Red Road Trip to Greensboro
Greensboro, NC
October 17, 2007
By Kayt
I couldn’t get enough time off work to go to Red Elvises’ shows in the Carolinas AND in Florida this time around, so even though I would’ve loved to have been able to go to all their shows on the southern East Coast on this tour I had to make some choices. Since I’d never been to Key West I decided to do that. But I couldn’t resist running off mid-week on Oct. 17th to scoot up to Greensboro after work, which is only about an hour and a half from Charlotte. I knew as soon as the show ended I’d have to hurry home to get some sleep so I could work the next day but, of course – who could disagree that one night’s loss of sleep would be totally worth it?
I made it to Greensboro after only a little bit of rush hour traffic delay and found the club, downtown…very cool. Then I went to find a gas station and a place to change clothes, which turned out to also be the gas station. I grabbed a very light bite to eat at the Food Lion grocery store…it was either that or gas station food, I couldn’t find a restaurant anywhere in the vicinity of where I was driving around! Soon it was time to go to the club; Oleg had said they’d be there around 8:30pm. I got to Elm Street and started looking for parking, passing the club, where a big red van and trailer were parked out front being unloaded. Parking was a little bit of a challenge but I went around a few blocks and finally found a great parking space nearby on a side street.
The first band member I saw was Oleg in front of Rum Runners, who took the box of brand new Red Elvises buttons I’d brought (available online soon!) and greeted me with a hug. He took me inside the club and I saw Adam, Igor, Elena and later Roman, in that order. Igor, I noticed, was wearing his white Squirrel Nut Zippers t-shirt I’d given him during the summer and he looked good in it. They all looked very good, especially after not seeing them for almost three months. We all hugged, talked, got beer and food and sat at tall tables to watch the opening act. It wasn’t a band but a group of people who called themselves Café(?) Mystique and acted out sexy scenarios to music while, well… stripping, sort of, basically… Most of them ended up wearing very little clothing, prancing around the stage area to music, interacting with audience members and sometimes singing a little. The first girl wore a red plaid schoolgirl type skirt and I believe a white blouse. She had a paper diagram – a black outline on white paper -- of a nude, very well built female propped up across from her. She seemed to be pleading for it to come to life. Now I tell you this only because it was funny… I was sitting there at a table with Igor and Oleg watching this, with my back to them, and when suddenly a very pretty, sexy girl wearing nothing but panties and diamond-like pasties popped out through the paper diagram I heard this surprised and happy “Ohhh!” sound from both the guys behind me, echoed by just about every other male in the room and I believe some of the women there too. The girl in the red plaid skirt acted thrilled and the two of them danced around together and mildly play-acted some rather typical male fantasies that two girls might indulge in. It was all pretty funny, especially watching the guys’ reactions to it (they were smiling, naturally). The other people in the opening act’s group took on various themes of dress from Japanese to femme fatale and did some undressing worthy of a strip joint (one that wasn’t closed), although there was no pole dancing, just some very suggestive prancing and revealing, both by female and male participants. Some audience members were dressed up for what I can presume was Halloween, even though it was only the17th of October. It was quite a colorful, wild crowd. I was sort of surprised by how many scantily clad people there were in a club on a Wednesday night in Greensboro, North Carolina. I wouldn’t have been fazed at all if we’d been in Key West or New York City, or even L.A., but Greensboro? Who knew people there would be so open, creative and exhibitionistic? It was fun… and everyone seemed to enjoy it. For you guys out there, there sure were a lot of pretty women in Rum Runners that night, I have to say! So anyway…
The opening act did run rather long and then there were sound system finer points to be worked out, I think, and Our Favorite Band didn’t go onstage until around 11:20pm. They were incredible, as always, beginning with Lovepipe and playing two full sets with several encores. They sounded great and it was a tight, musically intense show. I couldn't see everything from where I was, though the crowd in front of the stage but what I did see rocked the rafters, and of course there was no problem hearing them. The crowd LOVED them mightily; from beginning to end there were lots of people dancing like maniacs in front of them… no need to ask the audience to come closer, they were right on it! It was really cool to see people in North Carolina enjoying themselves so much, especially on a weeknight!
The songs they played, in order:
Set 1:
Lovepipe
Telephone Call From Istanbul
Gypsy Heart
Love Rocket
Ticket to Japan
Ukrainian Dance #13
Sad Cowboy Song
I Wanna See You Belly Dance
This was followed by a short (15 minutes or so) break and then they took the stage again.
Set 2:
200 Flying Girls
Better Than Cocaine (or Sweeter Than Champagne or whatever the title is these days!)
Twist Like Uma Thurman
Hawaii
Winter Reggae
Memoirs of a Phuket Geisha
My Darling Lorraine
Burning For You
Rock Me Sally
And then the encores, almost a mini concert in themselves:
Closet Disco Dancer
Juliet
Kegga Beer and Potato Chips
Rocketman
I had such a fun time dancing at the merch table and also, while keeping an eye on the table, closer to the stage at times. I even met a guy there, Paul Smith, who won Igor's polka dot jacket in an eBay auction! It looked good on him. He told me Oleg was joking with him about it, saying "You have Igor's jacket, how did you get this jacket?!!" The Greensboro show was the only NC/SC show I was able to make this time but it sure was a good one and well worth the hour-and-a-half drive and loss of sleep. I even made it to work the next morning on time!
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