A Virtual David Byrne Experience - by CyberYukon

Look Through This Eyeball

The place: downtown Minneapolis;
The Reason: to check out David Byrne on his "Look Into the Eyeball" tour...

Hi--I'm CYBERYUKON. Real name's Eric. That's my bro' Mike in the picture below. This is where we start--here in a parking ramp in downtown Minneapolis. We drove 5 hours from Upper Michigan through Wisconsin to get here. It's Tuesday afternoon, May 22...2001. Check it out.

E-mail me at cyberyukon@yahoo.com

It was a brisk, pissy day. A cold front had squatted itself just south of the twin cities plunging the temperature into the unseasonable 40s and battering us with wave after wave of cold spray rain. And then there was the wind...

The concert was scheduled for 7:00 PM at "First Avenue", the club made famous in Prince's film "Purple Rain". It lies just a few blocks west of the immediate downtown area.

Getting to First Avenue was a real bitch. Downtown Minneapolis has become an insane labyrinth of one-way streets, spaghetti off-ramps, tunnels and circling jam-packed overpasses. A real thrill at 65 MPH in the rain. Once we penetrated the sanctuary of the downtown area we parked the car, locked her up and vowed not to leave and take any more chances on the freeways until the concert was over.
Hear me on this: I've driven in rush-hour traffic in L.A.--and that's a cakewalk compared to this!

Ahhh...the tour buses must have arrived around the same time we did. The green bus on the left is the band's bus, the silver bus on the right is the roadie's bus. Later on, while waiting in the VIP lounge, I saw David, after the sound check, hoppin' around out here. He and some others jumped into a white Monte Carlo and sped off into the 'burbs...

Mike and I had roughly four hours to kill. We wandered into the downtown area--a pretty combination of glass, skyways, gang-bangers and business people. We walked around...and walked some more...and then some more...and then some more. Whew! We were getting tired...and bored. Despite all of the buildings there was very little that grabbed our interest.

After more aimless roaming Mike and I, around 4:30, drifted back to First Avenue just because we had nowhere else to go. Behold--to our shock the following sign had been posted on the doors outside!!"Hi, friends..unfortunately the doors to tonight's...show have been pushed back to 8:30". Look at the picture of David to the right-- he must have just read the sign, too.

Around 6:30 the folks at First Avenue opened up their V.I.P. lounge to give people a place to hang out until the show began. Mike and I were among the first few. From where we were sitting as shown in this picture we could look out the window down onto the tour busses below. The silver bus has exactly thirteen panels on its roof and ten lug nuts on the hub caps. There--how's that for obscure trivia?

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