And speaking of lovely and talented...

[annathepiper]

The lovely and talented Mr. Alan Doyle recently amused me with posts of his to the From the Road journal he keeps up on greatbigsea.com.


Posted on Sept. 7th:

Time for a confession. Please don't misunderstand what follows as lack of appreciation for those of you who attend multiple concerts. Quite the contrary. There are those (you know who you are, thank you for your support) who have attended many GBS shows over the past months. My confession is that I am, of late, distracted by the amount of photographs taken inches from the stage. Intimate shows are most excellent to play and attend, but it is difficult not to notice when someone so close to the stage raises a camera for the umteenth time to take a photo. It should not bother me, but I find myself thinking "What in God's name could this person be hoping to capture on film that they don't already have?"

Posted on Sept. 21st:

This is the last day of the third weekend on the road. In usual GBS circles, this would be the last day of the tour and we'd be heading home tomorrow. But this opportunity to introduce our selves in the South is worth the extra couple of weeks effort. So if we seem a little road weary and act a little kookie, please forgive us. As I type, Kris is attempting to jump from a sixth story window. Not to commit suicide, but out of sheer boredom.

Please entertain us any way you can.

That last being a dangerous request to toss out to GBS fans with too much time on their hands, I HAD to post something. ;)


My reply to the FTR posts:

Since he remarked in his last FTR post that he was wondering what the heck people who take zillions of pictures of the band in concert are expecting to get that they haven't gotten before, let me take it upon myself to answer his question.

From the Home Office in Seattle, Washington, the Top Ten Things Repeat-Show-Attending GBS Fans are Seeking When Taking a Million Pictures of the B'ys:

10. The definitive shot of Kris on the drums. What, Alan, you thought we were taking pictures of you? ;)

9. A good grade in the photography classes we're all taking. Every single GBS fan is a photography major, after all.

8. Several of us are undercover crew members of the Starship Enterprise on a time travel journey to document 21st-century Earth musical customs. Those aren't cameras, they're tricorders.

7. There's a huge and little-reported film surplus all over Canada and the United States. GBS just has had the odd luck to show up and sing every time a batch of us are desperately trying to get rid of old stockpiles of film.

6. It's all a scientific endeavor to document the Bob Effect. And proper science requires a wide set of data, you know.

5. It's also a scientific endeavor to document whether Bob does, in fact, ever smile.

4. We're too chicken to ask Séan for bodhran tips directly, so we figure if we photograph him in minute detail, we can figure out what he's doing.

3. One of the Great Big Mysteries of Great Big Sea: how does Alan tune his bouzouki? If we have photos, we can find out!

2. If we get enough GBS pictures, we can make photographic flipbooks and sync them up to Road Rage to tide us over between concerts.

And the Number One Thing Repeat-Show-Attending GBS Fans are Seeking When Taking a Million Pictures of the B'ys:

1. Photographic models for the next shipment of Alan, Bob, Séan, Kris, and Murray Blow Up Dolls, what else?

Cheers all,
Anna the Piper

I got a very satisfying number of giggles out of that, and at least one person has asked permission to print the list and take it to the next GBS show she is going to attend. *snicker* I told her that anybody who thought my modest contribution to the level of laughter on the OKP needed to be seen by the band was welcome to do whatever steps necessary to accomplish it; me, I'm chicken. ;)