Worm-Follower

(I do realize that concerts 1 through 6 have not been posted. Bear with me, I'm working on it. Slowly.)

My seventh concert took place in Brantford, Ontario, and was interesting for two reasons: 1) the tickets were a Christmas present, meaning we had awesome seats. Not quite as good as Newmarket, but very close. And 2) Part of the present was that my mom would go with me. Now, my mom loathes the Worms. I don't know why! So this concert was going to be my one chance to convince her that she was wrong. More on this later.

This was also my first concert in which there was a replacement. Chris' wife had twins last week, so therefore Chris is, according to Mike and Trevor, either dead, or a zombie. So they brought in Mike Ford as a "swing member" on bass. I'd seen Mike Ford once before, at my first concert, and I only knew him as "guy who was on before the Worms, I want Worms, dammit. >:(" So maybe I was a little biased.

The show went on, and there were impressively few mistakes. A few missed lines here and there, Mike messed up the second verse of I Am Cow (but quickly recovered), Mike Ford playing fast and loose with the melody for Celine Dion, messing up the order of the songs in the second set, and something interesting happening during the bridge of Pirate:
"Arrr you salty...pirate!"
"Arrrr you salty cat!"
"Arrr you salty...samovar!"
"..."
"..."

Also of note was Mike Ford jumping off stage and running into the audience during Mounted Animal Nature Trail, after a young man who made just one too many animal noises (they're dead! It's a funny, funny joke!)

Regardless of any (very minor!) mistakes, it was a great show. The funniest line of the night was Trevor deciding that Brantford-people have no internal monologue and must narrate everything they do out loud. It would just be really lame if I tried to recount it here, but it was funny. Another intereting thing was that Mike mentioned that his parents were from Brantford, and met while working at Cockshutt's Farm Equipment, which is where my grandpa worked for most of his life (and when I queried him later, he did think that he recognized the name McCormick.) This also led to a great moment in Mounted Animal Nature Trail (after the audience-jumping, btw):
"And the crow goes..."
"...Shutt!...cocks?"
"...WHUT?"

I had to laugh shortly after Canada's Really Big. See, they'd explained how it had been voted onto Obama's iPod playlist (although I thought Obama used a Zune. Oh well. /shrug). So they did the song, and when it was over, the guy in the seat behind me muttered "They shoulda put the War of 1812 on there instead." So both me and the girl beside me turned around and whispered "It's not their song!" Fellow Wormfan, I salute you. I also noticed you looking at my set list during the show. Why didn't you just say hi? :(

So the set list was as follows:

Act 1

1. We are the Beaver
2. New Car Smell
3. Rocks and Trees
4. Big Box Store
5. Pressure Washer
6. Cellphone Vigilante
7. The Hot Dog Song
8. Mounted Animal Nature Trail
9. Go To Sleep, Little Leech

Act 2

1. Carrot Juice is Murder
2. My Boy
3. Canada's Really Big
4. Hollywood Girl
5. I Am Cow
6. If I Were Prime Minister
7. Celine Dion
8. I Ran Away
9. Last Saskatchewan Pirate

Encore

1. Jesus' Brother Bob
2. I Am Not American

The house lights came up, and we stood up to leave. I noticed the guy in front of me, in the front row, reaching up and taking the set lists from the stage. He noticed me trying to see if there were any left, and graciously got one for me. I thanked him. I never found out who he was. Maybe he was the mayor. Eh, I doubt it.

After the show, I waited around as always to get an autograph. I bought Beige, which came with a free Moxy Fruvous CD. Value added, indeed. Trevor came out first, so I wandered over and gave him my CD, and asked for a picture, for the blog (this blog.) Picture was taken, but unfortunately I look like a man in it. Oh well. You can't really top the picture from the Christmas show.

We saw Mike Ford next, so we went over to talk to him, and he signed the back of my program. He actually is quite nice.

Mike was out last, and I almost didn't see him because he had a grey sweater on over his green performance shirt. Maybe that was plan. Luckily, Mike is very tall, so I did spot him. So we went over, and here's where I think I made my mistake. I mentioned the blog (this blog.) and asked him why they didn't update their blog anymore, and kind of without thinking asked if it was due to laziness. He kind of paused, and said yeah, it was partly laziness, and also due to some other issues (not sure how much of this is common knowledge, so I'll leave it at that.) So then I felt bad. So Mike, if you're reading this (and I know you're not,) I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply you're lazy. I just meant that I could relate, because I have also abandoned many things out of sheer apathy. Don't hate me. :(

Conclusion: there's no replacement for Chris. But if there *has* to be, then Mike Ford gets the job done. Also I'm sorry Mike.
Any my mother no longer loathes the Worms. Unfortunately, I think she was more impressed with Mike Ford than with Trevor or Mike. But the lines of communication are open now, so there's still hope. We shall have to see where this goes. (Nowhere.)