"Not So Silent Night"
Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
San Francisco, CA
December 10, 1999
Bands that performed (in order): Filter, Blink-182, 311, and best of all BUSH
My friend and I left my house around 4:30pm for a long drive to San Francisco, which is about 2 hours from here. Our plans were to spend the night in my sister's dorm room in Berkeley that night because I had to be in San Francisco the next day for my college orientation. So we were going to take the bay area transit from Berkeley to San Francisco for the concert, and then back again after the concert was over. I made my friend, who's not a big Bush fan, listen to all the Bush CDs on the way over to get in the mood.
We hit a lot of traffic, but finally made it to the transit station around 7pm. Then we boarded the transit and arrived at the Civic Auditorium right on time when Filter started to play their first song. My friend and I stood near the edge of the mosh pit and I took 2 pictures of them, until I realized I only had 13 pictures left when I thought I had more...so I told her "no more pictures of any other bands, this film is for BUSH!!" Next, Blink-182 came on stage and played and my friend liked them the most out of all the bands, I think.
When Blink-182 was done playing, we got out of the pit and went to buy $3 sodas and then we went over to the t-shirt stand and I bought a Bush shirt. It was the black one with the cd insert background picture of the disease of the dancing cats on the front. On the lower right side there is a small blue Bush logo and on the back of the shirt there is the same Bush logo, only much bigger, and underneath it says "The Science of Things." I told my friend that I needed time to relax when 311 played because a) they were my least favorite band there, and b) I needed to rejuvenate myself completely before Bush came on because I knew I was gonna go crazy.
During 311's last song, we gradually moved towards the pit until they were offstage and we got up to the very front of the pit to wait for Bush to come on. At first I started screaming, "Oh my god, it's been SO long!! I'm so excited!!!" I kept repeating those words to my friend, as I just kept feeling more and more anxious for Bush to come on stage. I noticed that Robin's bass drum had a cool design from the english fire lyrics page background in the cd booklet. After a while I could hardly breath and my feet hurt from standing there for so long, but I kept telling myself, "Bush is worth the wait!!" I kept saying, "come on Bush, I have waited over 2 years to see you and you make me wait here for half an hour so anxiously!" I started turning from very patient to impatient as I waited so uncomfortably for them to get on stage. But like I said before, "Bush was worth the wait," so I kept smiling and cheering for them.
Then, finally, when I felt like I was going to die from feeling so anxious, they came on stage!!!! I screamed louder at that moment than I ever had screamed before. Bush started playing Everything Zen and the crowd went crazy! At that time, I was staring at them in awe and could hardly believe my eyes. I was seeing Bush again for the second time!! I wanted to meet them so badly, and during that first song, all I could do was try to get one of the Bush men's attention. I was closest to Nigel, even though I was in between Gavin and Nigel. So I first tried to get Nigel's attention. When I realized that my screaming wasn't loud enough and wasn't getting me anywhere, I thought of reaching out my arms. I knew I was really close to them because I was right in the very front of the pit, so I was pretty sure this would work. I was one of the tallest people standing in that area, so I stood on my toes to make myself even taller. Whenever Nigel looked my way I gave him a huge smile and when I thought he finally saw me, I smiled at him and reached out my arm and waved. He saw me and smiled back right at me as we made eye contact. He gave me the cutest smile in the whole world and he looked so happy...I was totally excited and I felt so happy. That smile was priceless and I know I'll never forget how I felt when he smiled at me like that!
After Everything Zen, this guy in front of me yelled to Nigel, "Hey, you!" And Nigel laughed and said, "you?!" as he was making fun of the guy for not knowing his name. Then Nigel threw that guy his pick, and it was impossible for anyone else to get it except that guy, so that made me jealous. It seemed like I was the only really huge bush fan around that area, or even at the whole show, because there were so many girls screaming for Gavin it made me sick. One girl even showed Gavin her tits and that was the only time Gavin even looked my way during the show really. He just kept staring at her tits and I was mad because he wouldn't even look close to me. (This whole experience was very opposite to the last time I saw Bush because Nigel wouldn't look at me last time, but Gavin would and gestured to me).
I pretty much knew I wasn't going to get Dave's attention during the show because he was on the other side of the stage and didn't look my way at all really. So I next tried to get Robin's attention. He seemed to keep looking in my direction the whole time he played, so I thought I might get him to see me. Finally, he looked my way once again and I waved right on time for him to see me, and he smiled at me!!! I was extremely happy about this because he gave me just as cute of a smile as Nigel did! I got TWO of the four Bush men to see me and smile at me!! I was so excited and I felt so good that I hardly noticed myself being squished to death by gavin-lovers the whole time. However, my friend couldn't stand being squashed any longer and decided to get out of the pit, while I was telling her Bush was really worth everything.
The song order went very close to this:
In between songs, I yelled out stuff like "I LOVE YOU BUSH" and "BUSH ROCKS." Then, when two girls next to me yelled together "We love you Gavin!" I yelled immediately after, "I LOVE YOU BUSH!" It was funny because there really weren't any big bush fans besides me standing around there and every time I yelled something, they all just kind of looked at me like I was crazy. And during all of the songs, I sang quite loudly along with all of them and no one else seemed to know the words to any songs from The Science of Things except maybe "The Chemicals Between Us" a little bit.
Then, Bush left the stage and I felt like I was going to cry because it didn't seem like they were going to come back on stage. The radio station that hosted the event (Live 105) had this partial moon thingy happening, and it looked like they were getting ready for Foo Fighters to come on stage. But I hadn't heard that Foo Fighters were not going to play that night, as far as I knew, they were coming up next. So I left the pit because I was so exhausted and found my friend and fell on the ground and told her how happy I was and how I had just experienced the best thing in my life. Before I finished that sentence even, she said "who's that on stage now?" and before I could answer I began running as fast as I could through the crowd to get my spot in the front back. It was Gavin on stage playing Glycerine!!!! I thought they were done and I was so thrilled that they were back on stage!!!! So I got pretty close to my same spot, but couldn't quite get around these three big guys that were in my way.
The second set of songs went like this:
Before Swallowed, Nigel said they were going to dedicate the next song to a good friend of theirs that just died, Rick Danko--"a fucking awesome human being" (or something like that).
Then Bush went off stage for the last time and the lights came on so I knew it was safe to leave the pit now. I looked at my watch and I saw that I had 15 minutes to get to the transit station before it closed down for the night, so we jammed out of there. But we didn't pay any attention to which direction we started walking in and then we realized we went the wrong way. So as we turned around, we noticed a limo parked outside next to the auditorium. I was thinking, "Is that Bush's limo?" and I decided I was going to stay there to find out, even though we had hardly any time before we missed our only chance to get out of there. So almost immediately after we went over near the limo, we found out it was in fact Bush's limo! I got so excited and there were security guards blocking off the sidewalk area where the limo was parked. Pretty soon a security guard came over to us (there were about 10-15 of us standing there) and said that Bush might decide to do some signing. Then he gave us all a speech on how to act mature and form lines if they did come over. He also said not to get our hopes up because they might not come at all, but sure enough, I was starting to think my dream was about to come true and got my hopes up. So we waited there and my friend kept bugging me that we have to go and I kept saying, "just a few more minutes." Just when my friend had started physically dragging me away, Bush came out to their limo! But there were two sides around the limo of fans that were waiting for autographs, and guess what Bush did?! They decided to go to the side where I WASN'T STANDING and sign, instead of over where we were. All of us started saying "No, that's messed up, noooo" and shouted to them to come over to us. My friend said that she saw Gwen get into the limo with them, but I didn't see her. I was looking at the Bush men. Gavin was wearing a beanie and they were all wearing warm clothes. Two girls next to me yelled out "Nigel" when he was in our view and then when Dave was in our view, I yelled out "Dave!" and he looked over to our side and smiled. I even held up the back of my shirt to them (where it says Bush in big letters) and waved it around to them. But no one came over to us, so we were all really disappointed. Bush got into the limo and the limo drove away honking.
My friend and I took off as fast as we could, after the limo went down the street, because we had 5-10 minutes left before 12:20 (the last train for the day). We got to the station and ran on the first train we saw, not paying any attention to where the train was headed, until I realized it was the wrong one and jumped in the doorway as the doors were closing to get my friend out of there at the same time. I got a huge bruise on my arm from that. Then we finally got on the right train and left for Berkeley.
This was truly the best Bush experience of my life...just coming that close to getting them to sign my shirt or whatever and all my favorite songs from TSOT that they played, not to mention the cutest, most priceless smiles from Nigel and Robin. It was the best weekend of my entire life and I'll never forget it! Bush makes me so happy!
Luv, Andrea