I fly to Toronto. As soon as I take my seat in the airplane, I yell profanity at myself for leaving my 10 INXS tickets tacked on my bulletin board at home. What an idiot, eh? And things just got worse.
I met Kim from Minneapolis at the Toronto airport. When I got to hotel, I learned they bumped me. They said that I never made a reservation, but I know that what really happened was that the city was totally booked because of some conventions, and they wanted to get a higher rate for my room. Spent the entire weekend scrambling for rooms.
I was able to solve the INXS ticket problem. I called my point man in Australia, and asked him to contact Tim (the guitarist) and try and get us tickets for the Thursday show. I got my friend back home to FedEx the Friday tickets to me.
Dateline: Thursday, September 25
Kris and Kim from Fresno arrive in Toronto. We all scramble to hotel #2.
We go to the show that night. I'm hanging out outside when the tour bus arrives at the venue. Tim sees me and runs up to me and shakes my hand. I go inside and pick up my photo pass and VIP pass. I'm able to squeeze to the front row by flashing my VIP pass and photo pass, although I can tell the crowd isn't too thrilled about it. I tell them it's only for three songs.
The band comes on. Tim sees me in front row, so reaches out and shakes my hand. They play a good show. The only different things were Mike singing three songs from the bar, and Andrew doing a little UPS skit with one of the techies just before the encore. There was also a big skirmish for a shirt that Mike threw into the crowd, and 5 girls ended up turning it into 5 pieces.
We all go backstage after the show. Kirk is there taking pictures of Shelley and what I think were a bunch of her family. Kirk sees me and seems quite happy to see me. This means he remembers who I am. Cool. I ask him if I can get a picture with him, so we move to a hallway with more light and do the picture thing. I then ask if I can see Tim since I had some business to discuss, and so he takes me into their dressing room. I meet a number of the other guys again, and get a picture taken with Andrew. Tim's happy to see me and gives me a big bear hug. He thanks me for helping him out with some Apple stuff. He suggests that I go see the band play in Australia. ÒThat would be coolÓ I say. ÒNo, that would be very coolÓ he says.
He invites me back to their hotel to share a drink in the lounge. So we all go back there and just hang out.
Dateline: Friday, September 26
Yet again, we see another show. This time I don't have to leave the front row after the third song (the previous night we had to go give the photo pass back, this night I got to keep it). I took a bunch of photos with my conventional camera this time, using the zoom lens. The concert is also very good. A different occurrence was when a couple of strippers came out during Suicide Blonde.
After the show I went backstage shortly again and met up with Tim who said he was really ÒnakedÓ, which I think is the Australian term for tired. He used that same term on ÒIn Search Of ExcellenceÓ. We go back to the hotel lounge and hang out. It isn't long before Tim goes back to his room due to his nakedness.
I have all the pictures from the first night already downloaded onto my Apple PowerBook 3400 laptop, so I go to each of the guys one by one and show them all the pictures I got. I show Kirk first and he is really impressed and urges that I show them to Martha the manager since the band apparently needs some good live photos. He jokingly says they'll pay me 50 cents a piece for them. I then show Andrew, and then Garry, and then Martha and Michael and Jon. Each time I get quite a crowd around me looking at them.
But alas, the night comes to and end, and that's my story.