wet willie (a flashback)

where to begin on this one? it was wet willie weekend and if i don’t see the two rivers place for about six months that’ll be okay with me…so let’s just look at what all i dealt with, eh?

thursday

it was PREDICTED that some of the campers (the willie site had camping for several hundred) would come and pick up tickets or what not on july 3rd since that was when they got to load in. so i had to go out there at noon and sit and ‘work’ till 6:00. six hours. in a box office. no tv. no pc. no radio. no sales. okay, two tickets sold four minutes after i plopped down on the stool. ‘this won’t be so bad’, i thought…and that was all she wrote. then i got to set up stuff and start printing all the unprinted. granted, this sounds a bit philosophical, but basically if you ordered your willie stuff and set it to be picked up, we printed and sorted it the night before. took a crew of four of us about six hours and some change to complete the job. the things we do for you people. i got out at 12:30 am on july 4th (after being at the office by 9:00 am july 3rd). then i got to go crash in l-town, which meant i didn’t get to bed till around 2:30 am. yee-haw

friday

my alarm is scheduled to go off at 5:30 am…three hours after i crash. but thanks to an electrical storm my alarm doesn’t go off, so i get to sleep in…till 6:00. then it’s off to the venue, dressed in the requested “pseudo-professional-ticket-selling” gear which basically means no sandals and no ink showing. but i take it the extra yard and actually wear a button-up shirt. then i find out i’m running the will call tent. as in outdoors. out came the sleeveless wear (and countless referrals for harold, owner of sharp things tattoos & body piercings, on the square in san marcos, 512-353-1170. last one for a while, i swear!!!) ’cause it’s all good while the rain fell (and fall it did). not so much once the rain cleared off and a hot texas sun hitting rain soaked ground turned the place into a sauna. and NOTHING compliments the steamy heat of a texas sauna quite like the scent of deadheads.

a funk not even george clinton would groove to.

i’ll tell ya…it’s pretty bad when a group of folks wreaks so thoroughly that the smell alone induces acid-like hallucinations. that was the game i played with myself on july 4th to try and keep sane after a while…guessing who the burnt-out, raggedy individual approaching us was there to see…willie or the dead. a lot of their fans DO look pretty similar; like homeless people en masse. scraggly hair, bad tattoos, WAY to much ‘skin’ showing. and the only reason i use the word in quotes is because they’ve all taken on an appearance that looks less like human flesh and more like tobacco soaked pleather. like a couch in a double-wide, but with a rebel flag tattoo that’s only half colored in. so, you’d go off the check list…

1. scraggly and desheveled? check…could be either
2. bad tattoos? check…could be either
3. hemp jewelry and / or pot leaf pendant? still could be either / or at this point.
3. does the tattoo have a confederate or anti-russian theme? willie fan.
4. does the tattoo have a mushroom in it? dead fan.

and so on and so on. what’s funny is that while dead HEADS look that way, the dead don’t. and i’ll grant you, a bit of their fan base looks like older, professional types…but that only makes them more fun to watch when you see them do ‘the dance’. the ‘noodle dance’ i believe it’s called. when a guy is in patchwork pants and a tie-dyed shirt, it looks normal. well, the hippy version of normal. when you put someone in dockers khaki shorts and a polo shirt doing it, it looks as if a seizure has set in. i’ve never seem so many confused concert paramedics in my life. they went on an hour early (pat green got stuck in the traffic going out to the venue, which at times was a four-hour wait) and once they were done, the mass exodus began. by the time pat green DID hit the stage, there was hardly a glass ‘shroom dangling from a hemp string as far as the eye could see.

this all sucked for me, ’cause i was proud we were starting to pack up the outside stuff at 10:00, and figured i could beat the crowd out…then all of a sudden, not so much. i did finally roll out at around midnight (again), and got home around 1:30. that night i got a whopping five hours of sleep, and then was back up by 6:30 and out there by 9:00. we’ll pick up there tomorrow…’cause i’m still sleepy and this one is getting a bit long…

Replies: 3 Comments

mz. obsin…

i agree on the harold thing, but if wwi made you cringe, try and avoid wwii…and any of the back stuff on panic shows last year…

sean said @ 07/09/2003 09:30 AM CST

DUDE…
you’ve insulted the deadheads, you’ve insulted the rednecks,
you’ve insulted the hicks…
hell, i think you even insulted the russians….
dangling glass mushrooms…
indeed…
OH…and for the idiot who DOESN’T know…Harold is an ARTISTE’…(if i could make a raspberry on here…i would!!!!!)hehehehehehee

sacred_obsinity said @ 07/08/2003 10:06 PM CST

and who is harold, really?