[The May Home]

Ok....just saw my third show (Anaheim, Vegas, and Phoenix tonight) and I 
am just completely blown to bits.  I've been a fan since the mid-80s and 
this was my first set of Oils shows.  Dear God, I love these guys.  I 
hope heaven is a perpetual Oils concert (no religious thread intended).

So...here's the set list, with brief annotations:

Redneck
Bullroarer
Too much sunshine -- I really love all these new songs....
Dream World
Say Your Prayers
Beds
Short Memory -- and something about this song in the US right 
now....awesome
Luritja
Blue Sky
King
Golden Age -- this one has grown on me like a weed -- I can't get it out 
of my head
Truganini
Dead Heart
Forgotten Years
Hercules -- and why didn't I know that I love this song so much?  After 
all these years....
-------------------------
Weapon....yes weapon....thank you God I got to hear this one
Power & Passion (awesome as always....love the song but the alternate on 
the set list was What's so funny, which i would have LOVED to hear them 
play)
Sometimes

I am really jealous of you folks who got to hear Diggers....would have 
loved that one.

This was the best show of the three I've seen -- the Celebrity Theatre 
is in the round and the front row ( I was in the 'second' row but the 
people in the first actually sat down...yes, sat down..can you believe 
that???!!!....the whole show -- I was about 12 feet from Pete and 
Martin) is at the level of the stage, roughly.  So they were right there 
in front of me instead of 'up' there.  They seemed to have more energy 
and some girl presented them with a big vaseful of roses and later Peter 
threw them out into the audience.  It was actually pretty cool.  The 
crowd was small -- 300-500 which is a bummer for the guys but it turned 
out to be a really lively group and because we were curved around them 
and there was no curtain or barricade or stage wall, it felt really 
intimate.  People were dancing a lot more and a group kept yelling 
"Kosciusko" but no luck...at the last minute, Martin heard them and 
turned around to say something to Rob (which I imagined was, "Hey Rob, 
let's play Kosciusko for all the die-hard Oils fans out there in the 
Valley of the Sun...you know, the ones who actually know the words to 
songs that weren't on Diesel and Dust") but Rob was launching into 
Sometimes and that was that.

So, my 2001 Oils experiences are over and I just did not want this 
concert to end tonight. I was feeling completely elated and bummed out 
at the same time.  In another life I was born an Aussie and followed the 
Oils around the pubs for the last 20 years (killing millions of brain 
cells in the process)....but, that's another life.  The guys more than 
lived up to my expectations, which were insanely high after 15 years of 
long-distance idolatry (in the best sense of the word).  What a band.

Now I know why Oz is the lucky country.....

Sharon May
Phoenix, AZ

Hi to everyone I met!!!!  Enjoy the rest of the shows!  Here's hoping 
they really do come back in 2002!!!


By the way....How surprised was I that the one I made the most 
consistent eye contact with was Martin.  I've always thought of him as 
so reclusive and in his own little world -- I really didn't expect him 
to be watching people so much but he seemed to be really eyeing the 
front rows at all the concerts.  And Jim and that guitar playing....man, 
my fingers hurt just watching him....I love the acoustic stuff so 
much...and, oh yeah, at one point tonight some guy in the audience was 
talking on his cell phone during the concert (idiot) and Bones came out 
and got the cell phone from him and took it onstage, talking into it and 
then laid it down and finished the song -- then he tried to have the 
person talk into the mike but it didn't work and he gave the phone 
back.  It was pretty funny!!!  There was a 'runway' type thing that both 
he and Pete walked out into the crowd on.  Really cool.  Ummmm, can't 
think of much else.  I'm to wired to sleep and too keyed up to 
concentrate on anything.  I mostly just want to hit the road to the next 
concert, but reality calls

By the way again...I've actually grown rather affectionate toward Will 
Hoge and the "unknown warmup band" as they call themselves.  Hoge is 
pretty funny -- he talked a lot more tonight, said that the way the 
place was set up made him feel like he was on that VH1 storytellers 
documentary thing....lots of self-deprecating humor - seem like nice 
guys.  The songs on their current album don't do much for me, but a 
couple of their new  ones for the next album are pretty good, I think.   
They, too, did their best set of the three I saw tonight -- something 
about the theatre's set-up, I think.

Okay..I really will stop writing...I'm just so damned excited!!!!!!!

OILS!!!!