POE’S FAVORITE “RAVE MOMENTS” OF THE TOUR

The Atlanta “rave moment” was equally brilliant.  That show was over the top to begin with.  The band was on fire; the audience was insane; and I felt totally inspired…which kind of blew my mind because I had woken up that morning feeling so exhausted.  It’s weird, but sometimes the best shows come together for me when I’m at my most run down.  Right up until the moment that Titus threw the Star Wars theme onto his turntable to introduce our show, I was wondering how I would ever summon the energy to deliver a half-way decent performance.  Then the lights went down, the Jedi’s started screaming, and all of a sudden I knew it was going to be one of our best nights…go figure?!

Anyway, by the time we arrived in Atlanta we had moved our “rave moment” to the tag of the song “Wild” which was really where it belonged in the first place. This time I had spotted my rave prey early in the show.  Toward the very back of the room I could see this guy in a big white fur coat dancing around like crazy and I knew I had to get him up on stage with me.   It took no prodding to get him up there.  He hopped on stage effortlessly, handed me his big white fur coat (yummmmm)  and erupted into the strangest, coolest, dance imaginable.  What made his moves so brilliant had a lot to do with what he was wearing.  He was dressed head to toe in black, covered in belts and zippers that went every direction, and best of all, the sleeves of his shirt were about two feet longer than his arms and they were attached.  He was basically in a straight jacket (any self-respecting psycho should own one don’t you think?)!  Anyway, luckily this straight jacket was not all that confining and, as he moved, he kept his arms (and those long sleeves) going wildly over his head in circles. Suddenly he looked like he was made of rubber…a beautifully disturbing rubber cartoon…Aeon Flux meets RanXerox. 

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that the best part of all of this is that he let me keep his incredible white fur coat, (which you can see on many of the contest winners because I got a lot of them to pose for pictures in it!)  Turns out that the jacket was actually made by our magnificent rubber cartoon man, whose name, I found out after the show was Willy.  Willy also designed and made the straight jacket suit that he had on and that blows my mind. 

The only down side to all of this was that for the remainder of the tour, band members and crew members alike fought shamelessly over the coat.  It made me wish that Willy had also given me a few of his straight jackets (well, at least one that I could use to restrain Siggy with). But hey conflict can be fun and in the end the coat survived many interesting skirmishes without a blemish and it is now safely hanging in my closet waiting for our next “rave moment”. Be afraid….be very afraid….