Nashville-September 3rd 2019

So, after a fun night in Charlotte, Maria, Marilyn and I hopped into a car for the drive to Nashville. As I have mentioned before in some of my blogs, I collect Build A Bears so I had 3 stores I wanted to stop at to look for location exclusives and get my Pawsport stamped LOL. It was a lovely day, albeit on the warm side and honestly, it was quite a fun road trip! Great conversation and company. 🙂 And lovely scenery too as we went through the Great Smokey Mountains for part of our journey. 😮 😀

Once in Nashville, I dropped the girls off as Maria had an Air BnB and Marilyn was in a hotel. I though, was lucky to be getting to stay and visit with my sister. 😀 She’s lived in Nashville for about 12 years now and tho we make sure to see each other for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and 1 other week during the year for either a ‘staycation’ at each others homes or a full blown vacation, there’s still always a number of months in between all that. Last time I had seen her was end of May when we came back from our vacation together so I was looking forward to hanging out. AND, since Monday was a holiday, we got to TRULY hang out because she was home! Movies, games, munchies, lots of chit chat…it was great! 😀

Tuesday afternoon I went and met Maria for an early dinner at a well rated Taco place (that we both thought was DECENT but not GREAT like the reviews LOL. But still good 😉 ) and then headed to the venue. We had heard that this particular show hadn’t sold as many tickets but I kept thinking about back in 2011 when the Tulsa show was a low sale show but the crowd was really enthusiastic and loud. PLUS, OMD hadn’t played a solo gig in Nashville since they’d reformed (trust me, my sis and I did Atlanta in 2011 together as that was the closest show so I KNOW Nashville hasn’t hosted OMD yet) so I was sure those who WERE coming, were going to be coming in elated and thus, really pumped and ready. 😀

Not a ton of people in line but that was good as we wanted front row again LOL. 😉 Christine was in line when we arrived and Marilyn showed up a bit later. Maria and I kept looking at some colorful, er, STICKS that were about a block away. I later emailed my sister to ask what they were and she said it used to be some kind of turnabout but now traffic patterns have changed but they put those there in a center area for art deco….or something like that LOL. 😉 Once in, we got our spots front and center (though later Marilyn went back a bit to watch) and waited. Nice people around us and some small talk ensued.

Strangely, tho THIS show was going to have an opener, they didn’t come on until 8:15pm and tbh, I can’t remember what they were called now. There wasn’t a name on the stage and they didn’t say anything when they came on NOR did they sing. It was all instrumental stuff so…sorry, can’t help with that .

When it was time for OMD to come on, I figured the guys might be nervous due to the lower crowd number but immediately they cheers erupted. Once Isotype was done, Mr. M. smiled at us and said “I crawled out of my death bed tonight to play. I’ve been sick for 2 days. Thank you for coming.” Aww… 🙁 Lots more cheers and then they went into Messages. Once done, Mr. M. joking replied to everyone cheering loudly “You’re worth coming out for!” 😀

I didn’t have anyone to do the “yes, Yes, YES” with tonight so after my first attempt and realizing I was flying solo, I let it go LOL. Ah well… 😉 When Mr. M. put the bass down and said it was time for some dancing, I was happy to see quite a few people bopping up and down with me for HoM. 😀 That then brought things up to Mr. H.s feature. Mr. H. jokingly asked if Mr .M. knew the combination to the pad lock (so he could come forward and center LOL) and during FLaD, I heard a number of girl cheer…followed by a lot more of everyone when it was done. This was for SURE a good crowd that was making up for the smaller numbers..like Tulsa! 😉

For Mr. M.s next song intro, I should mention…for anyone who doesn’t know…Nashville is like the LA for country music singer wanna bes. And it’s the Country Music Scene Capital of USA. (no that is not why my sis moved down here, we aren’t even country music fans LOL. 🙂 ) So when mentioning that they got asked to write a song for a movie about “a bunch of outsiders” Mr. M. added “if you like synth music living in Nashville, you’ll KNOW what it’s like to be an outsider.” HA, yup! 😀 😀 Lots of singing along for that one (no surprise).

We got to hear the lovely She’s Leaving again and then it was time for Souvenir. By this time, Maria and I had noticed that Mr. H. seemed to maybe be sick too as he had called for his own cup of warm tea (Mr. M. had some already). Poor guys! 🙁 But he managed to do well with Souvenir with Mr. M. giving him bowing gestures afterwards and the crowd loving it. They truly WERE thrilled to have the guys there! 😀

Well, it goes without saying that JoA/MoA went well despite Mr. M. being sick and tonight, since I was an idiot and left my camera in the car (don’t ask), I only had my phone but gotta say, I was determined to get it recorded and I managed LOL. Once finished and both Mr. M. and Stuart were basking in the glow of the cheers, Mr. M. laughed and said “if you have only seen my dancing on YouTube, it’s scary in real life eh? But I can’t stop.” GOOD because we don’t want you to! 😉

We all pretended “like we’re in a stadium and there’s 10,000 of you” for TLaC LOL as we swayed our single finger in the air back and forth. And I loved hearing everyone go crazy when Mr. C. pulled out the sax again for SiL. There were cheers mid song for him! 😀 There were loud “hey, hey HEY”s to TPoL too where, when it was over, Mr. M. said “New song and a great response…I love it.” 😀

It seemed the crowd really enjoyed Dreaming too and tho I was sure both Mr. M. and Mr. H. were getting tired at least vocally, their spirits were still up as the crowd reaction wasn’t letting up. Mr. M. jokingly went over and dabbed Mr. C.s forehead during SotSS and everyone again loved Mr. C.s solo, this time doing the funky keys. When it was time to do Enola Gay, Mr. M. looked at Mr. H. and said “you doing OK? Ready?” to which Mr. H. smiled and nodded saying “yeah”. More crowd bouncing and cheers as they wrapped it up and came forward to do their intros and goodbyes. I was quite happy for the whole band as they all seemed to be really happily surprised by the crowd’s reaction. Thank goodness since 2 of them were sick! 🙁 🙂

No real let up from the crowd as we waited for the band to come back. When they did, Mr. M. looked out fondly at everyone and said “Thank you for being so warm, energetic and wonderful!” It’s good to see he and Mr. H. doing some funny little cute antics during Locomotion again (tonight was them making some funny mutual faces and doing their usual hand gestures for some lines in second verse).

But then when it came time for Secret, poor Mr. H. said “I’m losing my voice here so…if you know the lyrics to this song, help me out and join in” to which Mr. M. raised his hand and said “I know the lyrics!”. Aww… 🙁 Honestly tho, Mr. H. pulled it off and as I looked around a bit, I saw a few mouths moving along so… 🙂 Prior to Electricity, Mr. M. thanked everyone again and one final crowd bounce before it was done. I’m sure the guys were glad to be off and able to go rest but what a lovely reaction and lots of love, encouragement, and appreciation from a small but effective crowd! 😀

Right…so my highlight of the night. Well, this may sound a bit weird but since my sis has lived in Nashville for as many years as she has, it’s KIND of like a second home as it’s very familiar to me with having visited so many times. There was also a laid back and slightly spread out vibe to the show which was nice. I honestly felt like I was in a second home town and that was comforting to me. So…if that makes any sense, I’d say really just having a gig with a homey home away from home feel was special for me. ESPECIALLY since they’d never played Nashville solo since the 80s. 😀