My first Daddies show

I bought myself and Jenn a ticket the day before the show at Fred Meyers. Note that the tickets were only 8 bucks a piece.

Finally, Saturday arrived and Will, Eric and I gathered at Jenn's house and piled into her mother's enormous station wagon and headed off to Albany.

Upon arriving, Jenn and I were relieved that we had bought tickets in advanced as there was a large crowd standing in line shivering. Will fought his way to the front while Jenn and I hopped up and down to keep warm while waiting for the doors to open. Luckily, they did shortly.

After handing my ticket to the doorman, getting my hand stamped, the wrong end of the ticket stub back and a t-shirt, I entered the real theater.
The theater had a dark purple color to it. The lights were on, but not brightly. The staged lights bathed more purple light and some yellow onto the instruments set up, giving everything a gold and purple shine. An electric blue clock glowed from the wall to the left of the stage. The carpet in the aisle and on the stage was tattered. The dancefloor was nothing more than a couple slabs of plywood thrown on the ground in front of the stage. It was beautiful.

We sat down in the comfy theater seats were introduced to the people in front of us by a friend. We talked for a while and I looked around the theater and stared at the clock. Will, who was attending his first show ever was gawking a rudeboy in a tux and tophat who was showing a girl some skankin' moves. "What is that guy doing?" he asked us. "He's skankin'," we replied. "What?" Poor Will had no idea what he was in for.
At around 9:30, the opening band hit the stage. I believe their name was Hot For Chocolate, but I do not remember as I was sleeping through most of their set. Normally, I'm all for local bands, but never has a band been able to actually put me to sleep LIVE. Oh well, I'm sure they're good on CD.

I awoke when I heard a kind of rushing sound around me. I opened my eyes to find that the number of people in the room had almost tripled and they were literally running down the aisles toward the stage. Jenn hit me in the arm, "Sara, we gotta get down there!" she said.

So we all crowded arounded the stage. At the time I was in about the second of third row close to the middle. But with each passing second I was being moved farther and farther back. Finally, Jenn grabbed me and pulled me up to the front on the far right side.

On the stage was two guitars: one yellow and an another that looked like that it may, at one time, have been red, but was too covered in stickers to really tell.

All I wanted out of this show was to be able to see and hear the horn section and that they played Dr. Bones. Three guys in red velvet coats with leopard skin lapels came on stage and started setting up microphones directly in front of me. One of them was bald with a wicked goatee, one had blonde hair which a draft was blowing around. The other was a very, very cute guy who looked rather young. They left and then returned individually with their instruments, testing out the mics. The horn section was right in front of me!

A guy in a dark suit and cigarette in his mouth set up a keyboard in the opposite corner of the stage. A short, dark-haired man paced around awhile, came on staged, messed around with the bestickered guitar, talked to the extremely skinny man with the bass guitar, then left the stage to pace around some more. A shy-looking blonde guy in a tweed suit tuned up the yellow guitar. A guy with kinda long, dark hair made some adjustments to the drums.

Then they all disappeared. After about five minutes, Jason, Dan, Tim and the horn section filed on stage. Dustin got behind the keys. Then the small, nervous man leapt onto stage and people started to really cheer. Now that they all were in possession of their instruments, I could tell their names.
Steve took the mic off its stand, made some crack about the lovely aroma of Albany (something along the lines of "it smells like dirty socks") at which a couple people took offense and so he apologized and said that "Eugene smells like an armpit, anyway."
There was a bunch of noise and the drums started into a the familiar "ba BA bababa BA baba BA ba BA," of Dr. Bones. First song! I was pumped. Then I realized two things right away. One, lots of people dancing in a very small area makes for lots of bodies and clothing to go in every direction and calls for a huge temperature increase (I was wearing three shirts, one of them long-sleeved). Two, not only was the loudest trumpet player in Oregon blowing directly in front of me, but the amps were a mere foot and a half to the right of my virgin ears.

Dr. Bones was really, really fast and I didn't understand how the singer was even coming close to uttering all the words to the verses. At the end of it, Steve fumbled around with the mic and then asked "hey, does anyone have some duct tape?" I shouted back, joking, "Yeah, in my back pocket!" Who really carries duct tape with them to a show? Well, obviously someone, because the mic got fixed and the show resumed. Hopefully, he didn't hear me. From there, I hardly remember the order of the setlist. I do remember that they played every song off of Zoot Suit Riot except "Pink Elephant" and "Come Back To Me." At one point Steve announced that they were going to play a brand new ska song called "2:29." I enjoyed it very much.

The singer, Steve, was a short, skinny, extremely scary-looking man. His hair was drooping in his face sometimes covering his eyes, he obviously hadn't shaved in quite some time as he had quite a bit of stubble, and his silky, purple, sweat-soaked shirt was hanging out of his pants on one side (Although, I'll have to admit, he did match the theater with his purple shirt, gold tie and dark pants.) His dark eyes rifled through the crowd and occasionally settled on someone or something while he sang or danced (If you could call his spastic jerking, and high-kneed, running-man skank, dancing.). I remember thinking that from a certain angle, he resembled Adolf Hitler. A Nazi, child-molester was another description that came to mind. Needless to say after watching this man in curiosity for a couple of songs I focused my attention on the much-easier-on-the-eyes Sean, the tenor sax player.

Unfortunately, as I was standing directly in front of Sean, it was quite obvious that I was watching him. I quickly looked away, but everytime I ventured a peek at him again, he seemed to be staring at me. Perhaps he was only looking at some object in the distance that happened to be located directly above my head, but nevertheless, it made me very uncomfortable.
"Master and Slave" was quite the performance. Of course it was fast and frantic and Steve made the most of it. He high-kneed it around the stage and sang the slower parts as if he was about to cry and at that particular verse he made his way to my corner of the stage and at the "but I can still see the stars, through these red, white and blue prison bars" his anguished looked turned to one of rage and he gave the air a fist and a finger (you know which one). The band ripped through the rest of the song. "Drunk Daddy" was the same deal, with the "comin' up the stairs," line that he looked so terrified as he delivered.

Then came "Brown Derby Jump." Being the owner of only ZSR, this was one of my favorite songs. I was having a good time dancing to it when I notice Sean staring at me again. Then I looked around and realized that I was the only dweeb actually jumping to the "JUMP!" in the chorus. I immediately stopped and took a moment to watch, in awe, as Dana effortlessly put forth the "wee-EEEEEEEE" trumpet line. Looking around the crowd some more I noticed a lot had changed since the last time I had looked. For one thing, there was less flying people, and second, no one was wearing a shirt - even the girls! I guess I was just naive, but I had never seen anything like it. The girl standing next to me had short, wine colored hair, and horn-rimmed glasses had her shirt AND bra off and was dancing around completely without support! I decided that this was pretty damn cool. Hey, if guys can take off their shirts when they're hot, why can't we? We certainly don't smell as bad.....

It was about this time into the show when I looked up to find Steve staring directly at me. As I said earlier, Steve is a rather frightening man and his watch was more than a little disconcerting. I froze in my place and stared back. I really can't explain it, but it still gives me shivers. Finally, one of us looked away and I decided to focus on something a little less intimidating - like the drum set.

Then "Shake Your Lovemaker" started. And let me tell ya, the beginning of this song is LOUD. Every instrument and the vocals are on full volume. I watched as Steve jibbered, jabbered and la-la-dee-lalalaaaad his way through the opening then, with a dramatice pause, "shake your lovemaaaakah.... RRRRRROCK HARD!" He swayed and swung, as I was also doing, mainly because I just couldn't dance anymore and it was too slow to really do anything else. Once again, I had to gawk at the horn section (I'm a band geek, OK?) until, of course, something caught the corner of my eye. Steve was doing something with the mic stand; I turned to watch ... and I couldn't turn away. Steve had straddled the stand and then, ever so slowly, began to sliiiiiide up and down, his face the look of sheer pleasure. A little smile started to form and then, as the song started to change a bit, he made what looked like a small gasp and then paused, eyebrows raised, mouth slightly parted, then continued to molest the mic stand some more. He grinned sheepishly as he adjusted himself to rest a noticable, um, lump on the steel bar and then slid some more as me and a few other people started to laugh. As the verse neared he dismounted the stand and picked up the mic again. The song ended in another barrage of sound, Steve said "Thank you, and good night," and left the stage with the rest of the band.
Much to my surprise, no one moved. I figured there would be a huge rush to out the door and to the cars they had parked in the two-hour meter spaces. I quickly realized why when Jason got back on stage and plunked something on his guitar, the rest of the band got back on and Steve made his leap again as one of my all-time favorite songs "Don Quixote" started. Jenn and I found each other for a second to do the "yee-aye-aye!" sound in the first verse. People turned.

Then, again, I looked up to see Steve staring at me. But this time it was different. Instead of being repelled, those damn hormones in the bottom of my tummy grabbed a nerve and squeezed. Suddenly, I wanted to take this once repulsive, ugly man, throw him against the nearest flat object and... and... yeah. They played one more song of which I don't remember and then left the stage for good.

In the lobby I looked around for Eric, my ride home. He was nowhere to be found. I asked Morgan (who had been invited to hang out with Steve afterward. Damn him.) who told me he thought Eric had left. That wouldn't have surprised me at all. So I went about trying to find someone else to take me home, when I noticed Jason standing there. He looked like a nice guy so I tapped him on the shoulder. Now, I have no idea what I was planning on saying to him, but it didn't really matter anyway, for as he was turning around, I chickened out and ran away. I looked back to see him looking around confused.