The Band Who

Last night something happened that I thought I would never get to see. Travis the band playing in Salt Lake. It's great because I've been a long time fan, since there The Man Who album came out in 2000, thanks to friends who knew that Brit pop is something I love.

They've never come to Utah in the whole of my fandom, so I figured it was just a matter of time before they followed my favorites, Gene, and broke up and never toured again.

When I found out they were coming I started listening to the new album online. It's good, a return to the energy of their first album but with more umph. I'm not sure how to put that into technical terms. But I didn't buy the album, by the time I got around to really listening, there were only a few days left before the show.

Erika and I were partners in crime and get there pretty early and ended up very close to the front. It was standing and so there was a lot of shifting as people pushed in and whatnot.

The opening band was Republic Tigers and they were great, it was hard to really hear them well, but they sounded very new wave but with some Killers mixed in and the guys voice oscillated between the deep of Peter Murphy to an amazing falsetto. He sang Blonde's "Heart of Glass" and he sounded like Debbie Harry, it was wild.

Then out came the fabulous Travis. I knew who the lead singer was, and I had looked up the names of the rest of the band, but the crowd obviously knew them all, which really helped me figure out who was who. The bassist, Dougie, came out in a long buttoned up peacoat and was basically a rock star the whole time. Fran was amazing, so full of energy. They rocked out! I was taken so by surprise. Most of their songs are pretty laid back, but none of them were at the show, they were all amped up to 11! The guitarist Andy was jamming on his guitar with his whole body and Fran got up on the bass drum and played his guitar several times. It was great. They played a lot of the new songs at first, which were familiar, and I was surprised at how clearly even up close I could make out all the words. They played almost every one of my favorites, "Writing to Reach You," "Turn," "Closer," "Humpty Dumpty Lovesong" and "All I Want to Do is Rock." During "Falling Down", Fran got off the stage and walked through the center of the crowd. We were too far on the side to be in on that, but he danced with some girl, shook hands, gave high fives, for almost the whole song! It was really cool. We were right in front of Dougie and let me tell you, this guy enjoys his bass playing. He smirked and rocked through the whole show, he was a treat to watch all by himself. It helped that he looked our way and smiled even wider. I like to think it's because I'm so freaking awesome.

It was also the night of the Britney Spears concert just yards away for our venue, so of course "One More Time" made an appearance, it was really fun.

The played "Slideshow" during the encore and on the album after that song is a "hidden track" after you listen to air for 5 minutes a song called "Flashing Blue Light" starts, and i thought "Wouldn't it be funny if they did that song right after?" and they did. To close the show they did "Flowers in the Window" acoustic and it was really lovely.

I bought a cool Travis shirt that I can wear and people will ask me who the heck this Travis guy is, but it's all good. It was great how chatty they were, mostly Fran talked, but Dougie also did a bit, and it was so great to hear their cute Scottish accents. Erika got me a copy of the drummer's setlist, for which I am very grateful, since I didn't know the names for all of the new songs, but now I have it forever!

We booked it to the side of the venue where the tour buses were. It was raining lightly and it was just us and some other guy there trying to meet the band. We walked around the loading area, but there was no sign of life, we even walked into the back of the venue and walked around but most the doors were locked. After a few minutes of serious discussion, we decided that this had to be the place they would come out. We were right, after a few minutes the crew appeared and straighted putting away the gear, including the huge gong used for one song. This went on for a while and it continued to rain and more people came until we were a little group. Finally the keyboardist came out and headed around us the tour bus. A few people talked to him, I decided to focus on official band members. I had brought my "Turn" single if there was a chance of getting something signed, that would be the coolest thing that I had. It also had the live cover of Britney's "One More Time" so it's a treasured possession and I'm really glad that I remembered that I had it that day.

Andy, the guitarist came out and posed for pics and signed stuff, he was cool. Turns out they are from Glasgow, so we could chat about that a little. The drummer Neil came out and he so reminded me of the Irish guy from Braveheart, very similar sense of humor and also the same dark, lanky hair. He was fun.

Dougie came out and was mobbed. Apparently he might as well be the band leader since he gets lots of attention. I can understand that, he's easily the most attractive band member, but mostly it was all boys that were calling out to him and shouting that they loved him. He's probably their man-crush. He was such a rock star on stage and very kind in person. He asked us our names as he signed our paraphernalia and was very gracious with all the people that wanted to get his picture.

After a few minutes Fran came out. The people were respectful, I'm not sure that giving them a CD of your band is the way to go, but I guess if the right person hears it and you don't suck, there's a chance. Still, I think it's dumb, but I'm not in a band. I should be, I decided that since I rock the house on Rockband drumming, I should be some one's drummer. Every band needs a drummer. But that's neither here nor there.

We waited patiently for Fran to work through the crowd. A nice guy named Robert was letting everyone borrow his sharpie to get things signed (what kind of groupie am I that i don't have a sharpie on me at all times?) and we told him we'd take his picture with Fran and e-mail it to him if he took ours. I took his picture and it looked good, then we tried to exchange the camera and it went crashing hard on the pavement. Even Fran said "that's not good." The view screen was all white. I wasn't thinking rationally or I would have tried to take out the battery and memory card, but we decided that it might still take pictures okay, so we took 2 sets of pics of me and Erika with Fran. One with Erika's cell phone and one with my damaged camera. Robert felt really bad, but it was an accident and I wanted a new camera anyway since it takes not so good shots at concerts. After Fran left for the tour bus, I took out the battery and put it back in and it turned on but said the battery was dead (which it was close before, so that could have been natural) but it wouldn't let me view the pictures, so I didn't know if our pictures with Fran had come out or not. Finally I got the screen to work, but it was upside down. Not the worst, but I was hoping for no real damage. We looked and saw that the pictures we took with Fran were there, but the one of Robert and Fran wasn't. I'm still not sure if it was erased or if it's somewhere on the camera. But look! Aren't we cute?

Of course we thought our adventure was now over and we headed to the trax station to get home. But Wait! Even though Erika had gotten the weekday schedule for Trax online that said the last train was at 1 am, the sign at the station said it really left around 11:30. And it was 12:05. Luckily Erika was able to call her friend and she headed right over to get us. Of course while we were waiting we thought some guy was going to kill us, but he just walked on by. Maybe he didn't know that trax was done running too.

So we got home very late and now I'm at work wishing that somehow I could sleep under my desk, but it was so worth it!