Meeting the neighbors
The Saturday night audience already seemed to be a little more involved than Friday night's crowd, and people around us wanted to talk too! Micky and I were back at table 108, and there was a little girl at table 110 to our right who was about nine years old. She was wearing a baseball cap with "STYX" written across the front in glitter. She and her dad (I'm guessing he was her dad) had a whole stack of them that they had made, and they had a few to give away to people. They had also made personalized caps for each member of the band, with "Tommy," "J.Y.," "Glen," "L.G.," and "Todd" written on them in glitter! The microphones were already set up across the stage, and they were asking me whose microphone was whose. I didn't realize until later that they were asking because they went across the front of the stage, and put the cap for each band member right in front of his mic stand! They saved the ones for Lawrence and Todd to try to get to them later, since there was nowhere to put them. The man remembered being there last year and hearing that it was Micky's 100th Styx show at the time, so he thought it was cool to see her again!
We also talked to a couple of guys who were sitting at the table directly back from ours, Pat and Ray. Pat asked if we had seen the band with the new lineup yet, and we just said yes without elaborating. I don't think he had heard the previous conversation about Micky's 100th show! He had seen them a couple of times too, and we talked about Lawrence and how he was doing. We all agreed, we like the new guy!
When the couple came in who were sitting directly across the table from me and Micky, they got in on the conversation too. Somewhere in there, I mentioned something about last night's show, and they were surprised, and asked if I had been there last night, too. When I said I had, they asked why I would do that! I told them when you come all the way from New Hampshire, you stay for both shows! The guy gave me that "you're kidding me, right" look that I'm used to, and asked, "You didn't come here just for the shows, did you?" And I said, "Kinda yeah!" I told him how it's also a chance to get to see friends and how the whole "traveling Styx family" thing works, but that's a hard one to get across. At least he knew I was telling the truth about knowing people there, because we kept getting visitors from the other side of the room at tables 107 and 109. Also, we had other communication going, as Helen and Sheri held up their signs for us to see. They had made signs naming each of the new songs they had heard at soundcheck, with specific words of approval for each one!
The excitement was mounting and contagious at this point. There were some people around us who were still immune, but they were tolerating us pretty well. Pat came up and asked if we thought we might be able to get him some autographs from the band at the end of the show. He had a couple of CD booklets and a pen, and I told him if he could get up to the stage when they came out, there was a good chance he could do it. He left the booklets with us just in case he couldn't make it up there. I asked him if he'd rather have them use a Sharpie than his pen, and he said sure, if I had one. Well of course - what color?
It was almost time for the show to start, and at the last minute, Jimmy came out on stage and put down a new set list! He pulled up the old one from last night and came over and asked Micky if she'd like it, and of course she said sure! He had a grin on his face when he told us we were going to hear something new tonight, and also something we hadn't heard in a long time! We got a little excited about that! I looked across the room at table 107 and saw a row of faces all looking at us, going, "WHAT DID HE SAY?" I couldn't really get the message across (should have made a sign!) so I ran over to tell them the news.
On the way back to my seat (which I don't believe I ever actually sat in from the moment we walked in), Ray stopped me and asked if I could do him a favor. I said, "Sure, if I can, what is it?" He looked at me very seriously and said, "Can you cheer up a little?" Whoops - was I bouncing off the walls just a bit? I promised I'd do my best to stop bringing him down!