Our First Show, May 26, 1999, Phantasmagoria, Wheaton, MD

The date was March 8, 1999. It was my Birthday. I was 32. We took the day off to celebrate and relax. We went out shopping, and when we got back, there was a call from one of our coworkers at the record store saying, "Happy Birthday Steve. Listen, I just got a package in the mail addressed to me, but it's really for you. It's an advance copy of the new Porcupine Tree CD, Stupid Dream." So, we raced off to work on our day off to pick it up. That night, with the lights out, I got to listen to it for the first time. It seemed a little more accessible than Signify, but I really liked the harder edge. It only took a few listens before it all congealed and I realized what a masterpiece it was and that it was just the next chapter to this incredible band.

We were still in contact with our friend Phil at this time, and he had heard word that Porcupine Tree was finally going to return to the U.S. for a handful of live dates. They were going to play close by at a local record store turned concert venue just outside of Washington, D.C. It was going to be a double bill with another band that Phil was a huge fan of called Gong. I'd heard of Gong and I had a compilation CD of theirs. Sure enough, we watched the venue's Website and a show was announced and calls were made to see about tickets. There would be no advance ticket sales. You just had to pay at the door that night. I thought, "Aw man. I finally get to see Porcupine Tree and there is no insurance that I'll even get in. What if 2,000 people show up for this show in that tiny place?" Jason was like, "Yeah, they wish!"

The day of the show though, I still made sure that we got there early. Like around 2 o'clock for a show that didn't even start until 8pm. So, we looked around the record store which didn't have any PT or Gong CDs, albums or anything related except for a few flyers for that night's show. The bands' equipment was all over the place in the process of being set up. I think Jason found a record and bought it. We realized pretty quickly that 2,000 people weren't going to show up, so Jason and I and our friend Christopher (who came along with us straying from his Grateful Dead fan base to check out some psychedelic music from overseas) went and got a bite to eat at some place nearby while the bands set up. When we got back, we saw Phil who was letting some of the Gong entourage crash at his place a few miles away. We talked for a while until they kicked us outside for the long wait. Since Phil was helping out, he somehow got to stay inside for the sound check.

So, by this time, it was about 4:30pm and there we were. Outside. "Waiting." This was a situation that we would later find ourselves in a whole lot. Waiting outside for hours for the doors to open for a PT show so that we/I could get a spot up close. This was a long wait though as they had some problems with setting things up. The line behind us grew longer, trailing down the sidewalk. We heard a Gong sound check and at one point, Steven Wilson came outside to do an interview with someone. At this time in PT history, there were only a few photos of SW on the Internet. most of them were from the Coma Divine period and before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. There was even chatter on the newsgroup about what SW had done with his hair recently. There was talk of a wild crazy perm. It was only cut a bit shorter though, much to my relief. SW went back into the building. Gong came out the door and went off for dinner. Then, we heard a PT sound check of Even Less. PT's road manger came out and chatted with us awhile knowing that it was taking longer than expected. He told us that they had a nice turnout at the Quebec show a few nights earlier and that the crowd looked good tonight as well.

Finally, at around 8pm, they let us in and it was pay your $18 and rush to the front of the stage time. We got a place to stand just a few feet away from Steven's microphone stand. I was a little to the right of it toward Colin. The stage was very tiny. Just risers only about a foot or so off the ground. After a few minutes of getting everyone inside, the lights dimmed a little and the intro to Even Less started playing and the Porcupine Tree came out and up on stage. Steven started in with his slide playing technique using what looked like a copper bracelet and whoosh! I can still feel the air on my legs coming from under the stage as the band crashed in all together.
The set list was incredible even though they only played for a little more then an hour. They touched on all the major releases and featured the new Stupid Dream material as well. Right before they played "Waiting," SW apologized for making us wait so long outside. He explained that it was out of his control . The light show was minimal to say the least. No fruit salad light show in the U.S. This time, and this was long before Lasse's visuals. There was this cool mushroom light pattern during Voyage 34 though. My eyes were focused more on the band playing than the lights anyway.

I found that I was actually eye level with Chris, and he seemed to enjoy the fact that I was really rocking out and knew the material very well. Colin played with his eyes closed a lot. (Later on, he would tell me that at this show, he was nervous about playing "Don't Hate Me" in front of Gong bassist, Mike Howlett, because of Mike's influence on Colin's bass playing on that song.) Now, somewhere between "Tinto Brass" and "The Sky Moves Sideways," I felt this feeling of sheer elation. This band that I had been listening to and dreaming that one day I would see play in the US was right in front of me. SW was ripping chords just inches from my face, and I was choking back the emotions that I was feeling. The band ended their set and then returned to the stage and encored with "Radioactive Toy" and dropped "Dislocated Day" from the encore that was on the intended stage set list because of time restraints. There are some concerts you go to and fall asleep. There are others that you say, "Man, what a great show!" There are usually just a few that you go to in a lifetime and leave feeling like it changed your life in a spiritual way. This was definitely one of the latter kind of shows.

As the band was leaving the stage, Chris was gathering his things and he handed me one of his drumsticks that he had broken the tip off of during the show. The crowd dispersed a bit after PT left the stage. As I was trying to recover, clutching onto Chris's drumstick, we noticed after a short while that Steven Wilson was in the crowd. He was just hanging out. So, I approached him timidly, being the really shy guy that I am, and asked him to sign one of the two flyers that I had picked up. To my surprise, he signed both of them. I thanked him and told him how much them coming here and playing this concert had meant to me. I don't know if he realized just how happy he had made me.

After a short while, the rest of the band came out and I collected the other's autographs on my flyers. I Thanked Chris once again for the drumstick and wished Richard a safe and healthy journey as PT continued on their first real U.S. Tour. I also got into a long conversation with Colin about Salvador Dali telling him if he ever got the chance, that he should go down St. Petersburg, Florida to the Dali Museum. It wasn't on the stupid Dream U.S. tour schedule, but maybe he made it there on another PT tour.

We didn't take any pictures. They had said no cameras and I was too afraid of not being let to risk bringing one with me. As a result, the only photo I got was of the PT tour bus in front of Phantasmagoria. Some folks did take photos though. Here's one I found on the Internet where you can see the top of my bald head poking out from underneath the Porcupine Tree. I bought a few Stupid Dream t-shirts, and we watched the crowd of about 150 or more people dwindle down to about half that size just as Gong came on stage and the PT tour bus headed off for their next tour stop. We stayed for the Gong show. I had gotten a couple more of their CD's a few weeks before the show and brushed up on this wacky band. The Gilli Smyth "I am Your Pussy" song was a little disturbing seeing how she is like my mother's age, but I found them to be a lot of fun and I even caught them live again the following year in Philadelphia.

I would have to wait two whole years before I would see Porcupine Tree again though.

Setlist :

Even Less
Piano Lessons
Waiting
Up The Downstair
Don't Hate Me
Signify
Voyage 34
Tinto Brass
The Sky Moves Sideways

Radioactive Toy (encore)

How We Found The Tree

In September of 1995, I started working for Tower Records in Annapolis Maryland. One of the perks of the job was that we were allowed to pick free promo CD's from several boxes CD's that the sales reps gave to the store to promote their product. The guy in charge of letting us look through the boxes was my manager/soon to be PT traveling companion, Jason. When it was finally my turn go through the boxes, being the new guy at the store, most of the familiar CD's were taken by the long timers and I was left to blindly choose things from the leftovers that I thought I might like. Most of what was usually there was a lot of crap the stuff no one else wanted. Unknown rap and rock and country artists, some Latin and easy listening titles and a couple of handfuls of world music CD's. This one time, however, I saw the name PORCUPINE TREE amongst all the other CD's. I picked up the CD. It was called "The Sky Moves Sideways" on C&S Records. I looked on the back of the CD at the song titles. I liked how it looked like there was a theme running through the songs kind of in the Prog-rock tradition. Being a fan of bands like Rush, Marillion, King Crimson, and Yes, I thought I might like it. My manager, Jason, said that I might like it, but it wasn't really his thing. Something he would live to regret. (Kind of.)

So, I took the CD home along with a few others and I put it on and I thought to myself, "Cool. It kind of sounds like Pink Floyd, but maybe a more techno-sounding Pink Floyd." As it went into the "Wire The Drum" section of "TSMS", I noticed that the CD didn't have a lot of vocals which wasn't a problem. I did really like that "Stars Die" song though. Over the next few months, I was able to find a CD single in another box of promos at the record store. Other than that, there was nothing else available in the store's database. So, I just kind of shelved the two CD's with all of my other CD's which is more then I can say for a lot of the free promos that I got from that job. Very often, those free CD's sucked and disappeared over the years.


This all happened before every home in America got wired to the Internet. We were not online at the time. If we had been we probably would have realized that Porcupine Tree was playing a concert nearby in Baltimore on June 29 of 1996. We did not know though, and I'm still lashing my backside with a barbed-wire tree branch because of that. I guess I'm still trying to make up for missing that show. It wasn't until the next summer in 1997 that anything PT related came to my attention. This time, it was in the form of the new Fish album "Sunsets On Empire." Now, being a big Marillion fan from the Fish days, I was on top of it as soon as soon as it came out. I must say that I was more into what Marillion were doing than what Fish was doing at the time In fact, I really didn't like his previous CD "Suits", but "Sunsets" was very different, and I found the Mark Wilkinson cover with the pot leaves irresistible. So, I listened to it and found the album delightful from a musical and production point of view. Then, I noticed the producer of the album was named Steven Wilson. I wondered if that was the same guy that was in that band Porcupine Tree? It had to be. There can't be two guys named Steven Wilson making this kind of music.

Some more time passed up to January, 1998. While scanning through some printed data during a record store inventory, I noticed this title, Porcupine Tree - "Signify." So, I went and found the CD on the sales floor. It had just come out in the U.S. that week Ark 21 Records I believe. So, I bought it right away and took it home and listened to it that night. I had a little herbal enhancement and turned the lights off and turned the music up. After it was over, I thought, "Wow!" I have been incurably hooked on P-Tree ever since. Right away I started doing more research on the band. As I scanned the ads of Goldmine Magazine, I noticed more releases by the band. "On The Sunday Of Life", "Up The Downstair", "Staircase Infinites", "Coma Divine." I quickly ordered them at their rather pricey import prices.


At about this time, every home was getting wired to the Internet. Except ours. Jason would do research at the library for me and he'd bring home these stacks of printouts from some of the PT websites. (This computer stuff was all new to me.) Interviews, pictures, show lists, set lists, lyrics, discographies. All this info gave me a whole lot of insight into this wonderful band that was relatively unknown in the U.S. at the time. I still had more music to acquire though. "Voyage 34" and "Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape" were on the top of the list, but both were out of print so I was kind of out of luck. But, good fortune was right around the corner. First, I went to an in store CD signing by Tony Levin and Bill Bruford at a record store called Of Sound Mind that just sold progressive rock CD's and vinyl and I came across a copy of "Spiral Circus" on vinyl for $35, so I had some of "V34."

Then, there was this new thing on the internet called E-bay. At that time, there were usually only 5 to 7 Porcupine Tree items on there at any given moment. One day, "Voyage 34" (The Astralasia Remix) on vinyl came up for auction. It was being offered by a guy that lived about a half hour's drive from us, so we bid as did others and we won the auction for $51. We got in contact with the guy. His name was Phil. He was very nice. We drove to see him and make the transaction because he needed the cash and I needed the music. Phil had been following PT for sometime and had everything available plus had been to the only two U.S. PT shows at that time. He was more than generous and shared some of the harder to find things that I was so desperately trying to find and even a few that I didn't even know about. Now, had these recordings been available to buy or even on E-bay I would have certainly jumped at the chance to purchase them. But, since they weren't, it seemed okay and Phil and I were both from the same school of thought that sharing music is one of the ways to bring people together. It was all done in good faith, and I ended up buying it all when it was re-released anyway.

Phil told me some stories about the first shows like how in N.Y.C. the opening band, Poppyseed, went on way too long and when PT finally came on, they only played for a short while and then Steven's amp started smoking. Or, when they played Baltimore, they had left some sort of disc they used in N.Y. so that show didn't go as well as planned either. He said the N.Y. gig was one of the best concert values ever though. $5 to get in and you also got a copy of "TSMS" CD and a magazine with a SW interview. He took a few pictures at the show and told me that the Porcupine Tree guys are very nice to chat with, but they didn't quite like the heat of the northeast U.S. humid summers.

I kept in touch with Phil for a few years up through my first PT show at "Phantasmagoria" in Wheaton, Maryland, and on through about the time that "Light Bulb Sun" came out. I don't think that Phil liked the direction the band turned after "Stupid Dream" and beyond. He was more into the early psychedelic stuff. So, maybe he just passed the PT torch to me and inspired me by his kindness to share some of his PT rarities with another fan trying to find his way under the tree.

I was off and running...