My review - 26th Nov Birmingham NEC

[Gypsy-Rhiannon]

Birmingham NEC 26th November 2003





Day 2 of Fleetwood Mac heaven. We set of for the NEC much earlier as hubby’s were left home to baby-sit and we fancied trying to catch the band arriving. We had the card we had made for John and a couple of Happy Birthday banners. Our banners the previous day had been taken away but we thought we would try again. We also had a collection of penguins for John and planned to throw them on stage when Mick did the intros.



We arrived and headed straight round the back. There were 3 very nice people waiting. They told us they had waited the previous day and that John and Mick had talked to them and signed autographs. Nat arrived with the fabulous cake her Mum had made for the band – it was truly wonderful and she is very talented. She left it at the stage door and we hope the band at least got to see it.



It seemed to turn very cold very quickly and we were bloody freezing waiting for some action. Then a car appeared, I think it was a Chrysler voyager. Out came Mick and immediately came over and chatted to us and signed for us all. Idiot me had only brought the Buckingham nicks album so I had to get him to sign the concert ticket! As he went to leave I asked to shake his hand and he did! Nat got a great picture and you can see me on it too! Not quite a picture with Mick but almost!



Lindsey was the next to arrive but he whisked out of the car and didn’t even look at us. So much for being his ‘come’ girl! ;-) John arrived after that and when he got out we all sang happy birthday to him! He seemed chuffed and gave us a wave. Then arrived Brett Tuggle, Taku Hirano, and Sharon Celani… probably others in the car but I only saw those. Sharon was really sweet and chatted to us and signed some things too. Finally we saw the security men wheel an electric scooter out for Stevie’s dad. It stood there for ages and the seat must have been freezing by the time he arrived! LOL! Didn’t even see Stevie get out as she was shielded by the car. Never mind.



Now even more excited we decided to head inside to bag our spot in front of Stevie’s mic. Front row again and my sit was right in front of where I wanted to stand anyway!!! We lined up all the penguins between the monitors and also the gift we had for Stevie from Fireflies UK. This had been spotted in town earlier in the day. It was a little white dog that when switched on walked and yapped! We tied a helium filled red heart to it and wrote on that ‘For Stevie, Love from Fireflies UK’ I had also brought my Buckingham Nicks album to try to get it signed so I got that ready too. We also had Johns card but as this was quite big security took it backstage for us to give to him. Hope he got it.

People must have thought we were very peculiar to be standing there over an hour before the show was due to start! As time passed more and more Fireflies gathered – the atmosphere was buzzing. Dorothy, my new friend from the USA arrived (fellow ledgie) and I also met another girl from the US called Brandy. It is so nice to meet fellow fans at the shows; after all we all share the bond of loving FM!!



When the lights went down everyone went wild again. I looked at Rachel and she already had tears of joy in her eyes.. bless! Out they all walked and we were all in Mac heaven. Lindsey looked across and I pointed at him and right away he recognised me!! Wow! He pointed at me with a look on his face like ‘you again?’ and mouthed ‘Mad’…. He might have been saying that to Brandy tho as she had been to numerous shows in the USA. Of course this made my night but the best was yet to come. I turned my attention to Stevie and as she stepped back from the mic she looked down and saw me and there was this sudden recognition on her face and she broke into the biggest smile and mouthed ‘Hey’, pointed at me with both fingers, gave me a wave with both hands and then a double thumbs up! OMG!!! Awesome moment is an understatement! She genuinely looked please to see me again! (Sorry if I’m gushing but this was a top moment for me!!) This was the first of a few ‘Stevie’ moments as throughout the show I got some lovely smiles from her. Each time I did I would get a nudge from Sarah behind me…hehe.

Stevie did seem more ‘into’ it right from the start of this concert. She was having a great time and she sounded fantastic. Lindsey chose Sara from Fireflies to be his come girl and she certainly enjoyed the experience. We also had some Lindsey attention too!



Say Goodbye was wonderful again apart from Stevie stumbled over a line and I felt awful because she had got distracted when she glanced down and saw all of our paraphernalia. We were going to put the penguins on the speaker but decided to wait until near to the end if it was going to prove a distraction!



The band was on fire all night. Stevie struggled with her voice at the beginning of Silver Springs but soon bounced back and Lindsey gave a thumbs up again during the slow dance of Tusk. Before we knew it it was World Turning so we decided to pop some penguins on the speaker and wave some others around. I had a great big one with a badge saying Happy Birthday John! Stevie spotted them and laughed. She must think we are mad!! Anyway Mick came out to do the band intros and just before he introduced John he spotted my penguin and took it from me laughing! He held turned round to show the others and started to introduce John, mentioning that it was his birthday. At this point penguins started to fly towards John and because Stevie moved she had to duck a low flying penguin! The crowd all started to sing Happy birthday and we even had a line from Stevie! What a cool moment. John held his head in his hands and then laughed and looked at the penguins and said ‘My babies’! hehe. He played Don’t Stop with penguins al around him and when the band went off before Goodbye Baby some crew came out and lined them all up! I wonder if we will see any at future shows?



All too quickly the show was almost over. As the light came back up after Goodbye Baby I put the little walking yapping dog on stage headed for Stevie. Right away she spotted it and smiled so big and went ‘awww’ and walked over to it. Then she picked it up by the balloon (she obviously can’t bend down to floor level… bad hip or tight corset? LOL!) and moved it over to where they were taking their bows. Unfortunately the balloon flew off and up to the top of the NEC so I don’t know if she would know it was for her. The entire band seemed to find it hilarious and the little chap walked across the stage while the band said their goodbyes. During Don’t’ Stop I waved my Buckingham Nicks album and caught Lindseys eye and he nodded that he would come over. And true to his word he did. He signed mine first and some of the others that were thrust towards him. Unfortunately he dropped Jenni’s ticket behind the speaker, but she was the lucky one as he ripped up a set list and signed that!!! Wow! Stevie came along and took one gift but missed some Fireflies gifts that were being held out for her. Looks like those gifts will be travelling to London ;-)



And so ends another night to remember. I’m still in a state of shock at my ‘Stevie moments’. I hope to have more as I’m front row at my other 3 shows… I know I’m spoilt! Hehe


I didn’t take photos this time as I wanted to just enjoy the show but I know Neil and Phil have some fab ones that I know they will share


You can view pictures of the FM cake made by Nat's talented Mum Julia at the following link. Also the picture of the Mick meeting!!


http://www.icdphotos.com/public/deta...c_album=483744



Pip

[Rapunzel]

Hi Pip

Did you ask Mick how Toad was?

I miss the little reptile!

lol

Aine x

[seteca]

This was just one amazing...amazing...AMAZING.....concert. Christy, Neil and I had 3rd row tickets, and about 15 mins before the band came out the stewards told the first 3 rows that they can stand in front of the stage. So there we were, the 3 of us standing right underneath Lindsey's mic., about 3 feet from the man himself. Pip's already written such a great review (thanks Pip! Good to see you again btw!) so I won't bother, instead here are some personal comments:

- During the second chorus of The Chain, Christy got the classic "smile-nod-and-point" from Lindsey. That was the first of literally about 20 or 30 he did to her throughout the show. Needless to say, she was a very, VERY happy girl! (I'll leave it to her to post at some point...we still have 4 shows and 3 front rows ahead of us so God knows what's to come!)

- I was trying my hardest to get LB's attention at the beginning of the show (he seems to warm up to girls a lot quicker! That suited Christy just fine but made things difficult for me and Neil!) and then finally he noticed me singing "Second Hand News" word for word looking straight at him, then gave me the smile-and-nod, and then he sang the entire "bam-bam-bam-bam....etc" part fixated on me, and to say that it was surreal having Lindsey shout "do it, do it, do it!!!!" at me, and shouting it simultaneously back at him, would be the understatement of the century. Again, the first of many, many, surreal moments throughout the night.

- Christy and I were determined to make sure Lindsey heard us during the gaps in the songs (e.g. the breaks in between the verses and chorus of The Chain) so we filled them with "wooooo!!!!"s...etc..lol. I think the best of these moments for me was that gap between the intro. to I'm So Afraid and the point were the main song starts....that 1 or 2 seconds were it goes completely silent (just before Mick hits the drums) I shouted out as loud as I could "C'MON LINDSEY!!!!"...my voice echoed right through the arena.....lol....I'm sure those of you who were by Stevie's mic heard it!

- Lindsey did the longest and most intense "Come" solo I've ever heard...He got to that point where he starts hacking away at the guitar and it sounded like he was going to finish it off, but then he just carried on playing, faster and faster....the man just wouldn't slow down, I thought his fingers and the guitar were going to burst into flames at any moment.....The whole solo must have gone on for about 5 or 6 minutes.

- Beautiful Child was the only song I didn't enjoy out of the whole show. Nothing to do with the band - they were singing and playing it 101% as usual, and Stevie's voice was incredible. About 30 seconds before the end of WTWCT an elderly man who was standing next to Christy turned around and started walking away with some apparent difficulty. About 30 seconds into Beautiful Child, a woman right behind us suddenly shouted "Oh my God! Security!! SECURITY!!!!". I looked behind me and saw the same man sitting in a front row seat, motionless with his head hanging down and his eyes closed. People around the area took a step back and a man next to him started trying to find a pulse on his neck and didn't seem to be able to find one. It took about 20 seconds of yelling "security" and "help" before two stewards arrived. At this point Lindsey noticed that something serious was happening down there and he carried on playing but was also continuously looking to see what was going on (I'm sure he had memories of Reno flashing through his head). Stevie was too far away to notice and she carried on singing, totally unaware. When the doctor arrived, the man regained consciousness but still had his eyes shut and seemed to be breathing with great difficulty. They put him into a wheelchair and took him away. The song finished about 30 seconds later and at the end of it when the lights went out LB didn't wait for Ray Lindsey to come and switch his guitars...he went over to Ray and pointed towards the area and they spoke. I guess he was asking him "what just happened??".

- Lots of eye contact and pointing interaction happened for us throughout the next few songs, but then the ultimate moment happened during the first solo of GYOW: he stepped down and almost kneeled in the gap between his monitors and pointed to us to play his guitar. The two girls in front of us started playing it, then Christy and Neil started strumming it, and then I started playing it, then he pulled it away for a second to change the chord and brought it forward again, (ONE OF THE MOST UNFORGETTABLE MOMENTS OF MY LIFE WAS ABOUT TO HAPPEN) looked me straight in the eye and screamed "Go on!!! DO IT!!!!!!!"....I must have had the largest grin in the world on my face at that moment as I started strumming the guitar again; then he pulled it away, changed the chord, and then brought it forward one last time and this time I uncontrollably just looked straight back at him as I was playing it and shouted "Yeaaaa!!!!" and as he pulled the guitar away for the last time he carried on looking at me and screamed "YEAAAAAA" with this demonic psycho look on his face!!! lol!!! (I must say it is just *impossible* to put into words what I was feeling as he looked straight at me, pushed his guitar towards me and yelled "Go on....DO IT!!!". I know many Ledgies have experienced this amazing feeling and only those who have, know just how amazing a moment it is!)

- Singing "Happy Birthday" to John was awesome. Lindsey played the chords to Happy Birthday lightly on his Model One while the whole arena sang the words. John is so shy..!! He went red and put his hands across his face (Neil got an excellent pic. of this!!). A whole army of penguins was thrown up onto the stage by the Fireflies...it was such an excellent moment for Fleetwood Mac.

- At the end of the show, the walking toy dog that was put on the stage by the Fireflies was the funniest moment of the evening. The look on Stevie's face was priceless. It fell on its side at first, but then Mick or Lindsey put it on its four legs and for just a few precious moments it looked like Stevie was walking the dog....lol!!! I REALLY hope somebody got some good photos of this...a video recording of it would be even better. Then the red heart balloon became unattached and floated up to the ceiling and everyone laughed.

- One final, ridiculous moment: Lindsey signed a few autographs on Stevie's side of the stage, then looked like he wanted to walk away so he just waved at our side but I screamed "LINDSEY!! LINDSEY!!" and held out my vinyl of the Go Insane/Play In The Rain single...he looked at it and gave me this shocked look like "Damn! I wasn't expecting to see that!". He came forward, took it off me, I handed him my pen. The pen was one of these silver pens which run very easily (I thought it would be a good idea as a black pen wouldn't really show up that well on the dark blue cover of the vinyl). He took the pen, signed it, and then as he came to give it back to me he said what I heard initially as ".....ef....huhhht!!"....I looked at him and said "what??" and then he said "Be careful! It's wet, it's wet!!!", at which point I was holding the vinyl almost vertically, and saw the ink running all over the cover. Once it dried it looked like one big mess. Stupid idiot me didn't realise that 2 and a half hours of jumping up and down against body heat would of course make a silver ink pen act like a paint brush. (Anyway, it's not the end of the world because today I went to a second hand vinyl shop and bought BOTH their copies of the Go Insane album, but unfortunately they didn't have any copies of the single. Oh well.) Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, Neil told me he spotted Lindsey looking strangely at his hands as he was walking off to backstage - so not only did I ruin the cover of my single and the autograph, but I also got silver ink all over Lindsey's hands.

Wow...wrote way more than I was expecting to there! Time for bed. Bring on Saturday!!!



p.s. I was standing right next to one of the giant monitor speakers on the stage (it was on my right). After the show I had really heavy ringing in both my ears, and the ringing in my left ear eventually died down after a couple of hours, but my right ear was really bad last night. And today I can still hear that "imaginary hissing/whistling" associated with loud experiences and it's still hurting a bit. Anybody else have a similar experience.....?? How long did it take to go away.....? It's kinda freakin' me out.... (And btw...before anyone says, I KNOW I should've been wearing ear plugs but I didn't think I'd be standing that close to the stage so i didn't bring them!)

[DownOnRodeo]

It's awesome to read Pip's review from the gang in front of Stevie and then Seteca's review from the gang in front of Lindsey. It's a like review in stereo!

I must say it is just *impossible* to put into words what I was feeling as he looked straight at me, pushed his guitar towards me and yelled "Go on....DO IT!!!". I know many Ledgies have experienced this amazing feeling and only those have, know just how amazing a moment it is.

Woohoo that's one club I do intend to join!! With two front row centre/Lindsey tickets, my chances are pretty good, huh? :P

[WelshWitchPMD]

WOW Seteca what a great experience you had!! I bet Lindsey will never forget you!! You will now be "Silver Boy" LOL
That kind of sounds like a Seinfeld episode or something Lindsey getting the ink all over his hands.

[seteca]

Originally posted by DownOnRodeo
Woohoo that's one club I do intend to join!! With two front row centre/Lindsey tickets, my chances are pretty good, huh? :P

[littlelies7]

Wow, that sounded like you all had a great time!

Great reviews!

That's pretty cool that Stevie noticed you, Gypsy-Rhiannon!

[AliP]

Wow! That's a great experience for all the UK Fireflies! So glad you got to play Lindsey's guitar. He's so cool Seteca - About the ringing noise, I was right in front of the speaker for one concert and it took a couple of days for the ringing to go away. I went to a different concert a couple of years ago and it was the absolute loudest thing ever. It took a week for my ears to stop ringing! It was horrible. I know because of that I lost about 5 years of hearing in the future. Thanks for the review! Can't wait to read how the others go!

Pip ~ Do you think Stevie remembered you from Las Vegas?

[stefan]

Originally posted by seteca


Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, Neil told me he spotted Lindsey looking strangely at his hands as he was walking off to backstage - so not only did I ruin the cover of my single and the autograph, but I also got silver ink all over Lindsey's hands.

O.K. so any show cancellations due to allergic skin reactions on his hand are caused by YOU Seteca...
Great reviews by all of you. Have fun on the other shows

[Gypsy-Rhiannon]

Originally posted by AliP


Pip ~ Do you think Stevie remembered you from Las Vegas?

I doubt it... I'm 70lbs lighter and my hair is longer! She just had noticed me on the first night and there I was again... exact same spot on the second night!

Pip

[seteca]

Originally posted by AliP
Seteca - About the ringing noise, I was right in front of the speaker for one concert and it took a couple of days for the ringing to go away. I went to a different concert a couple of years ago and it was the absolute loudest thing ever. It took a week for my ears to stop ringing! It was horrible.

Hey AliP, thanks a lot for that, it made me feel a lot better when I read your post. Fortunately it did get a lot better during today, although it's still hurting a lot and when I'm in a totally quiet room I can hear something that sounds uncannily like the crickets at the beginning of The Chain in my right ear...lol....but I'm hoping that whatever it was that got damaged will continue to heal. I guess the fact that I'm gonna be in Earls Court in less than 16 hours (and then AGAIN on Sunday) won't help! I'll definitely be wearing ear plugs.

Originally posted by stefan
O.K. so any show cancellations due to allergic skin reactions on his hand are caused by YOU Seteca...

lmao! That crazy silver ink actually washed off my hands quite easily but it totally ruined the vinyl cover. I tried scraping it off with alcohol and then acetone but they just made it worse. It looks like a total mess now. Quite fitting that it's called "Go Insane"...lol!

[Tango]

You guys have totally kept us up to speed on our band. THANK YOU for sharing so many "behind the scenes" moments, for telling us the show from your eyes, and for letting out those amazing pictures! Fleetwood Mac UK fans ROCK! And you know . . . I think you are making certain they come back again! There's no way this band can ever forget the reception you guys are giving them!