My World

My Melbourne Trip!

This is my account of my day last Sunday (03/05/06) and the night I partied with Fort Minor... You'd better believe it!!

BEFORE

First of all, myself, my Dad and Nathalie (who got all the after party passes by yelling out hey sexy to everyone.. lol) travelled the 800kms by road all the way to Melbourne from Adelaide, and we left at like 8 in the morning and got into our hotel rooms at about 5pm. Met up with some friends and had a wicked Saturday night, cheap pints of Becks.. was sweet.

Sunday was just like.. waiting for the night. I got to St. Kilda at about 12:30, wearing my KENNA shirt.. had some breakfast/lunch with Dad and walked around while Nathalie went to church (random) and walked past the Palace a couple of times by myself. Met up with Nathalie, went back to the Palace.. and by then FM number 1 fan KYM was there on the steps. So I went over and started talkin to her and gave her a sticker which Alicia gave me. This was about 2pm.

Steadily more people turned up, and we had like our group of 10 die hards or so on the steps.. and it remained that way until about 5:30. Shout outs to KYLIE and CAMERON and CAM (she's Camtastic!).. and everyone else who was there, whose names have slipped my mind. You know who I was though, with the Kenna shirt! About 6:30 or so FoxFM came and started giving out free tickets which shitted me cos I paid for mine. Grrr. A line formed, and more and more people joined the back end.. was looking much more promising than before.

Then we saw the massive FM posse head over to Maccas, Ryu, Tak, Beatdown the singers, the string ensemble... all looked so Gangsta. On the Maccas topic, I had a Maccas cup left over and stuck FM stickers on it to make an FM cup, which I thought was cool and had photos of it which I'll post up when I get em.

Then Holly came out with someone who looked familiar.. maybe Jon Ingoldsby? If he was even there! We kept giving shit to everyone who would step over the rope and professed to being someone important (like security or workers there)... something to keep us amused.

Finally we got in and I have no idea what time it was but it felt strange to actually move after being there in line for about 5 or 6 hours.

MEET AND GREET

Well before the M&G I squirmed over and bought the hoodie.. which is mad. The whole time I was waiting.. I was going Hoody.. Shirt..Hoody..Shirt..and by the time he asked me what I wanted it landed on Hoody.

The M&G was pretty tense, I recorded something on one of the M&G organisers 3 phone, for the Fort Minor Militia.. so if any of u FMM members see that, let me know! But they all came out and it was pretty silent.

AND THE BOUNCER CONFISCATED MY FORT MINOR CUP
Bouncer: Can't take that in there
Me: Oh mate, nah, it's empty, I've just whacked these stickers on there for them to sign
Bouncer: No, give it here
Me: Dude.. it is empty (opens and shows)
Bouncer: Nah man, their orders, no Maccas.
Me: There is no Maccas it's a cardboard cup!
Bouncer: (YOINK) I said no.
Me: Wanker. Seriously. Wanker.

So plan b was get my CD out of Kylie's bag (she was further up the line) and the other bouncer nearly didn't let me do that! So I did what every other kid did and got the Book signed. Thanks to Holly, who was the only one who signed the right page (next to Where'd You Go).

And I started the HAPPY BIRTHDAY chant in the M&G for Cheapshot. He loved it, and told me at the afterparty that it made his night and he could have gone home there happy. During the Happy Birthday he skulled his TED (Toohey's Extra Dry)

This is what I told them all

BEATDOWN: Hey beat. Recovery on the Leno show was awesome, but why don't carry spares? (Haha, not my style man)
HOLLY: Hey Holly (hey) Thanks for coming! Hope we see u here in solo terms soon! ...something... should have brought some sky team shirts (yeah coming soon)
TAK: (I forget, really.. no matter how hard I try.. I think Holly made me speechless haha)
MIKE: Yo mike, love your work. Lookin gangsta in Aps new video. Ha, I'm the dude you said looked like you from the FTI video on the FM boards (*blank look back*) You remember? (Oh... yeah) [he totally didnt]
RYU: (Hey where'd you see Aps video) Oh shit.. not sure man, someone posted it up (was it hiphopcrack.com) Yeah possibly, seems familiar. [Ryu seemed very committed to showing he genuinely was interested in what I had to say] Lovin the attitude through your verses man, it's tight. (Cheers mate)
CHEAPSHOT: (You made that happen!) Haha, yeah it was me, I'm the happy birthday guy. (Something something) i laughed and said something else, he said something else, and then i said have a good show. That was it!

Then I went to the bar and bought a well earned drink.

THE SHOW

The show was just full of so much energy! Absolutely amazing. I really don't know how much I can say about it. We all know how good the shows are, and it was simply fantastic. They started with Remember The Name and I was jumping round like I was on a pogo stick, and grabbed Ryu's hand when he did his reach out thing.

No idea what the playlist was, I can't remember specifically what it was after Remember the name. Enth E nd was fantastic, and Believe Me went OFF at the end. That was huge. Petrified good, but not as big. Red To Black was good... Numb/Encore was ok.. but I still wonder why they were saying "Cookin raw with the Brooklyn (Jayz) boy" and S-dot wasnt there..

Beatdown cocked up in one of the songs, snapped a stick maybe or dropped it and had to drum for about 20 seconds with one stick before someone came out with a new one.

I got a good-ish video on my phone of Where'd You Go, and the bit after where 3 balloons randomly appeared on stage. I can't upload it though!

I had consumed 3 beers (in express bar runs) would have been more if I wasnt so worried about losing my spot. Oh and I'm partially deaf in my right ear from standing next to the speaker.

P-Money rocked I thought! He really got the crowd going. Frontline was OK. Not as bad as I was thinking he might have been, and he actually had a pretty sick flow on a few songs. Very scribe like. And the Scribe song he performed, was actually his bit from that song (for the people who were askin why he was rhyming on that beat). If you see the film clip, he's the dude in there with the quick bit in the middle.

The show was just an awesome burst of energy, and seemed to be over in no time! I was then content, but I didn't want them to leave. Then they came back out and signed stuff. Cheapshot was fantastic. Poor Mike was mugged by fans everyone wanted their piece of Mike... he had to take off his watch and ring, dont blame him. Tak stayed away a bit, he didn't jump down to the floor level, but was still there signing stuff for a while. Ryu came down and hugged Bettina and stuff and it was all so surreal. The singers and string ensemble guys were giving out passes to chicks, like my friend for the afterparty.. i had no idea what was goin on until she showed me this sticker which said "Michael Coppel presents" haha.. and then it had AFTER and COMO on it. So we grabbed our stuff and by then Kym got her car and came and picked us up and we all went to the COMO hotel and afterpartied.

THE AFTERPARTY!

Got there, finally, and walked into the foyer as tour manager Jim realised he lost his bottle of Jack Daniels and accused the taxi lady of nicking it. Bad luck Jim, you still had like 3 bottles of CC. I'm sure you were set.

Then we whacked on our Michael Coppel stickers and went in, and then the crew started rocking up.

How do you describe this?

It was just totally surreal, just rubbing shoulders with Cheap Tak and Ryu.. my god!

Mike rocked up, and went off to the side in a little VIP with his wife, and was secluded from everywhere else. Mike seems very personal and withdrawn, which is obviously a personal choice of his - I hope everything was OK for him. Perhaps he's worn out and just wanted to be home. I suppose I was a bit disappointed I didn't get to talk to him properly or didn't get a pic with him, but I completely understand.

So I was in there skint on money, sippin Jacks and Coke with the celebs. And then that dude with the cowboy hat came in. I was like WTF look at him. Didn't even realise he was Tool's frontman. I chatted to a bloke in the toilets whose name I've forgotten who was 23 and an editor of some music magazine. Probably really famous.

Mike hugged Cheapshot goodbye, and said Happy Birthday. He seemed shattered. Absolutely spent. It was an honour to have mine and Cheaps pointless conversation interrupted by Mike though! I was just hoping that no-one tried to get him to sign stuff.. except Bettina's cousin.. or didnt ask the poor guy for pictures.

Found it hard to talk to Holly, cos she's just so overwhelming! So pretty of course, and soft.. I didn't wanna seem like an idiot. But I probably did anyway asking her for a photo.. *slaps forehead*. So sorry bout that Holly! Those boobs were massive..

Tak was a dude, chatted to him for ages at the bar, and taught him the game "Buffalo" a drinking game me and my mates play. He really liked it and saved it in his phone as "Aus Song". Holla back with that one Tak, I wanna know how well it goes! Memorable quote from Tak "Yo, what you sippin man?". Hah. quote of the year. I'll remember him askin that for ages.

Didn't talk to Ryu much, but we stood around and enjoyed the sounds of his iPod for ages as he bopped away to what he described as "Gangsta". Man that Machine shop bling up close looks incredible $10,000 each, 4 produced only.

I didn't really talk to the singers, but I chatted to the Celloist for ages about his career from now and stuff.

But CHEAPSHOT! Dude, what a guy, he was great fun to talk to and drink with. When i told him I wanted to have a beer with him after I meant it! Can't wait to get the pics done and to show everyone!

We left at about 4am.. with Ryu the last one left downstairs..

Oh man, what a blast. So unreal.