Wendy and Lisa [Official Site]

My turn? My turn?

Okay, so...it's always a challenge for me to find peeps to "travel" for my musical fetishes. I've forced many o' friends to travel down to LA to see Lizz Wright, Meshell, Sheila E, Nikka Costa and Wendy & Lisa on numerous occasions and this trip was the very first. Well, Wendy and Lisa were accompanying Doyle Bramhall II at the Catalina Jazz & Blues Fest. (He was opening for Johnny Lang.) and I convinced three friends to take a five hour trek down south to Catalina for the show.

First off, my buddy Jason (RIP 2008) and I get sea sick on the ferry. Then we decide to go eat before the show and end up drunk and full by the time the show started. Doyle, Wendy and Lisa all gave it their best and my friends and I danced our butts off and had a blast. After Doyle's show we all agreed it was time to leave (especially since our buzz was wearing off and the crowd was a stuffy group more interested in showing off their awesome Jimmy Buffet Hawaiian shirts than enjoying the show). So we skip Lang's show and headed towards the nearest bar. And this is where "the meeting" occurs.

As I am sitting there nursing my Big Blue Shark, yes I remember the name of the awesome fish bowl sized drink, I noticed a big poof of hair walk past the bar window. In my drunken haze I ask aloud, "Is that Lisa"? My friends chalk it up to me being drunk and ignore me. What do I do? I, in what felt like slow motion, walk out the bar and follow the poof of hair. I keep blinking and rubbing my eyes to confirm and it sure does look like them from the back. The two are window shopping (after hours) and luckily stopping enough for me to catch up.  I ask, "Wendy? Lisa?".

Wendy turns and responds, "Yes"?

I'm star struck and the rest is a blur. (Sue me, it's been over a decade and I'm getting old.) What I do remember is declaring how far I drove to see them and Wendy hitting me on the shoulder very very very hard and calling me a nut for driving all that way.   I remember thanking them for the awesome show and Lisa being the quieter of the two. Almost leery of the attention. But not an a rude way, more of an "it's all good, please don't spaz out on me" kinda way.

Anyhoo, so after a couple minutes of chit chatting with them I thanked them for their time and excused myself. I walk back into the bar, hyperventilating, and everybody (I swear I am not kidding--it wasn't that big of a bar) is looking at me like I am crazy. One of my buddies asks if I took a picture and I freak out even more because I didn't think of bringing the camera. :sigh: Oh well. It was still a great night.

:sigh: good times good times. i got the pleasure of meeting them a couple other times at various shows. i look forward to telling my largo experiences...expecially the crazy story with arthell neville. buahahhahaa.

I am Extremely Bad at Meeting Celebrities (tm). Great at talking to folks if I don't know who the hell they are, but completely tonguetied if it's someone I have admired for a long time. This happens to me all the time, which is why my darling ex has a drawing of Ray Bradbury's in one of her notebooks, and I just have the memory of sitting there watching thinking: "Holy crap - that's Ray Bradbury!"

So . . . oddly enough I've had all these opportunities to meet Wendy, Lisa, and Doyle, and have mostly hung back and not done anything about it.

I blame SOSGemini for the only time I met Wendy face to face. He literally dragged me up to meet her after one of the Pacifico shows at Largo. She was very gracious about it, and said "I know who you are!" And, like a complete tongue tied idiot, all I could manage to say for a second was, "i know who you are, too!" (:: headsmack ::) before I finally recovered and introduced my girlfriend, who had the blessing of not really knowing who Wendy was except that she was a really hot guitarist . . .

(Oddly enough, I was sitting right next to Eric Clapton and John Mayer the whole night and really couldn't have cared less . . . My favorites of all favorites were onstage! Who's this Eric guy?!)

Ahhh I am loving the stories more more. Thank you.

Would it make a difference if I shared that I met the man who plays Big Bird on Sesame Street?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1249919

LMAO - not joking! I had no idea until I was told. I was too bashful to ask him for a hug! : X

I never got to meet wendy or lisa. I did get to SEE wendy and lisa, (which is just as good). I was however able to meet Doyle bramhall, (4 x)  but that is a different story for a diferent day.

I logged on to tell my story then I realized...I don't have one!!!  Feels like I do...that's weird :shrug:

oh well, next time! hehe

I was working at Sunset Sound Factory on one of my first engineering assisting gigs when they came in to mix and overdub the Girl Bros record with Tchad.  I spent the final night of mixing with them in Studio B with Husky and I think Susannah was there too.  Tchad sat me in front of the board to listen through the recrod (twice!) and i loved it so much I told him this was his best work yet.  I loved Wendy and LIsa's work and still do!

They probably won't recall this, but we all sat in the lounge of B watching a VHS of Radiohead live and Susannah and I were trying to figure out if something was wrong with Thom's eye or not. (lame, I know)  They might recall that I was the bearded guy who brought the scotch.

You do remember!  I can't believe you can recall all that from so long ago!  Well...I knew scotch was Tchad's favorite at the time,  I can't recall their little dog's name, but he/she was there too.  Such a sweeheart.  I think kd walked out as I was walking in.  Didn't she try some backgrounds on a track that didn't work out?

I met Wendy and Lisa twenty-one years ago, on Septemeber 14th, 1988.  I had won a radio contest to fly to MN for the opening night of Prince's Lovesexy tour and to attend the after-party at Paisley Park.   I only had one week to design something to wear to this event.  So I went with the Lovesexy theme and painted all of the song titles from the Lovesexy cd on a cream colored jacket.  The jacket was quite colorful and bold,the lapels were trimmed with purple sequince hearts. I also wore a black ruffled shirt with pearlized buttons, tapesty vest, black pants with white heart buttons down the side, a police hat with a peace sign,sunglasses and one hoop earring.

The after-party was held in large tents. The inside had the white spiral staircase...I believe from the When Doves Cry video, balloons with Paisely Park recording artists names, pedestals with purple netting and busts.

I was nervous,excited, and so happy to attend this function.  There were a lot of band members there.  I immediately noticed Wendy and Lisa and walked over to them.  I introduced myself to them,complimented them on their music and asked for their autographs. I remember Lisa was very quiet and I almost didn't recognize her as I remember her hair looked dark black.  Wendy was very kind and talkative.  I remember thinking that Brown Mark wasn't approachable(I don't know why) and I mentioned that to Wendy.  Wendy handed him the paper I was carrying around and asked him to sign it for me, and he did.  Yes I was an autograph hound back then,sorry girls. Wendy then called over Susannah to sign the paper and I thought I would die.  All three girls.... meeting Wendy,Lisa and Susannah.  They were all so kind to me.

Shortly after that,  Prince was mingling with the contest winners and walking around in the tents.  And then I saw something I will NEVER forget!!  Prince saw Wendy and ran over to her and gave her the biggest hug I have ever seen.  It was a beautiful sight.  I remember seeing how happy he was to see her and the smile on his face.  Two friends together again.

Yes I do have pics of the jacket.  As a matter of fact I still have the jacket. lol

I was in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago for another festival, and since I had already signed up to receive announcements about Lisa & Wendy's events at my e-mail address, I was notified about the June 13th concert at the Largo there...a day in advance of it. 

I left the other festival I was at early on that Saturday (this was a week and a half ago), and ventured out and about driving around in LA until I found the place where this concert was gonna take place.

I'm not a concert-goer, but I figure that this is a rare opportunity for me to actually go to a Lisa & Wendy concert, so I made the extra special effort to go to this concert instead of giving up finding this place and driving all the way back to my mhotel room in Woodland Hills to crawl back into bed and watch tv.

Anyways, when I went into this concert place at the Largo, I was looking around at all of the decorations and old records on the wall, the bar section that was off to the left of the auditorium.  I've never been in a place like this before!  Once the auditorium was opened for everyone to enter - and we had assigned seats (really like being in school, but I can understand why things were managed that way).  The auditorium reminded me of a high school auditorium from the 1940's.  It had an old-fashioned effect to it.  I was checking out from sitting in my assigned auditorium seat (I was seated pretty close up to the front) the layout of all of the instruments up on the stage and looking at the screensaver images on the computers up there. It was a quite a show for me to watch all of the other *fans* eventually entering the auditorium.  I was thinking, besides myself of course, "Who else is coming here tonight to see Lisa & Wendy's concert?"  I also wanted to see how many people were coming to see them because I expected that there would be a full house for them.  And there was a decent turnout of people.

There was this one guy who was assigned to sit next to me...right before the show began, I noticed that he too was wearing black fingernail polish like I was, so I showed him my fingernails and told him that we were wearing the same colored nail polish.  I was wearing silver glitter over my nails, but he was telling me that his was actually a navy blue sort of color with a gold shimmering topcoat he had put on it...He asked me if I had ever gone to a Wendy & Lisa concert, and I told him, "nope"...he has several times..and then the clapping began..

Everyone started clapping when they all entered onto the stage.  It was surreal for me to see Wendy appear up on the center of the stage, serious as she was beginning to play the first note of 'Waterfall'...and then to see Lisa enter after her to take her place as she always does at her keyboard.  I was also pleasantly surprised to see Susannah and Cole still singing alongside with them, and another singer whose name I forget (no offense, *hugs*, sorry!) who was now a part of the band.  But it was surreal to actually see all of them performing in person!..after all of those years of watching them on tv on Prince videos, Wendy & Lisa videos I had videotaped from off of tv when I was 12 and 13 years old, now I was seeing them with my own eyes!

I must also comment on the slideshow of various places around France that we all were seeing on the stage wall in the background while they were performing.  I saw a very strong French cultural pride and identity that the band was expressing while they were playing a mix of some of their older songs from their first album, from "Fruit at the Bottom", and from "Eroica", "Girl Bros.", etc.

Both Wendy and Lisa were cracking jokes either at each other or about each other up on the stage between songs.  They were very relaxed and being themselves while they were performing...and interacting with the audience too.  The audience was very respectful of them too.

Everyone waited for them to come out from backstage after the show was over.  I felt like as if I was something of an oddball standing around out there with everyone else...it had to do with what I was wearing because everyone else seemed to be somewhat dressed up while I was wearing clothes that I normally wear to work..along with my black sweater that I always wear when I'm sitting on my stool in my classroom teaching.  I think Lisa had gone to that bar area from the back of the auditorium because she was already there where they were gonna sign people's posters and talk to everyone.  I was waiting out in the courtyard area outside of the auditorium and bar with everyone else when Wendy & friends seemingly burst out from their private backstage area door and moved swiftly past me, and were eager to greet people, sign posters and CDs and what not. 

I'm pretty shy when it comes to meeting strangers, but I had enough courage to meet Cole first.  I introduced myself and told her a bit about myself, and how I remembered seeing her on Soul Train years ago.  She was telling me how she grew up watching Soul Train.  I took a picture with her.  I didn't have anything for Lisa & Wendy to sign, so I saw that they were selling their new CD.  So I hastily bought it and the Largo concert poster for them to sign. 

When I met Wendy and told her my name, she had asked me what nationality is my name.  I told her that there isn't one that I know it to be from..We both took off our glasses for the picture we took.  That was cool.  When I finally met Lisa, same thing here..she was intrigued by my name.  I told her that I was in town from Chicago, and she told me that she likes Chicago and had performed there several times.  So, I got my picture with her.  I also met Susannah.  I couldn't believe how short she is!  We were both comparing our heights to each other.  But she was a lot of fun to talk to also!

..and that's it!  Everything was well organized and well-managed there.

Arana

Actually I haven't met them or even seen them, so rather than start a new thread for stories about not meeting Wendy & Lisa, I will make my first forum contribution here.

It was in 1989 when my record collection started to become stale and a close friend of mine called Dave loaned me Fruit At The Bottom. "Who are Wendy & Lisa?" I asked Dave and he replied that it didn't matter and just listen to the CD. So I did and I found it compelling, so much so that I said that we had to go and see them live.

"We just missed them", Dave replied. "We'll catch them next time".

So I waited and in 1990, driving down the road one day I heard 'Strung Out' and knew it was Wendy & Lisa. I spoke with my friend Dave and asked him to watch for tour dates for London.

"No worries", he said. "I am on it".

Some weeks later I was unfortunate to spend two weeks in hospital. Upon my release the subject of Wendy & Lisa concert appearances in London was raised with my friend Dave.

"It was last week", Dave admitted. "I didn't get any tickets because I didn't really fancy going. But don't worry they'll be back soon.

So I waited. And waited and began to suspect a conspiracy on the part of my friend 'Dave'.

It was some months later when Miles Davis announced London dates. The tickets were expensive and I allowed myself to be persuaded by Dave that we should wait as "Miles Davis is always touring and we'll catch him next year".

1991 - Miles Davis - Dead.

The moral of the story - Never listen to Dave.