The Mini-Vacation: The Erasure Show

I got things off to a good start with my new favorite breakfast combination, a corned beef hash omelet at the duchess. I arrived in Boston around 4:30 pm. Plenty of time for to be at the Avalon when doors opened at 6 pm, you say. Heck no! Not when there's a home game at Fenway Park which turns out to be right across the (very little) street from the venue! I knew parking was going to ridiculous and or expensive but man! An hour later I was in line waiting for the doors to open and entertained myself with some people watching. The people waiting in the line with me ran the gamut from mostly aging fags to the barely of-age fem-boys. The rest of the straight people came much later. I guess they weren't that obsessive about their Erasure fix. The club adjacent to the Avalon must have been having an all-age punk show, judging from the kids starting their own line in front of it. I watched a couple of Red Sox fan unknowingly wander to "our side" of the street and when they looked up they seemed startled, looking back and forth from the punked out kids behind us and the obviously beautiful gay men on our line. They immediately crossed the street.

Elkland opened with a few songs. They had catchy and fun songs. They had a very classic synthpop sound to them. The lead, Jon Pierce, sounds remarkably like a happy Morrissey.

Erasure was fantastic. Andy Bell was delightful as always. His hippity-hoppity dance sent the crowd (myself included) into a frenzy. It was a small stage but they made the most of it. Vince Clarke is adorable. He played all the fave classics and some stuff from the new album which sounded great live but sound awful in the samples provided by amazon.com. This was the closest I'd ever been to a group during a show. I was 5 people away from touching the stage. I'm really glad now that I didn't go to the New York show. I know I would never have been able to get that close to them otherwise. Surprisingly, the club and or Erasure, were really cool about pictures. The bouncers who were right in front of us didn't even look at us when we blatantly took out our cameras and there were no threatening signs prohibiting flash photography and the lot. Here are my 3 favorite pictures.


I left the show spent, sweaty, and exhilarated with a little bit of my voice.