[this was written Wednesday night/Thursday morning; separate entry for today is at the end]
Travis is ...GLEAT! I mean great! I mean. Hooray for Travis and their bouncing about!
But first I must say that traffic in midtown Manhattan at 5 PM is sucky suck suck. It took half an hour to travel 10 blocks. Well...it was something like that. I got so impatient (because I was supposed to meet Diana at 5 PM but it was already past 5:30) that I got off the bus at 38th St and 10th Ave (or wherever the bus was...thank god it's relatively easy to walk around!) and walked to our designated meeting place (near Applesbees near 42nd St). I should have learned my lesson before, but I swear I've never been stuck for that long for such a short distance. Blah!
So after finally meeting up with Diana, we went to Quintessence because it's my favorite restaurant. :) Much good food to be eaten there. It's weird to think about how much money you could save by not eating, but then after a while you'd probably die. It'd be a long while, but it's something to think about. Or maybe that's the kind of think only I would think about. Hohum. You could definitely go at least a week just drinking water. And then you can spend that extra money on things like MORE CONCERTS!
We got to the concert a little late (if only I had been on time) and buying some merch (what am I going to do with a Travis t-shirt in the wintertime? It's not often that I find shirts in my size though) we saw the opener, Rooney, play a few songs. I thought they were nice, but not very memorable. I didn't even know there was going to be an opener until Diana told me beforehand.
And theeeen...TRAVIS! Yaaay! Diana and I had a clear view after moving over a seat...empty seat! *gasp* Why oh why. Oh well, it was better for us because otherwise we would have had two tall guys right in front of us. The evening was relatively cigarette/substance free except one short time when I think someone was smoking marajuana. Compared to other concerts I've been to though, that was very tolerable. Yay Travis fans!
I haven't a clue what the setlist was (should've written it down, dammit) but here's what I can remember in no particular order:
Why Does It Always Rain On Me?
The Line Is Fine
All I Wanna Do Is Rock
Peace the Fuck Out
Re-Offender
Quicksand
The Beautiful Occupation
Love Will Come Through
Happy to Hang Around
The Humpty Dumpty Love Song
The Fear
Writing to Reach You
Turn
As You Are
Sing
I may have added too much stuff to that list, actually. I haven't completely aquainted myself with the new album yet, as far as remembering the names of the songs. I like the new album so far, but not as much as the other ones since it's just not as happy, not that it has to be happy in order for me to like it, but I associate Travis with stuff like that. I think the last song they played was Why Does It Always Rain On Me? and the first one was Quicksand. Fran also played a song by himself dedicated to Elliot Smith, which was very nice. Before playing The Beautiful Occupation he told us that it wasn't meant to be a political song, but could be interpreted as that...and then Peace the Fuck Out is a message to Tony Blair and we should apparently peace the fuck out. Mm...peace! It's yummy. They were selling a t-shirt that said "Peace the Fuck Out" on it, although you could just was easily make one yourself. :)
All I Wanna Do Is Rock was probably the most enjoyable song. First off, it's just a great song, and everyone was going a bit nutty (except for Neil...well, what can he do?). Fran, Doug, and Andy were climbing on things and Andy jumped off the top of his speakers. Actually, now I'm not sure if Doug was climbing anything, but Andy is definitely the one who likes to flail around and lie on the stage and things like that. :) Fran also likes to hop around and stuff. He was wearing the same thing as what he wore in the Re-Offender video (What's up with that video? It makes me sad!), so it was like looking at this glowing, white thing in the middle of the stage. The suit looked a bit too large, as though Fran doesn't already look small enough already? :D There was a sheet behind the stage that only came down for a few songs, but it made the background nice 'n pretty. There was a whole rainbow of colorful lighting during Sing, which felt very nice and happy.
I didn't use my binoculars much during the show since we weren't obscenely far away, but early in the show I used them and saw that Fran's head was very sweaty. This was only after a few songs, so I'm figuring by the end he may have been drenched. There was much towel wiping going on. He said after playing Peace the Fuck Out during one show, he threw his towel into the audience and people started fighting over it. Not very peaceful. Fran, you just make people go nuts!