You can get 3 mp3s of theirs there too. They rule. Well I had been e mailing the bass player, Jud, back and forth all summer and I told him I would give him a spice girls pez dispenser so I had that in hand during their set. I had on a bucket truck t shirt(the only one there) so after about 3 songs Matt(the singer) said that it was their first time in nb and he was really happy to see a Bucket Truck t shirt. and he pointed to me. That was cool. But not even the coolest. btw we were front row center for this band. I was taking pictures, I managed to get my camera in even through the bag searching, frisking and everything, but this security guy came up to me and my friends and said he had to take our camera batteries. After about 5 minutes I managed to sweet talk him into letting me keep them til after the show so i could get pics with the band. *score* so I sang song after song after song along with the band and during the last song Matt goes to me, "Do you know all the words?" I was like yeah, so he comes towards the front of the stage to give me the microphone. I started backing up going no no no no no, but my friend pushed me forward, and the next thing I knew I was singing the chorus of crack'n up for Matt! I was in shock pretty much. I was screaming really loud cause I couldn't hear myself so I must have been horrible.

   After the show I was yelling "JUD!!!!!! JUD!!!!!" to get him to ome over to give him his pez. Matt came over to see what I was yelling and he got Jud for me. Jud was like "Leah!!! I finally get to meet you! blah blah blah blah...." so we were talking to him and Matt there and then all these girls came and started bugging Matt, so someone told us to go over to the side of the stage to get my cd signed. I got to meet all the guys there and got pics with almost all of them. The problem was the security guys. One guy was right evil and wouldn't stop watching me. So Becky goes to Matt,"Can't you tell them to let her get pics with you guys, all she wants is ones with the band and thats all!" So Matt tells the security guy,"Look, I'll take their cameras backstage to our dressing room and give them back after the show ok?" The security guy agreed and off Matt went with 3 of our cameras. He came back and said he was gonna take pics of backstage stuff that we weren't supposed to see and then bring them back when the security guy wasn't looking. Unfortunately he didn't get any with my camera, but I still have to see my friends pics. So after all the Buket Truck stuff was over my friends started watching Joydrop. Me and Maggie stayed by the side of the stage and we saw 3 guys but we weren't sure who they were, I thought IME but I wasn't positive. So instead of handing them the wrong cd booklet and looking dumb I just took a couple pics of them. Once I got them developed the first person i notice is MIKE TURNER from OLP!!!!!!!!!!!! standing right there no more than 20 feet away from me!! I can't believe it!

   Now that I remember back I can totally picture him standing there, but I didn't even notice him during the show, and he was there for at least a half an hour. I think it was the barely there dark hair that made me not notice him. I'm so used to him being blond even though I knew he shaved his head I wasn't expecting it. So I basically missed Joydrop. After they were done we decided to walk around some more. I think it was Sloan that was next(bad memory). No wait, we went to wait for Sloan but BTK was actually next. So I missed Jeremy too! :( Never even knew he was on the b stage, and I was right beside it for sooooooooooooooooooooo long. I could have easily met him too! So I missed Mike and Jer o.

   So Sloan started. YAY YAY YIPEE!!!!!! Right? No. Sloan=scary mosh pit. Actually Sloan=Leah's first mosh pit ever. Well first real one with actual movement. So me and my friends start out way far back. But we keep getting pushed more and more forward. And I took pictures every step of the way. You can see how far to how close I got. We ended up sooooooooo close to the stage. But the mosh pit was awful and I couldn't breathe so we had to move back. We got a bit back and we had a perfect spot to see behind 3 really really short girls. I did lose 2 of my friends(never to be seen again til after olp). So although I should have had an amazing time during Sloan it was really the worst part of my day. I missed most of the set. All I remember is them playing Money City Maniacs cause thats when I was finally safe. All the rest of the songs are one big blur.

   I forgot to mention that between Joydrop/btk and Sloan it rained and rained and rained. It had rained a lot during Bucket Truck but it stopped after a few minutes. Actually Esthero was playing during the rain. I didn't really watch them at all though. We were on the other side of the racetrack.

   So after Sloan I think it was Treble Charger that played. We were searching for Jean and Becky and Maggie's sweatshirt so we weren't really paying attention to that. I could hear it but that's about it. We did get close for a minute though so I could take a pic.

   After Treble Charger was I Mother Earth. We still hadn't found Becky or Jean so we decided to look up in the stands and get some food. We waited in line for at least 20 minutes and we were right at the front when we realized we needed food tickets. ah humbug. So we are walking around soaked and completely covered in mud(Sloan mosh pit= a TON of mud everywhere). So we get the food and sit down for the end of IME. We stayed there til Moist started. Maggie LOVES Moist the way I love OLP so she was itching to get down into the pit. Lisa didn't want to move from the bleachers for the rest of the night though so she told us to go down and she'd stay there. So I finally got rid of my bag(full of 7 t shirts-3 for darcy) which was a relief after the Sloan pit. Moist was amazing. I didn't realize I knew all their songs so well but I was able to sing along to everything and the pit wasn't bad at all. It only got bad during the last song when Brian from IME came out to sing too. We had made our way fairly far up and we were in a ton of really big guys so we got kinda smushed there and went back a bit.

   After Moist some people left the pit so we made our way up a bit more and I was standing behind an incredibly hot guy. Me and Maggie were talking and somehow he started talking to us too. Apparently he lost the 8 people he was there with so he was all alone. Me and him just talked and talked and talked. We had both been at the Halifax OLP show in January and he really loved OLP too, he knew all the words to all the songs and all that shit and I could tell he realy loved them(and obviously not cause of Raine). Me and Maggie were talking and I was saying how my shoulder hurt so he started massaging my shoulder! In the mosh pit! I was like ok, I'm getting a massage in the mosh pit, this is too weird. But he rocked. A bit before OLP came out I got my camera out and he siad that if I wanted to he would put me on his shoulders so I could get some really good pics and so I could see better. I was like really? ok!!! But as it got closer and closer to OLP time the pit got more and more crowded and I somehow ended up in front of him. Once OLP did start(with their new song) I took one or 2 pis and he asked if I wanted him to pick me up. I said ok, but he couldn't get me on his shoulders cause I was in front of him then and it was really really crowded so he just picked me up and held me in front of him. And for a while too. I got a really good pic of Dunkle(who I couldn't even see from where I was-dead center but there were tall people to the side of me) And one of Mike too. So after I got the pics the pit got really bad and I could barely stay up so he held me against him and he held onto both of my arms so I wouldn't fall. Unfortunately the mosh pit collapsed where I was, now that is SCARY. He made sure I was ok though, and it happened AGAIN! But only a little bit the second time. So things were going ok, and then a crowd surfer came by. Somehow I managed to fall and some guy yelled"GET HER UP!!!" So like 5 people grabbed me and pulled me up. The pit was getting really scary, almost as bad as Sloan was. But I still stayed even though Maggie wanted to leave. I got seperated from the really nice incredibly hot guy though, well I was just to his side but he couldn't hold onto me. And then I managed to fall again. This time no one saw me though so I was screaming help!!!!! Finally after like 20 seconds, which seemed like an eternity, he saw me or heard me or something and pulled me up. Just as I got up a crowd surfer's foot went into my face so I said ok Maggie we're getting out of here. So we went back a bit to a safe place which was still pretty close. This was about 3 or 4 songs into the set. I never did see that guy again though. :( But OLP were soooooo good. They played(in no particular order that I can remember but I'll try to fit some into place):

Yourself/The Birdman/Let You Down/Carnival/Automatic Flowers/Superman's Dead
Naveed/4AM/Car Crash/Julia/Clumsy/Starseed/Eternal Life

   I can't even begin to tell you about how I felt during that set with the mosh pit problems I was just hearing the songs at first and singing along but I wasn't even realizing what I was singing, it was just automatic for me. I do remember that the second naveed began I started screaming and jumping up and down. I was soooooooo happy to hear that again live. When automatic flowers started I almost started crying, I think it was because it was finally hitting me that I was seeing OLP again and I was right here so close to all of them. When Raine talked about touring and how for as long as they continued touring they would never forget the east coast I just screamed and cheered so much. And eternal life was the most touching moment of OLP's set. Hearing Raine talk about Jeff and how great an artist he was almost had me in tears. I knew how much Jeff meant to Raine and it touched me how he talked about him. He finished talking saying Jeff.... Buckley Jeff Buckley, Jeff Buckley Jeff Buckley .... etc, over and over getting faster and quieter as he went. And then he sang Eternal Life. Now his intro to it almost had me in tears, but seeing the emotion Raine put into that song, every movement he made did have me in tears. It was incredible. I was proud to be able to say I already had Grace and Sketches before it started and when we got back in the car to go home and my friends were flipping through my cds and saw the Jeff and Buckley on the 2 Sketches cds in my cd case thing they went, hey thats who Raine was talking about, we have to listen to this later! We got to Moncton before we had the chance but they remembered and I was glad they did. Also, when Raine introduced car crash instead of saying "this is a song about a car crash, its called car crash" he said how it was about his friend who tried to commit suicide by driving into a big truck on the highway but it didn't work. I never knew that that was what the song was about until then. i had never heard of it being introduced in that way before. The emotion in 4 am when the crowd sang was so cool. It was like everyone was there for the same reason and everyone was friends with everyone. It seemed like the crowd surfing stopped and everything stopped and people just stood there and sang their very best. I know I did. That was really cool.

   I still have mud all over my jeans and shoes. Mom only let me take them in the house today(a week later). We had to leave $2 each for the cleaning lady at the hotel we left such a mess mom made us. But it was an amazing day and I would relive it all again anytime- the good AND the bad.

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