I felt kinda bad. =(. anyhoo...

Finally semisonic time arrived. Jenn and I fought our way to the front and partied down [not really, but we'll prented]. They looked so awesome. I was breathless. Munson was like 5 feet from me and Dan moved around a lot and at times was like 2 feet away. Dan had on a 4:23 shirt, some awesome iridescent pants and some Doc Martens. John had on a black shirt and pants with some ultra rad shoes. Jake was decked out in a black shirt and pants. It rocked so much. I wanted to cry.

They opened with F.N.T. minus the awesome little intro thingy like at Rockfest =(. They went right into Singing In My Sleep which caused the audience to scream because they heard the song on the radio or something. They went right into Never You Mind. Mr. Wilson on keyboard......no more hip shimmy! where did it go?!!!?! waaaa! It was different to see John jumping around the stage. I dunno, just different to see a 6 foot 4 inch grown man jumping about. After Never You Mind, they went into a rockin', funkified version of Secret Smile and then Brand New Baby. After which, Dan confessed they hadn't played in awhile. Dan proceeded to give us one of his infamous 'rock lectures':
"A few weeks ago, we rocked Washington D.C. in a place called the 9:30 Club {someone screams}.....yeah.....ok {Dan makes the devil sign with his hand}. Anyway, so that night around 3:30 our bus is stopped at a highway entrance ramp at the stop sign. We were stopped on our way to the highway and a drunk driver smashed into the back of our bus and totaled it. {Audience boos}...yeah....he fucked up the bus real good actually. Luckily none of us were hurt {Audience cheers}. Also, this asshole was not hurt as well. The cops came and took him away in chains....I felt pretty good about that. You know, he must have seen the bus at the last second because the sound we heard that woke us up.....it wasn't like eeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrttttttttt [brake noises]....CRASH!! It was more like erCRASH!!! Our bus is 12 feet wide and like 10 feet tall and whatever, y'know. And this guy must have been searching for another whiskey in the backseat or something when he smacked into us... Yeah, that's right, fuck him. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go on at length but it just gets me mad everytime I think about it because if we had been a little family in a Toyota we woulda been dead right now. So, the fact is though, next day in New York City, we took a bus and a train and we made it to the show and we rocked and the next night we got on a different bus. You know, a new bus that worked and there was no lingering paranoia. We were all just dying to get back on the road. But this next song has nothing to do with that..."

The proceeded to play If I Run with an AWESOME solo with John running his bass through some groovy pedals and Dan bounced around. After all that, Jake disappeared and John sported a Fender Strat. and Dan had his SG and they proceeded to play "She Spreads Her Wings". It was so awesome.

Dan began another rock lecture and it went something like this:
"You know when you go to a hotel or motel and you get those DO NOT DISTURB signs to put on the doors? Well, the cleaning people then refer to you as a DND. And that's not neccessarily a friendly word when they call you that. But I had an inspiration the other dayand I think it's pretty much has to do with President Clinton anyway. But to help us all get past our disturbances, Semisonic is gonna print up 20 or 30 of these do not disturb signs and put the Presidental Seal on 'em. We're gonna send them to the White House so that is a presidental blunder or sexscapade is happening. So I guess we'll find out and what it does, it helps you and not be disturbed by all this stupid little shit. I think it's gonna work. This next song has nothing to do with all that and it's called DND."

So that ruled and then they played Erotic City which rocked. Delicious was next and I guess they had a bubble machine because there were bubbles everywhere. Dan has everyone sing the 'hoos' and the 'yeahs'. He stood an the end of the stage [which was like 5 feet away from me] and flexed his muscles and screamed "muscle!! C'mon put some muscle behind it! YEAH! That's what I wanna hear!!" He made some really funky faces, and it was wonderful. After that, Dan asked how many of us had been bouncers before...so of course they gone into "Closing Time". That was fun. Everyone was singing along and having a good time.

The encore consisted of "Gone To The Movies" which made me cry because I never thought they'd play that. I had goosebumps and I was all girly and weird about it. I Love that song. They proceeded to play another Prince cover ["Take Me With You"] with John on vocals again...funkay! The final song was California, which was again beautiful and gave me ever larger goosebumps. Dan left the stage before John and Jake. Jake tried to give his drumstick to Jennii and I but some stupid chick grabbed it out of my hand......grrrrrrrrrrrrrr......

I bought my merch. and said bye to Casey and then headed to wait by the bus. I got bored and started walking around the bus and went and stood by the door which flung open and caused me to scream and run toward Jennii. We had Dan sign our stacks of Semisonic/Trip Shakespeare stuff. We both had on our Planetmaker [Matt Wilson's personal record label] tshirts on, which sparked Dan's interest. He was quite jealous. Apparently, he does not own a Planetmaker shirt. hehehehe....We then proceeded to attack John with our stacks of CD covers, cameras and stories. He too was also jealous of the Planetmaker apparell. We then found lil Jake and hung out with him for awhile and giggled.

We then headed back inside to use the phone when alas......there is an aftershow party going on. After talking to a security guard, we were allowed in. YES!!! Each individual member of Semisonic looked quite bewildered by our presence but it was ok, we were there and more importantly, so was Semisonic. We chatted with John for sometime, he has some incredible eyes people. Jennii's boss, Stu, was there too and he had the Semisonic men sign a ping pong ball. We tore ourselves away from the party when John and Jake left [Dan was surrounded by a crowd of evil DJs from evil stations that only play "Closing Time"]. We stood outside and it was lightly snowing. So we decided to dance and giggle. Finally my dad came and we hopped in the car to tell my dad the entire story. And as we turned the corner, who should be standing in the middle of the street except.....Dan Wilson!! We almost hit Dan Wilson!! It was quite exciting. So the night ended, we went home and dreamt of our beloved Semisonic.....


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