Meeting up with the gang
After we had lunch, we went back down to the Will Call area to see if we could meet up with any of the people we knew who were coming in from other places. We saw Debbie and Cindy and Jerry and Edith - I sound like the lady from Romper Room now! We went to talk to Donna again to see if they had gotten any word on allowing cameras, and she said that Keith had said no cameras. And we said - are you sure? Keith MARKS? She said she thought so, so we asked, "Can we talk to Jeff?" We were just full of ourselves, can you tell? We did get to talk to Jeff, and he told us Keith had said no flash photography, but cameras were fine. In a few minutes, they posted a sign saying that, so we were set. We talked for a while, then all went back to our rooms to change, and said we'd meet up again before the show!
Back over at the venue, we met our gang again, plus a lot of other online fans we had met previously, and many that we hadn't! We did meet up with the man and his son who were from Alabama, who the shuttle driver had mentioned to me! Styxworld can be a small world sometimes! This guy goes by "Chow" online, and he had found out that Herb Dixon was a comedian and was supposed to be on for about twenty minutes before Styx played. We also talked to Casey, the man who is in charge of merchandise for Styx. We were there early, so there weren't many people around yet, and he had time to chat. He knows Debbie, and several of the rest of us had faces that were familiar to him too... I can't imagine why! He was very sweet and funny, and like everyone else I've ever spoken to in connection with this band, he was so nice and appreciative of all the fans. He also agrees with me that sleep is overrated!
At last they opened the doors and we went in. This venue is very wide and not very deep, if you know what I mean - I don't think there was a row further back than row twenty, but there were seven sections across the room. For tonight's show, I had a seat in the second row of section F, which was a little past the edge of stage left. We found out that that the first two rows of the middle three sections, C, D and E, were reserved for casino guests, which means they might be Styx fans, or they might not. That's always frustrating, because a lot of the fans want to be up at the front, standing in front of the stage, and the band likes that. But when you have people in the front rows who may or may not be that interested... well sometimes you just have to get in front of them! So I believe several of us had that plan in mind!
While Herb Dixon was on, however, I was in my assigned seat. After he had been on for twenty minutes and didn't show signs of stopping, I started to wonder when Herb was leaving! Please don't get me wrong, he wasn't bad, and I'm sure he's a nice guy - go check out his web site in fact! But he wasn't who I was there to see! I saw George and Keith, a couple of the Styx tour managers, come out from the backstage area and watch Herb, and I couldn't see their faces, but I have it from reliable sources that they were not happy that Herb was still up there either! At 8:35 Herb finished up, and as soon as he was off the stage, Keith was on it. "School's Out" started playing, and in less than sixty seconds, everything was ready to go!