2001-03-17 - 16:13

Pettibon

What an amazing time last night, catching Rollins in Toronto. I'm still in a great mood. Of course, I live for this kind of thing.

As usual for one of my Toronto visits, it was hit it and quit it: drive to Toronto, eat, see the show, turn around immediately afterwards and drive home. I don't think that a lot of people would be interested in doing it that way; but the show is the mission for me.

I'm really lucky that Aaron can get into the same mindset, since he is always my ride down, as well as someone to share the fun. I was also very happy to have Jian with us this time. A little extra company never hurts. It's great to be able to have someone to share my excitement before the show and someone who walks out just as satisfied when it's all done.

For that reason, I was really happy to hook up with Richard. He, Liam, and I are the three biggest Rollins fans I know, so it's fitting that I got to catch a gig with each of them. I'm also glad that we had some time before the show to grab a bite to eat and yack it up.

We hooked up with Richard and his girlfriend and then went out for supper, which was funny, since I don't think that Richard and I gave anybody else a chance to say two sentences. It was one time that I didn't have Jian asking me why I'm so quiet. Heh. As a good warm-up comic should do, Richard had me laughing a lot before Rollins.

As for the show itself, Rollins was excellent again. In fact, I'd rank the Toronto show higher than his stop in San Diego. He ran about an hour longer (three hours and fifteen minutes, I'd say), and he also swapped many of the early stories. In all, I'd say that there was an hour and a half of new material compared to his San Diego performance.

Between that fact and the way that the core stories (the Kiss Army and his trip to India) went slightly different directions this time, I'm very glad that I decided to catch both performances. Some bits went better in San Diego, some were stronger in Toronto; but both shows were easily worth attending.

As I said, we took off immediately after Rollins finished; and I even stayed awake for the entire drive home this time. Jian managed to fall asleep; but I like to stay awake and keep Aaron company and work the CD player. I found that the entire day went really fast; and even though we weren't back until after 4:00 AM, it felt like we just left.

Everything went perfectly and I'm sure that everyone had an awesome time. Richard was long overdue for seeing Rollins, Aaron partially made up for missing the band last year with sickness, and Jian certainly had fun. (And I will see about dragging her to a mosh someday. Heheheh.)

And, of course, I had a blast seeing such an inspiring, hilarious performance with some very cool friends. Bring on Nick Cave in a week, baby!

J.