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The Orchestra : Old Shawnee Days Festival, Kansas, U.S.A. - 8th June 2002

Here I am sweltering away in Texas - it's bloody hot here!

There have been a couple of disasters since I got here. Mainly, the video camera and the stills cameras got stolen at Atlanta Airport when I changed planes after getting in from Gatwick. Turned away on the plane for a couple of seconds whilst getting other stuff down from the luggage lockers after we landed and... blam! Gone! I was gutted, as I lost both stills cameras, plus 11 films, plus all my medication, plus the video camera (dad is not a happy bunny!). We are going to ring the holiday insurance company today and file a claim.

I will come back with photos though - Tami has taken some gig photos for me and she is going to buy films for her camera and let me use it when we go sightseeing. Ken Petty (one of the US fans) also had a really good camera at the gig and took some great shots so he said and he is going to let me have a set of his prints. Everybody was very sympathetic.

Also, the connecting flight from Atlanta to Corpus Christi was severely delayed for over 2 hours. The air traffic control computer went down after an earlier thunderstorm (before we flew in from Gatwick) and we boarded the plane 10 minutes late and then spent the next 2½ hours taxi-ing slowly round Atlanta Airport! It was like signal failure on the tube! Stop, start, stop, start. Turned out they were letting all the planes that had been delayed take off one after the other and we were a long way down the queue! But because the computer was on the blink our poor pilot didn't know where in the queue we were! We actually spent more time taxi-ing around Atlanta Airport than we did in the air on the subsequent flight!

Eventually after we were getting very bored indeed, the pilot came on the intercom and said, "Ladies & gentleman, we are No.1 in the queue and we are leaving NOW!" You can imagine the cheer that went up! I will say that Corpus Christi looked absolutely gorgeous when we flew in at gone midnight as it was all lit up, and I am looking forward to seeing it during the day. The following morning we left for Kansas so I haven't seen Corpus yet.

The journey to Kansas was BLOODY LONG! We left about 8 in the morning and Tami just drove and drove and drove, stopping for petrol, rests and food of course. Tami's front passenger seat also reclines all the way back horizontally so I got some well deserved kip in. Tami has so much stamina it's incredible.

3 states later (Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas itself) we arrived at a place called Lenexa, which is just down the road from Shawnee where the gig was held. Bearing in mind what time we left Corpus Christi (above), can you guess when we hit Lenexa? Yes, dead right: 2 in the morning! Can you imagine driving that amount of time over in England!

After a nice night's sleep in the hotel (and no, we weren't stopping with the band this time!) we (myself, Tami & her daughter Sara) headed off to breakfast. I had spoken to Ken Petty the night before on Tami's mobile when we stopped for supper at a lovely steak house on the motorway.

After breakfast we met Jan Berkeley. Jan is so nice and a very calm and laid back person, as you would expect of someone from California. Jan was also staying at our hotel, but Ken was in one across the road. We went over to the shopping mall in Shawnee to look around and see where we were having dinner with the mailing list people.

The Rainforest Cafe in the mall has to be seen to be believed! It is all decked out like a jungle, complete with life-size animatronic animals, sound effects, and heaven knows what else. The waiters and waitresses are known as 'safari guides' and are dressed accordingly! Dinner was periodically interrupted by a family of gorillas just behind our table when they started hooting and howling, beating their chests and a little one swung through the trees above us! (they were incredibly lifelike!). Then the elephants started up on the other side of this very large restaurant!

3 or 4 other people from the list turned up for dinner (a guy called Rob, Mike D (known as conceptrock)) as well as some relatives of Tami's who came in from the neighbouring state of Iowa to see Tami as they don't meet up very often because of the vast distances involved. One of Jan's friends who lives in the area also came to dinner with us. I was proud of my little 'brood' of people on the ULS list - what a nice bunch they all are.

After dinner we headed for the venue in convoy, with Tami leading the way. Her rellies and Jan's friend went home.

The venue was lovely (think Tilgate Park). It was an open air gig set in a natural amphitheatre in the middle of this big park. To the right of the stage were some rides for the kiddies and a few white knuckle ones too, as well as various bouncy castles and even a bouncy Space Shuttle (which made Jan laugh no end!)!

It was a beautiful day weatherwise - very sunny and warm: temperature in the high 80's but with a nice breeze to keep things pleasant.

The first we saw of the band was when Kelly came out whilst the opening act (a local girl in her teens or early 20's that had won a talent contest, and did her own songs with a guitar - very much like Alanis Morrisette or someone of that ilk). Kelly came out to the side of the stage and saw Tami first before he saw me - I think he was suitably surprised! I got a big hug off him and it was so nice. We also saw Hux leaning on the side of the stage watching the young girl singing, with a  very intent look on his face - Tami has got a pic of him doing this and if it comes out we may use it as a caption pic!

As Kelly was talking to us, out came Eric. I was wearing Hills' Union Jack hat at the time, much to Kelly's amusement, and did think Eric was going to run a mile! However, either the hot weather agrees with him or he has had a personality transplant, but he was so nice and so relaxed and so smiley it was unbelievable. His face actually lit up into a big smile when he saw me (could have been the hat!) and he came over and said to me in that sexy voice of his, "Welcome to America!" It has become my catchphrase for the trip and will also be the name of my subsequent article for Issue 10 of ULS! He was in black T-shirt and baggy jeans mode yet again (no shorts :-( ) but he did look good and the smile made so much difference - his hair was like it was in October last year. Tami was amazed at his behaviour and was telling him he should smile more often... and he was!

As for the gig, my accent paid off here, I think, as well as me being able to mention the local councillor who emailed me enquiring about the show before I left the UK. We were actually given 3 tickets to sit in the 'approved seating' (which was RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE STAGE!). Although we only had 3 tickets, the officials said we could all sit in there, although Mike D and his wife had brought their own garden chairs with them and just sat at the end of the row. Me, Tami and Sara sat in the front row of chairs, and Jan and Ken Petty sat behind us.

The guys came on at 9pm. It was just getting dark (it gets dark earlier there), and the temperature dropped slightly and it became even more pleasant. The field had really filled up by this time and there were people sitting on the grass all the way up the hill. There was also constant human traffic in front of the stage consisting of people walking to and from the fairground rides on the other side but this was a minor pain in the backside.

And they were great! They didn't do the whole set they did last year of course, as there was no orchestra, and they weren't quite as brave as last year either, choosing to play it safe opening with Turn To Stone instead of Jewel & Johnny.

Eric had a few technical probs again, but not as bad as Croydon last year, and he did keep smiling, which was so nice. We lost the opening line of If Only because they forgot to switch his keyboard mike on, but he just laughed it off, which was quite a contrast from his poker face last year at Croydon!

The songs they did from No Rewind were: Jewel & Johnny, If Only, No Rewind, Before We Go and of course Twist & Shout, which went down very well with the local crowd! Me and Tami got up and danced like we did last year, although Tami hurt her ankle and fell against me with such force she nearly sent me flying! Sadly, the locals didn't join in with us (miserable lot!) but we had a good time all the same!

Over London Skies had me wearing the silly hat again, and Tami and Jan waving the Union Jack jubilee flags I had brought with me. Kelly saluted the flags!

The locals were a bit naive though. When the band went offstage after Rockaria, quite a few of them actually left! Myself and Tami were yelling at them, "The band are coming back!" but often to no avail (stupid lot!).

Those that remained (the vast majority, don't worry!) were treated to a stormin' Don't Bring Me Down. The guys got a wonderful response and looked so happy about it.

They came out afterwards at the side of the stage and we met them all. Eric was STILL SMILING, and I asked if Tami could take a pic of him wearing the silly hat. He just went "oh no... I don't wanna look silly!" with a big hangdog expression on his face; he was so funny! Tami said to him, "I bet if it had the Stars and Stripes on it you'd wear it!" and he replied "oh yeah!"

Kelly wouldn't wear it either. He just said, "I don't need any more excuses to look sillier than I do already!"

Gordon, Hux, Mik & Lou wouldn't wear the hat either! But they all came out and were so chatty. I gave them all an Issue 9 and Eric looked at the cover and said, "Thank god I'm not on it this time!" Gordon was a little freaked out to see himself on the cover. Either Kelly or Lou went over to him and said something on the lines of, "you are officially a band member now... Serena has put you on the cover and likes you!"

Lou showed the cover to Mik and remarked that Gordon looked like Phil Mitchell!

Eric rolled up his magazine and shoved it into his back pocket of his jeans. Tami took a pic of him from behind with the mag poking out of his pocket. She wished later that she had asked him to just look over his shoulder and THEN taken the pic!

Lou was looking forward to going home after this show to see his family. Kelly and the others had just had a good time and were looking forward to going home as well.

We left about 11.30 and went back to our hotels. Tami's ankle got worse and started to swell and Ken and Jan had to take her to the local emergency room. They gave her a painkiller and said to stay off it for 6 hours. She did and was fine the next morning (yesterday morning) for the drive home back to Corpus. Jan left very early Sunday morning to get back to California for a flag rehearsal, and Ken overslept, which meant we didn't see him again, although he phoned Tami on her mobile during the drive home to check how she was.

All in all everybody was really nice (we have done well with the ULS list - a nice bunch of folks it seems!), and the gig was superb - well received and in a lovely setting and was just perfect.

Definitely well worth my airfare and the trauma of losing the cameras!

All the best
Serena

Review kindly provided by Serena Torz - June 2002