So, it turned out that the Auditorium was just four blocks away. What happened was they didn't sell enough tix to fill the Coliseum so they had to move it to a smaller venue. Can you imagine that? Well, the lines were down the street and I could not believe that I was probably going to wind up in the back somewhere. On top of that, Johnny had been out front signing autographs not ten minutes before we got there. So, I was determined to step over heads to get to the front. You had the option of purchasing "floor" tickets or "seat" tickets and believe it or not, the majority of people bought seat tickets, but I got floor and you got this special access wrist band to be down there! I wound up in the very front row, NOT EVEN TEN FEET FROM THOSE DARLING BOYS! I was stoked to say the least. Now, I know at 28 years old, being a single mother of a little boy I'm not "supposed to get all ga ga over something like this" but I did and I do, so I was hysterically happy to be that close to JTR!! He's beautiful, as are they all!
The three bands before Tonic were Fono, 6Gig and Thrillcraft and they were all excellent; I even bought the 6Gig CD and got a tape of some songs from Thrillcraft. I was pleasantly surprised. Next on was Tonic and they were amazing. I have never seen them in person and they were all really energetic and friendly with the crowd. Emerson told a great story about his first marriage to someone he really should not have married and then went into "If You Could Only See". It was touching. They are super good live and sounded right out of the studio. They were only on for about a seven song set and sang "Open Up Your Eyes", "Casual Affair", "If You Could Only See", "Soldier's Daughter", "You Wanted More", "Knock Down Walls" and a couple more from their new release "Sugar". Emerson talked about how happy they were to be on the road with their "great but sometimes dysfunctional family the Goo Goo Dolls". That was really cute and he expressed his gratitude to them for bringing them along, which was really cool.
Now, we come to what we all dream about as fellow Goos, the moment of their arrival: I have only been to one show before, but at this show they were doing something a little different before their entrance. They had all these disco lights set up all over the stage flashing everywhere and then a disco song started playing saying something like "Goo Googity Goo, the Goos!" It was really weird and cool. Then of course they broke out into "Dizzy" and each of them came out from a different place on stage. Johnny was wearing his standard tight black t-shirt and green cargo pants (the same pants he had on at the Virginia Beach show I went to, he wears them alot!) and a brand new pair of Pumas. And of course, Robby had on all black and white socks! I couldn't really see Mike and Dave, but Nathan had on all black, too. Johnny was sort of hoarse and even said at one point he was losing his voice and could the audience sing some of each of his songs for him! What a DOLL! The set list went kind of like this, I don't think I left any out, but I may have: Dizzy, Slide, Broadway, January Friend, Black Balloon, Full Forever, Acoustic #3, Long Way Down, Iris, Burnin' Up, Naked, Name (w/o the college girl story, I was very surprised at that), Cuz You're Gone, There You Are, Thousand Words, Just the Way You Are, Flat Top, Another Second Time Around, and there may have been a couple more.
Johnny told a couple of really corny jokes: one about making love to his girlfriend like Ricky Martin, it was silly, and I can't remember the other one. I was concentrating on how great he looked. He had a little razor stubble goin' on. He talked about how Tonic had beat them in a softball game that day 33 to 13!, and credited Tonic's victory over them to the fact that the Goos team was probably loaded at the time!! HA HA! He was so cute. He was throwing out guitar picks left and right and even threw two of his bracelets out to the audience. Robby threw out some of his picks, too. It was a great show. They were so energetic and John was all over the stage, dragging that microphone around like he does. Robby was of course making his usual crazy faces and yelling stuff at the audience.
They played a little game with the audience when they came back for their encore where every time Johnny strummed his guitar the audience was supposed to clap. He had everybody going really fast and then stopped all of a sudden and messed everybody up. He got a really big kick out of that! It was a really fun show. The venue was small so he really participated with the audience more than I had seen him do at the Amphitheater where there was 20,000 people as opposed to say 2,000 people. Very cool!
Then at the end of the show when all the confetti dropped, Johnny went off stage to get a leaf blower to blow the confetti off the stage onto all of us in the front row but he couldn't get it to start and just totally destroyed it and threw it all over the stage. He threw his guitar up into the lights and some of them came crashing down, Robby ran off stage through the audience and out and Johnny kept throwing instruments all over the stage until he was satisfied, then he yelled "That's it!" and they were gone.
WHAT AN AMAZING SHOW! GOD, THEY ARE SO FULL OF LIFE, SO ENERGETIC EVEN AFTER BEING ON THE ROAD FOR CLOSE TO A YEAR!. The whole show was perfect and I can't wait to see them again. The local radio station here in Virginia Beach is giving away an all expenses paid trip, hotel and everything to see them in New York for the Millennium Celebration. I am really trying to win! I'M AN ADDICT! If you ever have the chance to see them, go! Even if you have to drive five hours, it was worth it to me!!