3:30 am
My room
Can't sleep. Still wired from the show and the afterparty.
DAMN we were good tonight! That was one fucking FUN show. The crowd was just nuts. I didn't want to stop playing... could have gone on all night. But I have to save a little something for the last show, ha ha. A few more rabbits to pull out of hats.
This is the part of touring I love. When you step on that stage and feel the electricity and know it's gonna be one of those nights. When you give it all to the audience and they give it right back. Like Richie says, it's as good as having sex with 50,000 people at once. A giant musical orgy. Seriously, it's the closest high to orgasm I can think of.
And it don't get me in trouble with the wife, ha ha.
Had some fun with this setlist. Yesterday at the Q&A thing I got the usual "why don't you play X song" questions and the semi-whining about always getting similar setlists. Hopefully tonight's show made some of those FanClubbers happy. I get that they want to hear the rare stuff, but there's only so much I can do on a world tour, especially one that's gone on this long and ain't slowing down anytime soon. It was fun for us to dust off a couple of those songs we haven't played in awhile, too.
Sometimes all the pissing and moaning about setlists chaps my ass. It ain't easy to come up with a show that keeps the audience engaged, covers all the hits they want and the new stuff you're promoting, and gives the die-hards what they want. In fact, it's damned impossible. There's always going to be somebody who's not happy. Somebody who doesn't get to hear "their song." Fuck, when you have a catalog as big as ours there's just no way to include everything.
It ain't like the old days, when we had two records and about 20 songs and a handful of covers to choose from. Back when we did 75-minute setlists, if that. But even then we changed things up -- the order of the songs, the solos and intros, the covers. Even as an opening act. We've always tried to keep ourselves entertained and challenged, even back in the days when we were a bar band. I couldn't go out and do the exact same show night after night like some (a lot) of bands do. I'd want to bash my head into a wall.
But you gotta give the crowd what they want, and what they want are Prayer, Wanted, My Life, Bad Name, yadda yadda yadda. Especially when we're in the States, a different city almost every night. I never play the same show twice in a row in the same city, but when we're really moving between the smaller venues we have to play the A-show over and over with only a few little tweaks. Then the fans who follow us from city to city get pissy that they get the same show three times in a row. Nothing I can do about that -- I can't cater to a hundred when there are thousands in the stands. But inevitably those are the questions and complaints I get during the Fan Club stuff. I try to be nice and gracious and I try to give them what I can, but there's only so much I can do.
That said, the Q&A thing yesterday was actually fun. Sometimes I dread those things, not because I don't want to interact with the fans or let them know I appreciate them, but because sometimes I'm just fucking TIRED. The drudgery of the tour gets to me, and I'm not the best at hiding my impatience. Just ask my wife. As she says, so much for all those acting lessons I paid for, ha ha. But yesterday's group was good, it was relaxed, maybe because I was in a good mood to begin with. It's Christmas, after all! Ha ha.
Was feeling the Christmas spirit at the show tonight too, even though it's summertime here. Talked to Cate after soundcheck, she said it was cold and flurrying in NYC. Made me wanna sing Christmas carols. I will say it just doesn't seem like Christmas when I'm hanging out in shorts and flip-flops on the balcony of my suite. Christmas should be cold and snowy outside, and warm and cozy inside.
Cate hates the cold--so do I-- but I love to see her all bundled up, looking all snuggly in her scarf and mittens with her pretty pink cheeks and her sparkly blue eyes. Makes me wanna wrap her up in my arms and pull her in tight and make her all warm and tingly. God knows she makes ME all warm and tingly, ha ha.
Tomorrow I'll be on the plane, back on my way home to her. God, I can't WAIT. Down to a matter of hours now. I'm already packed, so excited to go home.
Better enjoy this last bit of warm weather, though. It ain't gonna be like this in Pittsburgh come the start-up of the next leg, ha ha. But I'll have My Baby to keep me warm.
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