Goo Review
Township Auditorium, Columbia, SC,
November 6, 1999

For my 24th birthday, a friend treated me to a Goo weekend in South Carolina (I'm from TN). The night before we left, I found out that the venue had changed from Carolina Coliseum to Township Auditorium, which holds around 3,000 people. I was sorry to see so few people coming out to support the guys, but the smaller atmosphere was really great. We got to the auditorium about an hour before the gates opened and talked to some people who were gushing because they had just met Robby! When they finally let us in, we were able to get fifth row, which was way closer than I had ever hoped to get. We talked to some of the people around us and met twin teachers from Georgia who had been at the Halloween show, so hello to them if they read this! Anyway, the MP3 guy, Scott, started the show really soon after that, and the first band (6Gig I think they were called) was terrific. Fono, Thrillcraft, and Tonic followed but I was so ready for GGD that I was kind of bored. Tonic has a great sound though. When GGD finally took the stage, the place just exploded. John seemed kind of tired but gave an amazing performance as usual. Robby was really interacting with the crowd and even Nathan came forward at one time to play to us a bit. John told the lottery joke and the Ricky Martin joke and said that Ricky Martin was coming after him for that. He said something to the effect that Ricky was going to "Livin' La Vida Loca" him into the ground! He also had high praise for Tonic, and even said that Tonic had beaten them at softball 33-13 (or something like that) the day before. They did the audience participation game, which was really fun, especially because it was obvious that John and Robby had a lot of fun getting the crowd involved like that. John threw out a bracelet to the crowd and when he saw a little girl in the front row he threw out another one. Some woman apparently got it and when he asked her to give it to the kid, she did (this got a thank you out of John). The set list I guess was the same as it has been in all the other reviews for the MP3 shows, so I finally got to hear A Thousand Words. It was an amazing show and I don't know how I'll get by until I get the chance to see them again!