August 23, 2002
Poison/Cinderella/Faster Pussycat at the Pier Six Concert Pavilion, Baltimore, MD
Well, I guess PNC wasn't going to be the last show this year :) And I thought 2nd row center was incredible...
Ever since I started following Poison back in 1987,
it has been a little dream of mine to be front row center at one of their shows.
If you look closely at the ticket above you can see that my dream came true
August 23! It was an amazing
experience that was better than I ever could have
hoped for.
The venue was nice too. It was right on the water as the name implies, with an interesting looking tent structure covering the seats and stage as you can see in the picture on the left.
The security was great! I thought for sure that I was going to have to fight to keep my seats but they made sure everyone was where they were supposed to be. The only thing wrong was that they let people walk back and forth for drinks right in front of us during the show! I've never seen anything like that happen before in any of the venues I've gone to. It was VERY distracting!!
Seeing Faster Pussycat in the front row was kind of intimidating. Tamie was really pissed off because hardly anyone was paying attention. He was mocking everyone sitting down and he didn't face the audience for most of House of Pain. You'd think he'd be used to it by now. Maybe that's just his shtick. Same set, different day.
Cinderella, also was the same set, different day. Some people, including the people next to us in the front row, were actually sitting for their set! I just don't understand that. It's a rock and roll show, it's just not right to sit. We were close enough this time to get hit with the snow they have for Don't Know... I noticed that it wasn't real snow. It's actually little tiny bits of soap foam.
Then, the moment I had been waiting for. FRONT ROW POISON!!!! I couldn't believe it was really happening. It was the same set except "Ride the Wind" was taken out, but I hardly even noticed because I was enjoying myself too much. Believe it or not, Bret recognized us from the previous shows. He pointed and smiled at us a bunch of times and he slapped Brian's hand really hard twice. We were so close that the pyro was blinding and really hot. I don't know how they stand next to it without melting.
What really blew my mind was what happened during the encore performance of Nothin' but a Good Time. I was going nuts, singing along to the song as loud as I could, and then I saw Bret come running towards where I was. He stopped right in front of me and shoved the mike in my face, and I got to sing the part "workin', slavin', every day!!" Talk about your major thrills!! I know he does that for every show, but still, it was quite an honor to sing into Bret's mike!
After the show, as we were leaving, some knucklehead jumped into the canal next to the arena. There was a divider going across the water to keep the garbage dropped by the people on the bridge separated from the rest of the water... he jumped into the side with the garbage. EEEWW!! What was even funnier was that he couldn't get back out because the walls were too high for him to climb. He was eventually rescued by a nearby boat.
This was an event I will never forget and one of the biggest thrills of my life. I'm so glad my little dream came true :-) and here's the pictures to prove it.
