So anyways, today I got to the Metro area around 4:30 and found Sarah right away. She told me that she’d gotten a tape recorder so that she could bootleg the show, and of course we both had our cameras. Then we saw the sign on the Metro’s doors saying that they wouldn’t open until 7pm. So obviously we had a lot of time to kill. We wondered to the nearby McDonalds, to the Metro’s store called the Clubhouse (where I got another fugazi CD) and then we wondered across the street to a little fast food place that has outdoor seating and just sort of sat down and hung out.

A few minutes later we saw a huge bus with a U-Haul thing attached to it, driving down the street. When it got to the corner a man walked out of it and Sarah and I both realized it was John Watson. Then the debate began about if we should go up and talk to him, see if he remembered us from the March 15th show at the Vic. Then he crossed the street and was standing in front of the Metro. Meanwhile, the bus drove on.

Then a girl came running across the street and was asking Sarah and I all sorts of questions about if we were from the school in Indiana, if we’d met them, and so on. We found out that she had won her tickets from Q101 and she was there with her mom.

Sarah and I decided to go back over to the side of the street with the Metro on it and once again continued out debate over weather or not to approach Watson. Just then the bus pulled up in front of the building and of course a bunch of the girls who were standing there whipped out their cameras in preparation for Daniel’s arrival. Then the door to the bus swung open and first out came Sam and Chris, then Ben, and finally Daniel (who was wearing a huge backpack) and Watson followed him in to the building. The girl who Sarah and I had talked to before not only took a picture of Daniel, but wound of shaking his hand. And as soon as she had done that she started a screaming/shrieking thing (we found out later that her mom is ‘all for her marring Daniel’ hmm .. okay..). I felt really bad for them (silverchair) since they couldn’t even walk into the building like normal people, but then again maybe they like the attention, who knows.

Shortly after that the guards asked us to form a line and that led to the long, hot wait. We continued standing by that girl and her mom, and also another pair of mother and daughter pair who had won tickets off Q101. When the people from the school in Indiana started arriving it became a lot louder and more obnoxious to stand out there and at that point I was starting to get very scared I wouldn’t be able to get in.

At a little bit after 7pm they opened the doors and we were all very thankful to get into the air-conditioning. The guy at the door who was checking student ID’s for the Indiana people, told us to go to this little desk area where the woman who had the various guest lists was sitting. So Sarah explained to her who she was and the lady said to go on in without even checking who I was, so of course I was extremely happy at that point! Upon entering a man handed us each a 5 song promo disk for Neon Ballroom, and we also got the “Anthem For The Year 2000” single on vinyl and they told us to take any of the promo posters that were up on the wall that we wanted!

Sarah and I went all the way upstairs to the balcony area and saw that not only did they give us all that free stuff downstairs, but they also had free pop and pizza for anyone who wanted it! So we went and sat down on the floor right front and center, which is a wonderful spot given the Metro’s a really small venue and you could see everything really clearly from up there. Then Sarah got the idea that maybe she could convince the guest list lady to let her have a photo pass, since she does sort of work for Chairpage and she did have a camera with her, so why not? So we headed back down stairs.

The guest list lady was super nice to us and she asked a guy who also worked there to go ask John Watson if Sarah could have a pass. In the meantime she tried to get Sarah and I to sing for her.. Although I’m not sure what song she wanted us to sing all she said was “Sing that song I’d know by them” and we were kinda confused. When the guy came back from the backstage area he told us that it would be fine for Sarah to get the pass. Having the pass meant she was allowed to go behind the barrier during the first three songs and take as many pictures as she liked, as long as she didn’t use a flash. Then as we were about to go back upstairs I thought I had spotted my friends Christy and Jewels in the doorway. Sure enough it was them and they were trying to get into the concert as well. Luckily they both did and so the four of us headed upstairs.

Once we got back to our spot the four of us just sort of sat around talking for a bit, until it got close to showtime. Then Sarah went downstairs and I was left in charge of holding the recorder. As soon as the lights went down they began to play the opening music and everyone started to go wild. It got pretty loud in there with screams and such and that was sort of surprising seeing as there weren’t all that many people there. Ben entered the stage first, followed by Chris, Daniel, and Sam who all came onstage at around the same time. They were all wearing their usual outfits for this tour and opened up with a completely amazing rendition of “Emotion Sickness” . During that song I noticed something that never had really hit me before, their light arrangement is really expressive.. Like during the “Get Up” part there are these sort of flashing lights (not strobe, but flashing) and it just sort of really added to the feeling of emotionally falling apart.

The next song was Israel’s son and it started with the spotlight on Chris. For me, I’ve always viewed that song as sort of Chris’ if that makes any sense.. it’s just that it has such a strong important bassline and he always has seemed to really enjoy playing it. Speaking of which they all seemed to be completely enjoying themselves, smiling a lot and just giving everything into the music, and I’m always so happy to see them perform like that. Daniel and Chris were both jumping around and moving all over the stage and as I watched Ben drum I thought a few times that his sticks would just go crashing through the skins cause he was hitting them so incredibly hard. And even though the crowd was small, there was a pretty harsh looking pit going on. For me, I think that this was the best ever rendition of this song I’ve ever heard.

After that was Slave, followed by Abuse Me which was greeted by a lot of cheers from the crowd and of course sounded really beautiful as always. That led into Pure Massacre, which of course was great, the only problem was that during the second verse Daniel messed up the lyrics a bit.. He sort of started off saying the wrong thing and then tried to fix it.. But it wound up sounding awkward and I felt really badly for him because it must have been sort of scary. But I don’t know how many people noticed. At this point I began to wonder if this was going to be one of those shows where Daniel stays quiet for a long time, but soon I would be proved wrong.

Before the next song Daniel said a lot, but since I’m super tired and sort of in a very confused state of mind right now and I can’t really remember it word for word, but once Sarah gets the copy of the tape to me I’ll be able to change that. Anyway I believe he said something along the line of thanking us and he said something about the school that the people were from (Chesterton I think it was called..) and about how if we wanted to be in a movie to come by the nearest McDonalds because they’ll be filming a movie there about how to buy a burger. Then they began Ana’s Song, which nearly made me cry. Daniel used the Gibson SG (red with black pickboard.. my dream guitar) guitar for that and I noticed a sticker, which I think is new on there but I couldn’t tell what it said.. It’s golden and sort of oval shaped, so if anybody knows what it is let me know.

Around the end of Ana’s Song the tape ran out and I began to freak because I couldn’t get the recorder to close once I had changed the side.. but luckily Jewels was able to help me out there and I got it recording again after the first bit of Suicidal Dream was over. Now I **think** that after that Daniel started talking to the crowd again, this time asking how many of the people there just graduated from high school and are now unemployed and doing drugs? And a heap of people responded with cheers and raising their hands and stuff like that. Then Daniel said “Now, I don’t mean like, hard drugs, just stuff like um.. (insert something here) and vitameans stuff like that.. Well those people are our friends” and when on to say about how they used to go to school, but it was so long ago they can’t really remember it and said something about principals and how when they were in school. I think that then he went on to talk about one of their particular teachers, who I guess a lot of them don’t like and said that he thought that she told them that a lot of the students there are gay (crowd reacts) and Daniel starts laughing and says “But I think it was a joke.. I can’t really understand Americans though” and then they played “Point of View” which was met by huge cheering from Christy, Jewels, and I.

Then Chris and Ben began to leave the stage and Daniel prepared for Tomorrow. But then he looked over at them and went “Wait, do you guys wanna do Minor Threat?” and Ben went back to his drum kit and just sort of whipped his face with his towel, but Chris on the other hand just sort of looked at Daniel like he was nuts or something. So Daniel said something along the lines of “Do you guys wanna play Minor Threat or do you want to get a drink of water? Cause I was going to play our old hit Tomorrow, but I don’t really want to..” And so Ben’s all ready to start playing and such but Chris is still sort of hesitant. And Daniel’s like “Chris..” and went on to say something making fun of Chris and something about those bright orange pants that he always seems to be wearing. A good part of the crowd is like yelling for him to join then and so then he walks over to Daniel and whispers something in his ear. They checked with Ben and then they began to play “Lie To Me” which was met by lots of cheering and so forth.

I can’t remember if I reversed the order of this and the last song or not, but I think I’m right.. oh well we’ll see eventually. So then Daniel went on talking once again about the teacher the students don’t like and saying how when he met her she seemed pretty nice and I‘m not sure exactly what else, but I do remember it was rather funny (as most of Daniel’s comments are). During all of Daniel’s talking bits Chris would just stand to the side laughing and Ben would just sort of smile. Anyway Daniel dedicated “Paint Pastel Princess” to this teacher. That song was so fabulous! Not only is it one of my very favourites off of the new album, but last night I had a conversation with my friend Amanda about various anti-depressants and I told her how I was looking in one of my mum’s medical text books that has all this pictures of various pills and that Paxcil (Arapax) comes in really pretty colours (Pink, Green and Blue). Amanda then asked me if they were pastel and I said yes. Then it hit us that that’s probably why it’s “Paint **Pastel** Princess” . So back to the concert, during that song I noticed that the lights for that song are sure enough shaped like ovals (just like the pills are) and they’re in the colours pink, green and blue. I just thought that was rather interesting.

Next was Madman to which of course the moshers went nuts! There was this one guy with blond dreads who was down in the pit and after every song while Daniel was talking or there was just a little break or whatever, this guy would be bouncing up and down cause he was already wanting to mosh some more **heheh** During Madman I decided to get out my camera and start taking some pictures (without flash of course) and from that time until the end of the show I wound up taking 26 pictures! I went a little wild there. All throughout the show Daniel when there’d be a bit of a guitar break, Daniel would start doing these air drum movements, which I thought was kinda funny cause I constantly feel the need to air drum, or drum on something else during silverchair shows. Also, sometime during the show, and I can’t remember which part Daniel asked us to pretend that he was our teacher for the night and that he was teaching us to liborate ourselves or something like that, it was quite funny.

Sometime around that song, or maybe the next one a coke can dropped off one of the speakers right by Chris and he seemed to be really bothered by it. So during the playing I could see him talking to one of the crewmembers and trying to point to the can, but the crew guy didn’t do anything or try to clean it up. Oh well, I think that possibly Miss You Love came next, and I know that during some part of the show the door was played with a big talking intro.. But not the usual hallelujah thing.. and I believe it was then that he asked the crowd “Okay, what’s one band that’s really popular, that everyone here hates and we can cover?” and some guy yelled out “Korn!” and Daniel looks over at Ben and Chris and then says “Does everyone here hate Korn?” and Christy, Sarah, Jewels and I are like “No!! Korn rock!” and things along that line. So then Daniel’s like “Alright well name a band that everyone hates then.” And some people yelled out various band names. Then Daniel said “How bout Matchbox 20?” and everyone is cheering and he goes “Does everyone hate them?” **more cheering in agreement** “Alright then” but then he sort of looked around and then said something else. Sometime around then Sarah returned to the balcony after all her film was finished. She later told me that even though she was supposed to only take pics for the first three songs she some how convinced them to let her stay all that time, but she thought that she’d better come back upstairs.

They also played Freak in which Daniel brought back his famous strange/demonic voiced “Well get a different disease” and that song kicked ass, as of course all the others did too. That was followed by “Anthem For The Year 2000” which is just so cool to hear and see live .. With the crowd participation “We Are the Youth” part which sounded really good tonight. During the start of the song Chris walked over to Sam and started spitting something that he’d taken a drink of at him. I have no clue why he was doing that but it was really funny. Sarah and I were both doing somewhat imitating Daniel moves during the song which of course was heaps good fun. Then came time for the pre-encore chanting and I ran back to the bar which was right behind us to grab one of the free cokes because at this time I was super thirsty and even though I wasn’t in the pit, I had been jumping around and head banging a lot, and of course singing every line of the songs.

When Daniel came back he thanked us again, told us they were going to only play one more song, and said a few more things and then they began one of the heaviest versions of No Association I’ve ever heard live. And I do believe that that was the end of the best concert I’ve ever been to.

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