September 9, 2006. Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa, known to many as the 
Skipper Dome. An outdoor concert. For those of you who have never been to Florida in September, there really is only one thing you have to know before you decide to visit us during that month, and that is this: the heat and humidity are inhumanely brutal. August and September are indoor times, just like January and February are in Minnesota, only for the opposite reason. That being said, I have to wonder just what exactly the band was thinking when they booked this show.
Because on this night, the temperature was high, the wind chose not to blow off of the bay and the humidity was 100%. It was absolutely horrible. Just the worst night you could have chosen in the year 2006 to be outside in the Tampa Bay area. And of course, the show was sold out. Just like people who engage in outdoor activities during January and February in Minnesota, we Floridians have learned to accept our fate and, if the event is worth it, out we go, lah dee freakin' dah. In this case, to an outdoor venue with an outdoor bar, so we can risk further dehydration by drinking alcohol. We're stupid that way.
But the show was really great, the band was in high form and I managed to move this one great big fan so it blew on myself and one other guy directly. Bogus Pomp attracts an audience that comes to hear the music, but on this night, we had the added incentive of being out on an evening that was so hot and so humid that the exercise of flapping your jaws to talk would call forth sweat, so there was an added incentive to sit still and shut up. If you would like to recreate the total experience after you download these files, build yourself a little tin sweat hut like the Japanese stuck British POW Alec Guiness into when he wouldn't cooperate with them in the movie 'The Bridge Over the River Kwai'. That should give you a fairly accurate recreation of the weather that night.
