hobbitgrrl decided to take me up on my free ticket offer, so off we went after class on Friday. The traffic was annoying but not horrendous, and when we got there the line was still quite short. Jay was there, of course, and jokingly chided me when he saw I had the free ticket, but I explained that that had enabled me to bring a friend, so that was all right.

When we went in the security forced me to check my bag, so I had to leave my bottle of water behind, but I did get my camera in, so I have pictures (and scans). Despite the delay at the coat check we got right in front, wedged in between Jonathan's and Victor's monitors. Also on the way in I'd picked up a pass to the "after party" and a coupon for a free beer. I didn't figure I'd need either of them—I didn't want any beer and I didn't see any point in going to the after party if hobbitgrrl couldn't come too, but I figured the pass would be a nice souvenir and maybe I could sell the coupon to some desperately thirsty person down in the crowd (I never did get rid of it, as you can tell).

Then the waiting began. That is my least favorite part of going to a show. There was a moment of amusement for me when a drunk man came along and started hitting on hobbitgrrl in the most incompetent manner imaginable. When he told her he was a trainer for seeing-eye dogs I said to her, "That's the lamest line ever!" And Jay came over later and reminded me that if David had another "wardrobe malfunction" it was my duty to tell him to correct it.

We heard one of the guys in the crew telling another one that the Damnwells had called and said there was a 50/50 chance that they would make it on time...I was kind of hoping they wouldn't make it and then Camper would just play two sets, although there were very few people there by seven (when the show was supposed to start), which probably wouldn't have made it a very fun audience for them to play for at that time.

But the Damnwells arrived just a bit late. They apparently came straight out of the minivan onto the stage and then started playing immediately, which was kind of a neat trick. David's amp had been moved to the middle of the stage for the lead singer of the Damnwells, so his guitar was pretty much all I could hear. This made the set less enjoyable for me than it could have been, but at least it didn't last very long.

After that the Camper guys kept wandering onstage to check their gear. Every time one of them came out the crowd would cheer, and the guys seemed amused every time but also genuinely touched. Aww! There were new guitars all around again: David had a (reddish-brown, I think) Surfcaster, yay! (Turned out it was a loaner, though.) Greg had a Les Paul, in a beautiful natural finish, but a bit darker, more like a honey tone, and at first that Ibanez that Greg and David had used in Indianapolis was set up for Jonathan, but it was switched for the black mirrored Strat before the show started.

The show was great, as usual. I don't think I need to go into too much detail about it—eventually Jay will put it up on the CVB archive and you can download it in the format of your choice and hear it for yourself. They were pretty chatty tonight, though, which is always fun. They did Abundance, which somebody had requested back in Minneapolis (I think) to be played here. That didn't stop a guy from asking for it again later on. (David: "We played that one!") And That Gum You Like was the first time I'd ever seen Greg play acoustic guitar, ever. Crazy!

They came back onstage for the encore, and David was like, "Somebody must have a cigarette for me," so somebody passed him one. When he started puffing on it I said, "If he's smoking, they have to play an instrumental" (which they did: L'Aguardiente). After that David called for requests, and I yelled "Waka" about a million times, but he was way on the other side of the stage and everybody else was yelling too, so perhaps he couldn't hear me. They did Life Is Grand and maybe something else before that, I can't remember, and then David decided to do Duty Free, written by Chicagoan Ike Reilly. "It's a good thing Ike isn't in town tonight," he said, "'cause he'd make me go to a strip club or something." Victor laughed: "Yeah, he'd 'make' you."

So they were playing the song and while they were doing that this very exciting thing happened: Jonathan's setlist was way back out of sight behind his monitor, so he put his foot on it and slid it out for me to take. Whoopee! Actually I had already taken Victor's during the break (they don't write the encore on the setlist, so he didn't need it anymore), and I had felt kinda bad about snatching it from hobbitgrrl, so now I passed that one to her and was happy that we each had gotten one.

And see, you'd think that was already an awesome enough thing to happen at the show, but it was only the beginning.

David had announced several times during the show that afterwards there'd be a meet'n'greet at Hi-Fi Records next door. And I'd had an email or read it on a website somewhere before the show that that would indeed be taking place, but then later had gotten another email saying that in fact there would only be the "after party" up in the balcony afterwards, and would be 21+. Well, if the record store thing was still going on, that seemed way preferable since there was no age restriction, so hobbitgrrl and I went out and over there. Then all this confusion began. The surly record store clerk was not helpful at all, and the Metro security wasn't letting people back inside, and we were both rather frustrated and disappointed.

Then we met Velena (I think that was her name; I wish I knew for sure, and also her address, so hobbitgrrl and I could send her a thank-you note and a bunch of flowers). Well, hobbitgrrl has described this next part of the story pretty well, so I'll just cut to the part where Velena said to the Metro security, "I'm with the band, and they're with me," and a couple minutes later we were in Camper Van Beethoven's dressing room.

I felt really weird about it (and then the nervous giggling started, of course, which never helps), but the guys were all really nice and relaxed about it, as if it were nothing unusual to have two unknown girls standing around their dressing room. (Perhaps it's not...but anyway) Velena put a Sharpie into hobbitgrrl's hand and we managed to get all of them to sign our setlists. It happened rather quickly, but here's a recap:

Jonathan: called us "superfans."
Greg: I asked him if this Les Paul was his permanent replacement guitar, and he said no, but he was probably going to get one. He's a Fender-to-Gibson convert!
Frank: asked me, "haven't I seen you around before?" The answer is yes.
Victor: thanked me for driving down to Indy to see them. I told him I think he looks good in plaid.
David: was about to go to the meet'n'greet, but Jonathan stopped him and told him to sign our things for us. Aw, thanks, Jonathan!

Well, we didn't really need anything else after that, but Velena caught up with us again and suggested we follow the band (they'd gone up some stairs). My fandom having been more than satisfied at this point, I asked about something which I was very interested in: "Is there pizza?" and she repeated, "Go on up." So up we went. There were signs saying "to stage" but we continued upward and arrived at the balcony instead. And there was pizza.

The confusion downstairs still hadn't been entirely cleared up, I think, so there weren't many people up there. We had some pizza and then hobbitgrrl got in line to get her CD signed. I went along with her and after that (and it seemed weird that this should happen after we'd already been backstage and taken free pizza) the security asked us for our party passes. Since hobbitgrrl could not produce one, they said, "Then you have to leave." And since we'd already had our most excellent adventure, we didn't mind doing so. Although I would have liked to have found Velena again and thanked her. Profusely.

So, we went out, feeling completely giddy. I said to hobbitgrrl, "Next time, they'll remember you too."

Cool.