Saturday night my buddy and I took the train from our little town (about an hour from Boston) to go see Bumblefoot play at Bill's Bar. We got there around 5:00 and just kind of hung out outside the bar and mingled for a couple hours. Since there is only one entrance to the club we knew he'd have to walk through the front door at some point in the night, so we just kind of kept a look out. We watched a couple of the first local bands?
they were just about as bad as I expected since 99% of the bands in today's scene blow. Around 9:40 my friend spotted him walking down the sidewalk talking to a few people so we figured we'd just go right over and introduce ourselves. We walked towards him and I told we came in to see him and I was a big GNR fan yadda yadda etc etc... pulled the cheese move and showed him the tattoo etc.. etc... and he gave off real good vibes right from the start. It was evident that he was being yanked in every single direction possible and he had to go meet with a couple people, so he said he'd see us around. So we continued to hang out outside and it was evident that there wasn't a single real new GNR fan outside, but Bumble continued to talk with strangers and probably, answer the same annoying questions over and over. It was amazing to see how good he actually was with just talking to people (even on an everyday joe basis). Since there was some more bad bands on stage we stayed outside and Bumble was having some bowel issues due to "eating a way too healthy veagan restuarant" I believe.? He walked by a couple times and mentioned to me that he had to relieve himself pretty badly?
he was very funny. Eventually the band Bumblefoot was playing with (Crash Midnight) took the stage at 10:30. The place was pretty full but it was also pretty small. They ran through a 20 minute set of "originals"?
if you could call them that: they were obviouslly very influenced. After that 20 minutes, the singer announced they had a special guest yadda yadda and they invited him up onstage and broke into "Nice Boys". It was great to watch Bumblefoot up close but the band was pretty amateur and weak. After "Nice Boys" they played "Jungle" and "Paradise City". Again, it was great to watch Bumble up close playing these songs even though the band was butchering them pretty bad. He looked like he was having a fun time nonetheless. They finished their set around 11:00 and Bumblefoot announced he had tickets to give away for tomorrow. We met him as soon as he got off stage and told him nice job etc.. etc.. and my buddy told him he should play songs from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and he got a real kick out of that I told him he was just bustin' his balls and he was laughing. We grabbed free ($60.00) tickets from him for the next day: we thought that was really cool. We hung out for awhile after and decided to miss the last train home at 11:20, since we were on a Canadian band's tour bus hanging out. Afterwards when were standing outside, Bumble's wife came over and said "Bumble wanted to make sure that you guys got these" and handed us a couple more tickets: she was extremely nice.? We hung out for a little while more and then Bumble and his wife walked over to us and I told him "You don't think they were influenced by Guns do ya?" he started laughing. We continued to talk with them for around 20 minutes about several different random
topics. I didn't even bother bringing up the big subject, other than saying it gets pretty frustrating sometimes, he could see it in my eyes and just told me to "Enjoy the shows and the music we got while we're waiting". One of the topics we discussed was the Download fiasco. It was extremely interesting hearing it coming from him. He said the people working the show were asked a couple times to fix the slippery parts of the stage and it was very dangerous considering someone could slip and fall and break their neck. Him and his wife were extremely nice throughout the entire night to everyone. Later on we ended up catching a cab home for around $100.00?
The next day we got up and went to the actual Locofest and watched all sorts of bands, most of them being pretty bad. Bumble played a solo set at 3:00 and it was great. He played some of his solo songs like "raygun" "guitar's suck": him and his band were great. He was very funny during the entire set saying things like "this song really sucks and so does the album". At one point, he played a really chopped up version of the intro riff to "Sweet Child" on purpose and kept a straight face, it was very funny. He stated into the mic "And, no I don't when the album is coming out"?
Afterwards, we went over and talked to him for awhile, he commented on my GG Allin shirt since we were talking about him the night before. He was unbelievably social again talking to any stranger that came his way. Some of the bands had little merch tents set up. Bumble, his wife and some others were sitting at the Bald Freak tent with the pirate band Swashbuckle from his record label. I was talking mrs. foot for a little while about the first Hammerstein shows and she was telling me about his first show with Guns, it was great to hear. Then we got on to talking about Bumble's albums and I was about to buy one until Bumble came over and said just take it and handed me his album "Hands" I couldn't believe how nice he actually was. We took some photos with him on the first night that I'll post as soon as possible. At times, I felt bad just kind of hanging around cause I thought maybe we were bugging him but he didn't give off any vibe like that at all.? All in all it was a great experience meeting Mr. and Mrs. Foot and he was great to see live if you ever get a chance to see him. Pictures will be up soon.
Bumblefoot with Crash Midnight 9/8/2007
Bumblefoot at Locobazooka 9/9/07
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