The opener for this show was Kurt Easley (of the Lilies). He's good, but not what I want to hear before My Bloody Valentine.
Anyway
Here is how it happened:
After the show, me and a few friends were determined to meet them and thank them for coming to Richmond. We started at 11:15, but by midnight nothing was happening. My friends were tired, so they left and went home (poo on them!), but I didn't have anything else to do so I decided to stay. There were a few other people staying back too, so I wasn't alone.
1 AM rolls around. The band lounge is located on the 2nd floor of the venue, and we can see open windows there. Well all of a sudden, the opener, Kurt, sticks his head out of the window and see's us. He is drunk as hell and asks "heyyyyyy what's going on out here?" and we just tell him we're waiting for Kevin and everyone to come downstairs. I don't even remember what he says, but he walks away a few seconds later. Then a security guard comes over and looks out the window and see's us. I jokingly say "man tell them to hurry up!" and to my surprise, the guard says "ok i'll let them know". A few seconds later, he returns to the window, and Debbie is with him. We wave at Debbie and say hi, and she waves back.
She then looks around and says to us "alright come on up.". We were a bit stunned at what we just heard. We say "seriously?!?!" and she says "yeah come on up the stairs are right there". Everyone else is ahead of me. We go up the stairs inside and Debbie is there to meet us. She says "yeahh make yourself at home, have whatever you want, food, drinks, feel free to have some". We get into the main room that is filled with leather couches - the room to the left has a jacuzzi in it, the room the right has a pool table in it. Bilinda is in the main room sitting by herself with a huge smile on her face (as always). The opener, Kurt, is also around. He see's me, introduces himself to me, and says "heyy man you made it up here! let me go introduce you to Kevin!" He takes me into another room where Kevin is there talking to someone. He introduces me to Kevin (i'm trying to faint by this point in time) I thank Kevin for the show and everything. Read my post prior to this to see what we talked about. While I was talking to him, all of a sudden Colm walks into the room, only in his boxers, soaked and wet from the jacuzzi and introduces himself to me and everything. At one point, I was standing next to Kevin, and he offered me a hit on a blunt he was smoking!! I also talked to the new sound engineer for the gang, he said they reached 130 dbs on YMMR. Really nice guy.
We hung out upstairs with them for about an hour, and then they went back to the hotel. I went back to my apartment with the biggest smile on my face. What a night.
Here are some pictures:
The National, as soon as we got in:
Kurt Easley
The sonic force that is MBV:
upstairs with the band:
from left to right: Kurt Easley, Colm, me, Kevin Shields
me with Bilinda
