9/26/2003 (Friday)

Deaner's Tour Diary

first we got to enjoy a rare night off, which i spent (on my birthday) eating filet mignon and penne bolognese at original joe's down in the tenderloin. is san francisco truly the last city this filthy and crime laden or is it just the tenderloin? one way or another, that's where i eat everytime we're in the bay area. the next day we played the greek theater in berkeley and it was everything i was ever told that it would be. the only drag about the whole thing was the attendance which still has me sort of baffled. we had pretty much all sellout shows until we hit the greek, which holds something like 8,500 people. less than 2,300 people showed up in what's usually one of our biggest tour stops. how the hell we did twice as many people in portland, vancouver, and denver i'll never understand. there's no way we can draw 8,500 people in any city, but seeing as how the bay area has always been such a great place for ween coupled with the fact that we were at the nicest venue for a concert, no one showed up and it looked really empty from the stage. this probably means that next time we come back we'll be at the same places we been playing for the last 10 years, but truthfully, i don't care all that much when it comes time to start playing. the most memorable part of the whole set was late in the show when we were doing pandy fackler and i look over and there's this black dude sitting down at glenn's keyboard rig----i suddenly realize, "holy shit, that's bernie worrell" and i just about crapped my pants. i mean, if you knew how many times i've seen p-funk and every splinter group that has been spawned from funkadelic you'd be amazed. i mean, here is one of my heroes sitting in with ween at the berkeley greek. after he walked off stage i couldn't play a damn note, i was so nervous about him standing there. what's even cooler is that for like 5 minutes Ween had 2 black guys in the band, that's some pretty good stuff! overall this was a wicked good show in arguably the greatest venue in the world. the sound onstage is just incredible and the staff were extremely nice and courteous to us. we watched "bullit" on the bus after the gig, the definitive san francisco movie and i ate 3 gyros and 3 pieces of baklava and then i puked again and passed out.