Starting tomorrow Schools and Mikey were going on vacations in England and around Europe with their respective squeezes. They could hardly wait.

The fish ‘n’ chips were great. Sam smiled and said, “You know, Phil, you’ve really got to see us in the States, with our full sound and all the lights. Why don’t you come to New Orleans for Halloween?”

I was bowled over. Needless to say, I took Sam up on his offer immediately. I had already scheduled a November flight to the U.S., to visit my mom in Massachusetts. All I had to do was change the dates of the booking!

Sam walked back up to the gig. Marti and I took a taxi, because of my hurtin’ leg. When we got to the venue, the place had a special end-of-tour vibe to it.

We were ready to rock it one more time, Panic was ready to get down to business.

That was it. One last one-set extravanganza. Loved that “Climb To Safety” closer. And here was the new item, “Sometimes,” kicking off the encore. A super night.

Way back in Hannover Schools had been whining that he didn’t have any mementoes signed by the fans, so we presented him tonight with a New Morning poster that I had been toting from town to town, collecting Spreadhead autographs for Dave. He was thrilled, he said.

I looked around. It seemed like half the audience stayed for the aftershow.

I had a marvelous time on this run. What great fun getting to know and gettin’ down with folks like Pat, Disco, Deepesh, Stacey, Bill, Sequoia, Harmut, Ralph, Laurie, Chip, Rudi, Hanno and so many other fine peeps. Marti and I said goodbye to all our Spreadhead pals and the crew and the musicians, but my farewell was made less bittersweet by the fact that I was going to New Orleans for the three-night Halloween run.

This all began for me with ten nights at the Chesterfield Café. Over the past 18 months I had seen 20 Panic shows, all in Europe and none before a crowd of more than 400 people. Not that I’m complaining!

Now I was gonna see the real deal — make that surreal, it would be Nawlins.