Oakland show:
Thes and Double were still a little high from the Santa Cruz show when they rolled up to New Parish. (Thes said he feels like he inhaled 20 different weed varities in 5 different smoke forms... he felt like he and Mike had been blunted, vaped, bonged, waxed, etc., haha.) I actually got there before they did, and the opener (Melina Jones... super cool person) let me into the place. Thes called ahead and had me go buy Mike a pack of cigs and some zig-zags, and as I walked back, I met them coming in.
Mike was HURTING from hearing of Prince's passing that morning (he was actually calling some family members to make sure they were doing okay), and Thes bought a new purple shirt and purple shoes for the show in tribute. (The shoes actually gave him a little trouble during his usual Running Man dance on stage tho, haha.) They quickly threw together some musical tributes to Prince (I put up one of them from the soundcheck on my IG: pmuny... I also got a good backstage shot of the homies on there), and Thes even pulled out a little blasphemy (right on!) and said "God... you trippin!" at the beginning of Trippin' at the Disco. haha. Guess he wasn't happy with losing Phife and Prince in such short order. Thes was actually doing some good oration at both shows.
I met ILikeBeer from the PUTS forums at the show (good to see ya, man!).
Also, for the first time, I had a girl try to flirt me up since she'd seen me backstaging with the PUTS. Yo, baby, wassup?
I feel like the Oakland show performances were a little cleaner than the Santa Cruz show (probably 'cause there was less weed smoke flowing through the place), and the Prince tributes really made it (musical) dope.
We talked a bit backstage about the Stepfather era, and Thes said that he's actually got more copies of the CD/DVD Stepfather combo than like anything else because one of the Basement Records guys had hoarded away a ton of them in a storage facility, and Thes had never known until he got a letter some years later that said "you have 24 hours to remove your items from the facility or we're going to Storage Wars your sh*t!" I guess that same dude tried had come to the show that night, and was trying to link up with Thes. (Needless to say, Thes wasn't too interested.)
After the show, I was also showing Double and Thes the "Snippets and Shenanigans" Stepfather promo (from my iPhone)... I guess they hadn't listened to it in a long time, and they were dying laughing at the promo's intro, when the moog sample kicks in in the background (Thes couldn't even remember where they got that moog track from, but it's a separate layer from the speaking... "Hey, what's with the faces???".)
Double also didn't know that that AC the PD guy had had his solo demo stuff (and Tha Brothaload stuff) up on the web for so long, so he was amazed when I whipped it all out for him. I actually sent it to him later so he could listen to it. He said that he's still got all the original tapes, but he doesn't have it mixed down, so he appreciated the listen. (He's pissed at AC tho... he gave it to that guy in confidence, and none of it was ready for primetime.) He said that a lot of his demo stuff was recorded while he was druggin' hard. (He said that, for one of Kidd Lexus' tracks, he remembers feeling like he just floated on air over to the console and made the beat in like a few minutes.)
So that was that, and after a while, I headed back home. Both nights were quality shows, yet again, and I'm looking forward to trying to hit up more. I agree with everyone on here that it would be cool for them to bring merch next time around, if they can, and I REALLY hope they can get some TGOS2 in the set list, 'cause this new one is fresh!