Willis rocks the house...and my neck

It is 1:20am Sunday morning, and I write concerning the Willis concert of Friday night.

For those who don't know, Willis is a band comprised of some young folks from our sister church in Indiana, PA. The band members are all very funny, oddball, and likeable guys, ergo their band bears the same characteristics. And their music does a great job of being rockin' and fun while also glorifying God in the lyrics, and the important MATCHING of lyrics with music.

We Pittsburghers had heard about the concert months ago, and Sarah in particular spearheaded the planning of our little caravan of 12 to Lord of Life Church on Wayne road on this cold Friday evening in December. We took 2 vans, and in Mike's was himself, me, Daniel, Jonathan, Heather and Anna. We all stopped for dinner on the way (sating the vociferious cries of certain female passangers...) at Dairy Queen / Subway. DQ burger was great.

We arrived a little after 7 - perfect timing. Greg King's band opened up, playing for about an hour. They did a solid job, Barry Liddel, as always, tore up the electric guitar (he's a professional guitarist), and the sound quality overall was good. The concert was in the sanctuary, with most of the chairs cleared away and the stage all cluttered with sweet gear--lights, tons and TONS of speakers and amps, and lots of guitars. Those tend to be wherever Barry is :-P Stephen and Phil tried to get the crowd into it, and we jumped around a bit, but everybody was saving their energy for Willis.

During the break between sets I got to hang around, catch up with some friends, and have some surprisingly good cookies.

Then Phil started clapping, and we all forsook our conversations and moved up front and starting clapping along...and the band came in with a crash and the show began!

It was a lot of jumping and dancing and getting very sweaty and watching the crazy costumes and antics of the band and biting my lip as pain shot through my left knee. The room was dark and the stage was bright. The sound was competent: neither bad enough to distract from the music nor good enough to make you stop and say "wow!" The musicianship was good: not mediocre, but not stunning. They knew it all very well, which left them and us free to enjoy the music and have a lot of fun with it.

After the last song ended, and we all roared for one more song, and they played one, and then really ended, we all hung around, talked to friends, bought merchandise, looked at the gear, and other stuff for an hour or so. I got to catch up with David Altrogge a bit, and we set a tentative weekend in January for me to come up and hang out. A much-belated scheduling.

Finally the vans departed and we got some food at Eat 'n' Park. Good hangin-out times. http://www.flickr.com/photos/picsomike for some pictures :-)

It was sweet when Mr. Altrogge came up on stage for a cover of "Takin' Care of Business" - the fulfulment of all his classic rocker dreams :-P

It was fun to try to come up with cool dance moves, and to watch Johnny and Stephen and people who knew what they were doing. It was NOT so cool when David called for a circle to form and had different people dance in the center of it, starting with yours truly. Ah well. It's testing my application of the "hold yourself lightly" mantra. And though I sorely felt my lack of dancing experience...what the heck. I guess this is showing an area where I do care what people think of me! Sweet. Now to crucify this fear of man! There's a pic of me on Mike's photo page that I hate, too. The first pic anybody's ever posted of me that I really would like to delete. Schedule another execution boys - this fear of man's going DOWN!

It was good to reconnect with some of the Indiana folks.

It was fun to ride in the car with Pittsburgh folks, sing our throats out, and earn "The Reproachful Look" from Anna :-D Mike did a good job of driving and staying awake. I learned a bit more about what teenage girls are like. I stayed up till 3:30am archiving all my posts from my old modblog account, which just came back online. My throat ached. My knee hurt amazingly bad. As the night grew later my ankles and calves grew sorer and achier. Now nearly every step hurts mildly, and at times my knee gets so bad I truly can't walk on it. I hope my throat holds out for the One Voice concert tomorrow!

I'm currently thinking about how to deal with alcohol in my newfound 21-ness, the need to have a time (or times) of dedicated prayer and fasting about the future, the untruthfulness of my fear of eternity, the scourge of my crappy knee and overall weak and damage-prone body, the extreme coldness of my feet, and the possible drying up of my writing streak. It is now 2:20am and I am ready to hit the sack.

In a paper I peer reviewed someone had put in "monogamous" for "monotonous." Still makes me smile, every time I think about it :-P

--Clear Ambassador