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**Heather was nice enough to attach some pics of the show and the meet and greet for us. Thanks!**

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I'm back from the Y101 Birthday Bash in Richmond. Today was awesome. I won a meet and greet and two tickets from Y101, so I got to meet the band at the broadcast tent before their set.

Today started out hot as hell, and thus my sister and I were feeling gross by the time we went to meet the band. Well, right after we left the broadcast tent, it started pouring rain. It sucked and I felt like a drowned rat. Y101 made an announcement that due to lightning and the rain, they were pushing the schedule back.

HIM were supposed to play at 4:45 but didn't actually start until around 5:30. I couldn't get as close as I'd wanted, cause there were a lot of people who I'm assuming just stayed gathered around the stage all day - and since we had walked to the broadcast tent for the meet and greet, by the time we got over to the stage we were about 40 feet back from the stage.

They played:
Buried Alive By Love
Wicked Game
Poison Girl
Your Sweet Six Six Six
Right Here In My Arms
Join Me in Death
Death Is In Love With Us
Razorblade Kiss
Soul on Fire

The order is probably not correct, but they ended up cutting their set short due to lightning

Ville was quite talkative, and appeared to be a little drunk as well. It seemed like he forgot the words once, but apparently there weren't many HIM fans in the audience cause no one else seemed to notice. They played BABL, and when he got to the "buried alive by love" part, he stepped back intending for the crowd to sing along. Not very many people knew the words - I mean, like maybe 20 people in the whole crowd were singing. I was screaming my head off trying to make up for it.

He saluted a couple of people in the crowd, and blew a kiss to someone up front. When they did Death Is In Love With Us, he mentioned before the song that it is about losing someone very close to you and that many people have been through that and it inspires you to keep going for them. The crowd in Richmond very obviously only knew Join Me In Death, cause that's the only song that really got people moving and singing along - they've been playing it on Y101 constantly to hype up the Birthday Bash.

Before Your Sweet 666, he said that this next song is kind of evil, but they're all just blokes. He said before Soul on Fire that that would be their last song - that their set had been cut short due to lightning. Soul on Fire was awesome. The whole band was amazing and they put on such a great show as a band. I've seen other bands play that I liked (this was my first HIM show) and they just don't have the charisma and energy that HIM do. Ville was drinking and smoking throughout the show. He kept throwing his cigarette butts behind him on stage and popped open several beers throughout their set.

All in all it was an amazing day and an amazing show. I hope everyone else's HIM shows were and are as great as this one. Even though it was shortened, I still had an awesome time.

Here’s a little snippet on how the meet and greet went:

We got there at about 2:30 and headed over to the radio station's broadcast tent and got checked in. We waited for about 30 mins. there, then 4 groups of two each were led up the steps to the booth. They had a semicircle of chairs set up and we were told to just sit down, that when the band came up they would come around to each of us and sign things and take pictures.

They came up the steps and the dj's from the station talked to them for a few minutes. There was a table set up with 4 guitars and a ton of RR cd covers that they got them to sign. Then one of the dj's broke out about 5 boxes of Bam skate decks (there were around 50 decks) and got them to sign those too. One of the dj's mentioned that Bam had wanted HIM to sign the decks for something - don't know what.

Then each band member went around the semicircle and signed things - that part was kinda rushed. I didn't really get to talk to anyone, except to say hi and thank them for the autograph. Burton came first - he was really nice and seemed to be having a good day - very upbeat. Linde came around next (wearing a Viva la Bam shirt), and didn't say a thing except "you're welcome" when I thanked him for signing my poster - I've heard he's shy and I had to think about my husband and how shy he is and how freaked out he would be if he had to do something like this and meet all these people, he'd be the same way.

Then came Mige, who was also in good spirits. They were all smiles. Gas was nice too - he said they were having a good time today. Ville came around and was quite talkative, and so nice. He had the silver marker he'd been signing the skate decks with, and he used that for all his autographs. He drew a heartagram and a heart with 666 in it. He had on a Bad Brains shirt, and I told him cool shirt - he said "thanks". His pants were dark blue and had a hole in the butt that he'd put duct tape over.

I told him I got ALSN in Iceland, and he said "Iceland, eh?" My little sister got her poster signed and we asked if we could have a picture with him. He took one with me and one with her. He was so nice and polite the whole time - I honestly don't know that I could be that nice if I had to do that kind of stuff all the time. I thanked him for the autographs and the pictures - and as soon as we had gotten done, a lady from the radio station told us we had to go back down, so we went back down the steps. They are the nicest bunch of guys and so cool and laid back. All in all it was a great time

Attached are some pics of the show and the pic of me and Ville.