Wednesday, November 21, 2001 - Thanksgiving Eve - John Wychek, The Badlees - Gullifty’s Underground - BADLEES ANNOUNCEMENT! READ ON!

Wednesday, November 21, 2001
Thanksgiving Eve
John Wychek, The Badlees - Gullifty’s Underground
BADLEES ANNOUNCEMENT! READ ON!

The line waiting to enter the Underground was out the door, no thanks to the fire rule of no one being allowed to stand in front of the door. It was squish in or stand outside to wait. Shannon’s father managed to get downstairs and have Pete Palladino’s wife, Paty, reserve us a table! Unaware of this fact, Kathy, the Underground waitress, made her way up through the crowd to give us menus before the kitchen close up, leaving only a fryer and pizza oven on. Kathy let us know Shannon’s dad was down there with a table waiting for the crowd to enter.

When the crowd moved, we made our way down the stairs to find Joy, the usual door gal not there. It was the Rick Morannis (look-alike, and he could not find us any pink wristbands. Instead, we received big black Xs with permanent marker on our right hands. (Four days later, there are barely noticeable Xs still visible on our hands.) Paty asked us if we could loan our jackets to help reserve the nine chairs from being taken while her and Pete went out to eat with some friends. We obligingly tossed our jackets over the chair backs and then headed off for our first bathroom break of the night.

There were posters for Pete’s performance with the Jellybricks and the No Show Ponies coming up on Friday, December 7th at Gullifty’s all over. Posters were even on the inside of the stall doors in the ladies room! However, during the opening performance, we stopped in the ladies room again to discover one of the posters from inside the stall doors missing already. Shannon commented that the posters had pee-mist on them and she wouldn’t want one from that location. It was during out second visit that we also ran into Joy. She had accidentally over-slept...oops!

The Darcie Miner Band was scheduled to perform as openers but cancelled last minute. Luckily for the Badlees, they found a friend who had just released his own CD recently in the crowd. It was John Wychek. He expressed that he was disappointed that he did not have any CDs to sell to the crowd, but played on.

The Palladino table, including Badlees friend Janice Radocha (check out some of their album art by her) and X program director Claudine, arrived back safely. By then we had chatted with Kyle and Scott from Julian Fist and passed along ETB merchandise girl extrordinaire Evelyn’s hellos to them. Kyle, noticing our reserved sign, pouted that we didn’t save them a table.

The big Badlees announcement of the evening dispelled all rumors of the group breaking up. Pete, Bret, Jeff, Paul, and Ron will be recording another CD! With that said, let’s continue on with their performance.

Since our table was not by the stage, but behind the dance floor and the railing and level with the stage, we could see relatively better than those toward the back of the dance floor (like Scott and Kyle). We stood along the railing and bopped around to two sets of songs including “Don't Let Me Hide,” “Angeline is Coming Home,” “The Weight,” “Fear of Falling,” “Thinking in Ways,” and “Queen of Perfection.”

Between the sets, exhaustion set in and we leaned on the table, leaned on our hands, leaned back in our chairs, and even rested our eyes (aka closed our eyes, taking a mini power nap). One of Shannon’s parents friends noticed our sleepy looks while chatting with her parents and moved around the table by us. She told us to wake up and that it is sad when we’re the young ones and that we should be able to outlast all the old people there. Our moods changed when the guys once again took over the stage. We were up again and Shannon pointed out Bryce of the Jellybricks was enjoying the show as well from his own little corner.

Calling it a night we headed out the door, but not before saying good-night to Paty, Kathy, and Joy.