all hail the orb (to a point)

i heard about the concert last week sometime. i really, really, really wanted to go.. but it was on a monday night, whereas i get up at 5:30 am the next day. bleh. but goddamnit, it was the Orb.

so yesterday i said fuck you all, i'm getting a ticket. i swung by the metro and managed to snag one from their store (screw you, ticketmaster!). went home, took a much-needed nap.. then set out to thoroughly enjoy myself. i figured hey, if worse comes to worse and this thing goes until 3 am, i can always take off work. ..except i realized on the way over there, circumstances beyond my control mandated that i had to be at work that day. fuck. oh well. one day won't kill me, right?

i staked out a pretty nice space near the front of the stage, after waffling uselessly near a security guard. not many people were truly dancing - almost all of them were guys - but since my booty had intentions of its own, i got up and started shaking it. two prerequisite guys were there: the guy who will dance to anything, and the guy who's so stinking drunk he'll dance to anything. the show started at 9, i got there a little after, and this guy was already three sheets to the wind. impressive, on some white trash jackass level.

the music... sigh. from the first song the whole spectacle was worth the price of admission. one cannot put a price on my bliss. i only recognized one song - 'little fluffy clouds', of course - but i didn't care, for the most part. if they *had* played a song i know and/or love, rest assured i would have broken several bones. the stage was a pretty lowkey affair: two members spinning behind a table with a projector and screen. and by god, they were having fun up there! that was the best part. at one point this cartoony intro music started up and they started dancing around the stage with each other.. great stuff.

..right up until one of the guys left. he was there from the beginning of the show, thereafter joined by his cohort. then he put on his cap and jacket and left the stage, turning it over to the 'new guy', who i found out later was the real, long-term mastermind behind the Orb. that makes his choice of mixing all the more tragic, in my opinion. i thought i recognized a bit of what he started playing on his lonesome.. in a bad way. turned out to be a fucked-up cover of 'freebird.' okay, fine, we can deal with this kitsch.. he played a good groovy song after that, and then the doobie brothers. the doobie brothers. someone forgot to tell this electronic englishman that in america, we hear this junk all the time at ball games and in commercials and from our freakin' parents. some of the guys were going nuts, though. on my end, that was my cue to exit.

overall, a very good time, with a bit of letdown at the end. ironically that afforded me to go home and get more sleep than i thought i'd get. now if i can just get through the day without my leg muscles seizing up and my brain sloughing down my spine, i'll be set.