Patriot Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA
Wednesday, October 22, 1997
Section Floor-3, Row H, Seat 11
$36.50
Eighth row on the floor. These were my first truly great seats. My friend Scott got them for me.
I flew home from Boston on Monday, did my laundry, went to work, and took the Greyhound to Baltimore on Tuesday. I still had my part-time job at my old college radio station WXPN. The hours were flexible and my bosses were really cool about me taking off to see Yes all these times. My friends Scott and Thea lived in Baltimore and were going to take me to the Fairfax show. I didn't have a driver's license yet, so all of my out-of-town shows had to be arranged like this.
I met Scott and Thea at a concert a few years prior. We exchanged addresses and promised to keep in touch. We did! Before we were on-line, I told them about shows taking place in Philly. They invited me down to their home for the weekend visits. They had a great kid named Ian who was six years old at the time of the Fall Theater Tour. We used to watch Star Trek episodes together and then play the episodes with his action figures. They wanted me to come down a day early so they could pick me up from the bus terminal after work. I provided free babysitting when Ian got home from school the next day. When I told Ian I was seeing ten Yes concerts on this tour, he told me I was spoiled.
My friends recently got their first computer. I was able to check my e-mail there. I got an e-mail from my boss with a huge surprise. I was not allowed to tell anyone in advance. Jon Anderson, my favorite rock star, my idol, was coming to WXPN on Friday for an interview at the radio station. He was going to be on the World Cafe, our nationally syndicated show. And I was going to be allowed to sit in and watch the interview!
I'm wondering about the time-line actually. Did I already know Jon was coming and this was just confirmation? I definitely remember getting an e-mail from Kathy while I was at Scott's. And I also remember talking to my show's producer about it, but that might have been before this trip to Scott's. I wish I had this e-mail as part of my mementos. Sadly, this e-mail was on my old college server. I used elm for e-mail access and had no computer to download it to. This account was left open after I left school, so I still used it. But I lost access to it and lost all of my e-mail archive prior to 1999, except for some e-mails I had downloaded to my work computer and exported. At least Roy has the e-mail correspondence from early on in our relationship archived.
Fairfax is about an hour's drive from Baltimore, but this involved DC rush hour traffic. I would have preferred to drive down earlier in the day, but we had to wait until everyone got home from work. We left around 5. I was nervous, but we made it in time. Scott got tickets for the three of us and my friend Dawn from central Pennsylvania.
Patriot Center was one of the small arenas Yes played this tour. It wasn't even half full. Now, it's much bigger than theaters like the Orpheum or Tower, so it probably held as many people. But it seemed so sad to be booked in a place with so many empty seats.
I remember this show being really good. Yes did two shows in between Boston and Fairfax, so this was already the 5th show of the tour. A little bit of humor - when Jon talked about the Open Your Eyes CD release date, he said it was near Thanksgiving. That led into calling the album a turkey! Jon tends to repeat the same announcement at each show - another one I first heard here was the introduction to And You And I. The band's producer was rolling his ... tapes and Jon urged him to start recording Steve's guitar harmonics which became the start of the song.
The setlist was the same as Boston's, but Scott, Thea, and Dawn had not seen the tour yet. Scott in particular did not want to know the setlist in advance. It was great knowing what was coming next and watching his reaction. There was some opening percussion to Revealing Science of God, and he tried to guess the song. He didn't get it until Jon started chanting. He was about to cry, he was so happy. I loved watching the show through his eyes.
Yes music makes me want to dance. I'll dance in my seat, but it makes me feel confined. However, I hate the tension caused by my standing and blocking other people. I try to get seats on the aisle or some out of the way place where I can dance and not bother anyone - I call these dancing seats. We were in the middle of the row, and I kept moving over to the far aisle to dance. Dawn joined me for a song. But then, I'd miss seeing Scott's reaction, so I'd move back to my seat.
We drove back to Baltimore. I stayed there overnight again, and then boarded a Greyhound to Philly. I don't remember if I made it to work on Thursday, but I was definitely there on Friday.
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