Since it's been nearly a week, I am sure I will be forgetting everything. I thought maybe I'd do bullets in case stream of consciousness make it easier.

( cut for length and pictures )

golly, there is more but i'm sleepy and my memory is fuzzy. i'll have to listen to the show again because there were so many fun moments, so much great music, and such good people. feel free to add more memories!!

This is just a short posting because we're about to leave the house but I wanted to say thank you to everyone who helped out with the House Party yesterday and thank you to everyone who came out to support the Bards.

And an extra big thank you to Marc & Andrew who not only put on a FANTASTIC show, which I will babble about at great length later this week, but for being such super nice and fun people. We enjoyed you personally as much as we did the show - and as i stated before, that was a lot.

Please have a safe trip home to Texas, but please come back soon!


PS Marc, this is a link to an article about that zombie movie I was telling you about. It's called Homecoming. There is some swearing in the article, just to warn you. Village Voice article about Homecoming

PPS and i will try to get Sarah to write down what she did to make my Jayne hat... Is it okay if i make an icon out of you in the hat for when i official post about the House Concert? I can always do one out of the stalker logo otherwise :)

To quote the t-shirt Redd made for Lil’ B…”Bards Rock!”

Last night Cam & Steph hosted a Brobdingnagian Bards concert at their business. Their store set up is really cool! Anyway, reddheaded, disbandedtoastr , droidgirl, tickmosis and a bunch of others were there. I forgot my video camera and am sad because when they took requests from the audience for Million Duckets Redd asked for butt kazoo (inside joke) and Toaster’s nephew requested Chuck Norris. The Bards accepted these two suggestions but shot down Toaster’s request for huphalumps (they banned her from making any more suggestions) and didn’t hear Toaster & Redd’s request for bananus (that last little bit of a banana). Instead they took Jedi and cats. This was something I would have liked to have had on tape. Next time I will know better and bring the video camera. And butt kazoo showed up in other songs and banter later on – which was cool. I also got to request two songs (Exclamations! and Black & Tan). Redd requested the Unicorn Song – Andrew went off on unicorns, it was awesome. I like his theory that all unicorn statues get dumped in Arizona for target practice and loved the look of glee on his face when he got to announce the unicorns died in the flood. When Marc pretended to blow his nose on Andrew made a big deal about it leaving a mess on his shirt. Lori cracked them up saying it looked like a unicorn. And Redd got them to sing Loch Lomand, which I had never heard them perform before and they have not yet recorded on a CD. The show was great – loved all the songs, loved the banter, and Marc did an amazing job despite being under the weather. (Actually, the weather was awful – tornado warnings and heavy thunder storms.)

After the show was fun, as well. We just sat around talking about movies and arcade games and Dragoncon and cheese and bunnies. Tickmosis & hubby challenged Andrew to a Bunny Foo Foo contest. Her husband actually may have outgeeked Andrew – he caught even his most obscure references and threw them back at him. Redd, Toaster, and I performed Butt Kazoo for the Bards. Despite what you are thinking, the song came from my uncle’s battle with prostate cancer so it has a lot of sentimental value to me. Actually, that’s probably worse than what you were thinking so go back to your original thoughts! And we were a bit tipsy when we wrote it so, yeah. I would LOVE to get a copy of the Bards singing it. Oh, and I learned that I really need to buy a watch. We didn’t leave until after 11:00pm and I was barely awake and dreading the drive home through bad weather. But it was totally worth it. And we’re all excited about seeing them again at GARF this weekend!! Plus, they have promised to return to our neck of the woods in the near future. So long as my husband gets his Star Wars arcade game fixed…

If you EVER have the opportunity to have the Bards play a house concert – DO IT. If you cannot host it, than ATTEND. They are phenomenal. We were lucky enough to be on their route home to Atlanta so they did a show at our house on September 11, 2005. (We bribed them with arcade games and cats…)

I had no idea quite what to expect, we’d never thrown a house party before. We’d attended one in Pensacola for Carla Ulbrich, but that person had a beautiful HUGE house on the water with a gorgeous deck and a living room the size of half our house so we were a little nervous about the prospect of “seating room”. We took out our dining room table so the bards could have a “stage” area and totally rearranged the living room moving all the couches and chairs we owned – trying to figure a way to make sure everyone got a good view. I think it worked out great! We ended up with 19 or 20 people, mostly our friends but we had two people drive up from Panama City and three come from Navarre.

Here’s the thing that surprised me. The Bards put their heart and soul into the show. It was as lively and energetic and exciting as if they were playing a real show at a convention or faire. It was a little surreal because I kept thinking, they are at my house – I should be entertaining them as guests and not making them entertain me! I guess I expected it to be toned down a little since we were just a little house concert but nope, not at all. We were treated royally. And they did a lot of requests, which was great because you got to hear your favorite songs. They also did some new songs I’d never heard before, including their version of Glen Miller’s In the Mood! I honestly think it was one of the best shows I’d seen them do, maybe because it was more personal. The audience was really getting into it, singing along on the choruses, making jokes to accompany their banter, and shouting suggestions for Duckets, including a naked mole rat, a platypus, a gundark, and a redhead. Marc managed to use every one in a single “zoo” comment but they still peppered mole rats, platypi, and gundarks throughout the rest of the song in inventive ways. And despite the fact that we have no unicorns in our house, proving that they are filthy horrible creatures that nobody likes and therefore not deserving of singing about, Andrew still broke down and sang the Unicorn song for us. We actually made them laugh a few times in return for all the laughter they drew from us, which was nice. They sang two sets – they ended up singing until 7:00 pm instead of the advertised 6:30. There was a little break in between so people could get some food or drink. We’d made fondue, little bagel sandwiches and chocolate fondue plus chips and nuts and stuff. A lot of our friends brought food and drink to share as well. During that time the Bards chatted, sold CD’s, posed for pictures, and generally were amazingly cool guys. They repeated this after the show, being very gracious to their fans. It was a WONDERFUL experience and I really hope to repeat it some day.

If I can figure out how to post pictures, I will share a few. Now I have to brag a little – I think the acoustics were really good! I was so proud of my house :) I would change a few things for next time, including figuring out a way to keep them cooler while performing. They are probably used to stage lights (which our dining room lights were kind of acting as) but I’m sure it was a little warm for them. Then again, jumping around and spinning like madmen will do that to a person. I would also like to figure a better way to arrange the food/drinks so more people could get to them at a time, it wasn’t terrible but it could have been better. Also, we could have probably fit a few more people – we had 5 no shows so next time I’ll count on that and see if we can get more people.

This might not be overly interesting, but it deserves a mention to show how loved the Bards are… Most of the attendees were from the general area (Crestview, Fort Walton Beach, Destin) but some people traveled quite far to see them. The Panama City people saw their show at DragonCon and caught news of the house concert on their website – making the 92 mile drive to the show. The Navarre group had seen them at a faire in Louisiana and drove 46 miles. But the prize for most distance drove goes to our new friend Chris who drove 150 miles from Tallahassee to see the show. He also helped out a bunch with cooking and set up so he deserves a big thank you.

Also, they deserve some praise for being such great houseguests! They arrived early on Saturday during our going-away/birthday party for some friends who are moving to Alaska and they immediately blended right in. I don’t know if they had a good time or not, but they chatted and watched movies and ate with us as if they were part of the gang. After the show Sunday we had a great time watching movies. It was really neat to see them as actual people and not just musicians on a stage.

I’m getting better about talking to musicians now. I’m still not cavalier about it, but I can form words and stuff now – which is a vast improvement. The first time I tried to speak to Clarence from the Lost Boys I was incapable of forming consonants. I opened my mouth to a stream of vowel noises. Despite the fact I was muttering gibberish and probably drooling, he was nice enough to pose for a picture after autographing my CDs. The last time I saw him I was able to talk for ten minutes about various bands and I hardly made a fool of myself at all!

So picture this. Dragoncon 2002 and we saw the Brobdingnagian Bards for the first time. We were completely blown away by how funny the show was and how the entire audience got involved and connected. You know, one of those concerts were you feel totally in the moment and you realize this isn’t just a show it’s an experience. Anyway, they were the highlight of the con that year and we were so excited to find out they were scheduled to return in 2003. disbandedtoastr, reddheaded, my husband and I got there Thursday – we like to arrive the day before so we can get our room and get settled in before everything starts happening. We were eating lunch in the mall and I noticed the guy at the table behind me was wearing a Bards shirt so I thought I’d ask him where he got it. I leaned over and was just about to inquire about his shirt when I realized it WAS a Bard and, as usual, freaked out. So in a deep horrible whisper so as not to disturb him I shrieked “are you selling those shirts?” Andrew jumped and looked around frantically for the voice. Seeing me he replied “yes” and quickly turned back around. I returned to my friends to tell them the stupid thing I’d just done. They looked around to see the poor guy I’d just frightened only to discover the Bards had already cleared their table and fled. Again we died laughing and said they must think I’m some sort of crazy stalker. An hour later we bumped into them in the lobby. Andrew called out to me, pointing and saying “hey, there’s my stalker!” The weird thing is, some how they kept turning up where ever I was. We even discovered we were staying on the same floor. I bumped into him waiting for an elevator and teased him about it. His response was at least I didn’t know his room number. I replied in a cold confident voice, “I can find out” and he hopped on the elevator before I could follow. From that point it became a running joke. I have CD’s made out to their favorite stalker, I’ve been introduced to other fans as their stalker, etc. We’ve seen them at the 2004 Dragoncon (again – staying on the same floor?!?) and the North Georgia Celtic Festival (same hotel?!?!) and each time we’ve continued the stalker gag – although now we’re accusing them of stalking us. I’ll try to post some pictures proving this assertion.