-As a result of mr christopher's brief tour of China, 2 festivals invited The OBViOUS to perform for 2 huge spring music festivals; The huge traditional and historic Weifang Kite Festival, and the annual Qingdao (Tsingdao) Beer Music festival. Sponsors for a possible longer OBViOUS tour began to show interest.

-Back in the states, The OBViOUS was hard at work at the Digital Banana Recording Studio recording new songs for what was to become "2OBViOUS!", releasing an internet single of "I Want To Hold Your Hand" as an internet single and which also appeared as part of a Beatles newsgroup collaboration album, as well as rehearsing songs for their upcoming performances.

-Originally intended to be "warm up" performances for their China tour Bradley books The OBViOUS into several outdoor festivals. These would become the first live performances for this, the classic live line-up of The OBViOUS.

-Bad news comes as the political fallout from NATO's accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia becomes apparent. Both Chinese festivals cancel The OBViOUS' appearances avoiding any political association with the USA, saying only that "it's not a good time for The OBViOUS to come  to China Right now." -Making the best of an unfortunate situation, The OBViOUS turns it's energy into domestic live performances and into finishing "2OBViOUS!". As a result the band becomes tighter, more focused and further expands creatively in their live performances. This growth is captured on the release date of 2OBViOUS! when The OBViOUS recorded their performance at a huge Melbourne festival. These live recordings formed the basis of The OBViOUS' 3rd (double) CD "OBViOUS-ly LiVE!" released the following year, in May 2000.

-Soon after this gig the band members began to express to each other that they had hit a ceiling where they were. This combined with an economic recession in the area that had closed several venues that had featured The OBViOUS limited the places The OBViOUS could perform. This caused the band to decide to discontinue live performances for the moment and to take time to re-evaluate things and take care of some personal family matters. "A real tension was beginning to grow at then end of the millennium, not only in the band but everywhere in the world. The faint mummer of the doomsday prophets who were usually ignored, seemed a bit louder, that year. The music was put on hold to give attention to some important family matters.

The last release of the century by this performing line-up of The OBViOUS was a Christmas single of "Rudolf" (following the Beatmas arrangment) recorded the summer before.