From: Elizabeth Bouras (evb@psychotica.net)
Monday morning 11/15/99 - flew to Orlando FL hellishly early, met Robin at the Orlando airport as she arrived from Toronto and we set off to find the House of Blues. Never depend on Mapquest for your directions as the ones I printed out were utterly useless but thankfully we had genuine maps as well!
Arrived very very early at the House of Blues & got our tickets & picked up their November schedule which gave music categories for each band playing there - giggled that tonight was labeled "disco" - I can only guess that they got the Resurrection CD and only listened to the beginning of "Wasteland". We wandered around the "Downown Disney" complex which is just way too touristy and commercial to deal with & headed off to find a motel. Came back a few hours later & met up with Melanie (fresh in from the West coat Mish dates) and Frank who'd driven down from South Carolina & hung out with them. (notice that local fans never arrive hours early, only the out of towbners!) Walked into the HOB restaurant and somehow they got the impression we were with the band and gave us the artist's menu for free food - we certainly weren't going to correct them!
We walked out to hear the band doing their soundcheck & listened thru the door, amused as hell to hear them doing the Cult's "Wild Flower" & decided we didn't want to miss out so we walked in a back door and to our surprize nobody tossed us out so we got to hear the rest of the soundcheck from inside while Mel helped set up the merchandise. After they finished we went back out again to start the line & met up with Rob from Toronto - he was down in Miami on business and somehow conveniently managed to work 2 Mish shows into his schedule. (Now if I could only get my job to underwrite my trips!!)
Got in & grabbed our usual front & center spots. Took some pix of Mike Peters only to be immediately harassed by the House of Blue nazis who took pains to point out that my Ressurectuion tour photo pass was not good for the House of Blues because I didn't have an OFFICIAL HOUSE OF BLUES photo pass yadda yadda yadda. Give a big goon an ounce of authority and they want to take over. Whatever.... sez Liz, I'll just take lotsa pix at the next two shows, its not like I have no opportnity.... At least Rob got lots of photos of the Mish - I was too paranoid to bring my camera out again as I was SURE they were watching me. Jeez... it was a nice venue to watch a show but utterly devoid of any sort of vibe - give me a friendly little dive anyday!
Ran into Taylor who runs GLJ's label and gave him a buncha Jezebel pix I'd taken earlier on the tour - got to see his shots from the tour as well and he eagerly pointed out his pic of the back of Billy Duffy's head at the LA show!
MP was great, Jezebels kinda rambled on a bit as they are prone to do but the Mission weer brilliant, it was one of the best shows I'd seen this tour (tho I still don't think anything tops Columbus tho this one came close!!)
Set list: (snagged after the show)
Beyond the Pale
Hands across the Ocean
Garden of Delight (thrilled to finally here this as they hadn't played it earlier on the tour)
Butterfly on a Wheel
Raising Cain
Serpents Kiss
Over the Hills and Far Away
Swoon
Tower of Strength
Deliverence
Encore - the encore was an amazing conglomeration of songs..... first Wayne's acoustic Elvis cover, an instrumental "Marian" seg-wayed into "Wasteland" with bits and pieces of other songs thrown in (The Cult's "Rain", The Door's "Light My Fire"), they also did "Blood Brother", "Like a Hurricane" and a blistering version of "1969" to close the set. Several times they ran totally off course & screwed up but good naturedly went on - at one point Craig started jumping in the back like Monty Python doing ballet leaps or something and I totally lost it.
Immediately after the show the HOB Nazis tried to throw ewverybody out, of course nobody had offish HOB passes either but Mel somehow convinced them to let us backstage and they begrudgingly allowed 3 of us upstairs. Great to talk to everybody again & thanked Mark big time for keeping up with the website & Craig with the diary (which he's been writing out in longhand and then handing to Mark to type up and post). Craig went off about the squeezy cheese and peas or whatever at great length, no doubt inspired by the huge cheese platter on the table... Got Craig & Scott to sign my Coloursound album (And Mike 2 days later signed it), brought Wayne a Washington DC waterglobe for Dylan that I hope she'll like & got to see many cute pictures of her!!
What a fucking amazing night!!!!
--- Elizabeth
Pix from this night on the official Mission page
