Big Medicine Head- the Icehouse, Sparks, NV - January 24, 1992

This show was the first I saw legally in a bar (see My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult). We first heard Big Medicine Head through a friend of ours, Robin, who worked with us at Western Union. Her brother was in the band and she had introduced us to their music and passed on a cassette of Rex Hotel, which was pretty neat and had a lot of Nevada references. It’s interesting to read the review on download.com – they call them a country band similar to Wilco. More than 20 years later Wilco is now one of my favorite bands, but at the time I absolutely despised anything “country.”

I vaguely remember the show. The Icehouse was a funny old bar in Sparks with a long history – I think it sold ice at some point as well as functioned as a gay bar for a while. It was pretty neat to see a band we had some kind of connection to in a small setting, rather than just seeing big stadium/ampitheatre shows like we were used to.

Probably a better story than the show itself was how I got to be friends with Robin. We both joined Western Union at the same time, in the spring of 1989. Western Union was the hot job to get in Reno when you were in college – it paid pretty well for pretty simple work, answering calls to check on money orders and sending the occasional telegram. I found out about it because my high school boyfriend kept trying to apply there and flunking the typing test. My friend Kim has also taken the test and spelled champion “campion” – thereby missing it by one word. I went in figuring I would probably do fine on the spelling but I knew my typing wasn’t that great. Turns out I got a lucky break. I aced the spelling test and was only a couple of WPM off the typing score – so the testing person decided I should at least get to take the math test before they made a decision. I guess I did pretty well on that because they offered me the job. Ironically I probably type in excess of 100 WPM now.

Cory wound up getting in too and we started the same time, with a two-week training class. We learned all kinds of stuff, telephone scripts, memorizing state abbreviations, learning how to calculate telegram costs and look things up on the stinky old green-screen systems. After our training we got to go on the floor to take real calls, and we partnered up to take our first calls together. Robin was my partner and she was listening as I took my first telegram.

I didn’t realize this at the time, but Western Union did quite a lot of traffic in bereavement messages. I don’t think I ever even heard the word bereavement until I worked there. Lucky for me, that first call was for such a telegram. The woman who was calling had a really thick, deep-south accent and I was having a lot of trouble understanding her. She must have told me at least six or seven times why she was calling, and I had no clue what she was asking for. Finally, I figured it out. A bereavement message! Oh, like you send to a funeral home. Ok…

When I got to addressing the message, I had to confirm every letter with her. We were trained to say things like “do you mean B as in boy or D as in Dog,” etc. So, I was trying to help this woman sound it out when Robin wrote on her notepad and showed me – “no, D as in Dead!” It was all I could do to keep from laughing hysterically, and Robin was laughing so hard that she had to disconnect from the call and walk out of the room.

In any case, that story and my several years at Western Union were certainly more memorable than Big Medicine Head – though I did go ahead and download that track for my iPod.

1991 - A year with no shows?

I have gone through all my concert ticket stubs and tried to remember each show I saw, but for some reason I can't come up with a single show in 1991. In fact, I have a gap from July 1990 to January 1992, 18 months with no concerts.

I guess that was my last year of college - I graduated in 1991, so maybe I was just too busy with school? I know I had a big group advertising project to do that final semester, and that I probably didn't have a whole lot of cash since I quit working that year. Huh.

Anyway, I thought it was worth mentioning since my next post begins in 1992.

Depeche Mode (with Nitzer Ebb) - Cal Expo, Sacramento, CA - July 22, 1990

I remember this show, on the Violator tour, as one of the most fun concerts ever. Everything about it seemed just great – it was outside on a wonderfully warm summer evening. Nitzer Ebb, the opening band, was fabulous, especially after we suffered through the crappy Genuine Diamelles a couple of months before. Every song was performed just right, amazingly danceable and/or slow and tender, and it seemed that the whole crowd was so into the show that the energy was contagious.

I had mixed up the details of this show with the Bowie show in my mind. I guess they were only a couple of months apart and both at Cal Expo. But thanks to Paul and his elephantile memory, I now have it straight. Cory, Paul, Al, Christy and her brother Brian, Kirsten and her friend Debbie all went to the show. We went in three cars – Cory and Paul drove my Subaru wagon, Christy, Al, Brian and I rode in her car, and Kirsten and Debbie drove separately. We all met at the Tower Parking lot in Sacramento and Debbie made a snippy comment about a bumpersticker in the lot – Nevada is not a Wasteland, then Christy informed her it was her car and her bumpersticker she was commenting on.

Cory, Christy, Paul and I all wrote letters to spell out L-O-V-E like the Strangelove video and held up our hands during the show. We were a bit dorky, but that was nothing compared to the Little 15 video Cory and Paul had made with Paul’s camcorder.

David Bowie (with the Genuine Diamelles) - Cal Expo, Sacramento, CA - May 23, 1990

My friend CL had been a rabid David Bowie fan for years, so when his Sound+Vision tour came to Sacramento it was a natural choice for us to make the trip. At $27.50 (+ticketbastard fees), this was by far the most expensive concert ticket I had ever purchased, most were still in the $18 to $22 range, but there was never a question of whether it was worth it or not.

Four of us total went out for the show, PCH, CA, CL and myself. We did our typical Sacramento day trip, going to the Beat (still my favorite music store) and Tower Records before the show. I have a great picture of us on top of a car in Tower Parking lot, proudly displaying CL’s Bowie87 license plate.

I think this was when I realized that Cal Expo was probably the best venue in the local area for us to see shows. It was right off the freeway, just about 2 hours from Reno. It is a nice sized ampitheatre and everything is general admission, allowing you to get as close as you want to at any time during the show.

The opening act was one of the most pathetic I’ve ever seen – the Genuine Diamelles, an acapella group and about one step up from a cheesy Nevada lounge act. We felt a little ripped off, but they were so bad it was laughable. Once Bowie came on, we were all mesmerized. We managed to get all the way up to the front and stayed there for a while, but CL had some kind of horrible pain in her foot and couldn’t stand up, so we all moved back with her so she could sit down. David Bowie was and still is an amazing performer, I saw him again this spring and he still is pretty darn hot for his age.

The t-shirt I bought immediately looked like I had bought it in 1980 after only one washing – the last time I ever bought a white concert shirt.

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - Las Vegas, NV - Spring 1990

This was my first show I saw in a bar, so of course I don’t have a ticket for it. My friend Dan and I had driven down to Vegas to help my parents paint our rental house. We figured it was a free vacation of sorts – we didn’t have anything going on during spring break, so we drove down separately and my parents put us up at the Palace Station so we could help with the project.

Our friends Al and Ruth had moved down to Vegas about a year after they graduated from high school. We got together one night after painting all day and Al, who’s always been one of my music mentors, told us there was a show at some club that night that he wanted to see. We liked the band and thought it was a great idea. Only problem was, Dan and I were both still 20. My birthday is in October and his in November, and because we both looked so young, we could never really get away with anything.

Earlier that day the four of us had gone out to eat at a casino, and afterward, we were watching Ruth plug quarters into a video poker machine. Only Ruth was actually gambling, but a change girl on a power trip came over and carded all of us. When Dan and I remarked that we were only watching, she told us we had to go wait in the arcade.

Even after that embarrassing event, we decided to risk trying to get into the show. We drove over together, and Al and Ruth waited in the car for us. The plan was that if we didn’t get in, we would all go somewhere else instead. Dan and I walked up to the door together, and he went first since he was a month younger. Our theory was that maybe they would just look at the year on our drivers’ licenses, after all, many people born in 1969 were already 21.

Our theory actually worked. Dan went in first and I had a momentary panic attack that the bouncer would reject me. But, he looked at my license and let me in right afterward. Woohoo! We were in. We immediately went to the bar and ordered drinks. It took Al and Ruth probably at least half an hour to come in after us. They thought perhaps we had gotten arrested or something.

The show was pretty bizarre, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult had a combo goth/piercing/tattooed kind of crowd before that became mainstream. There were people selling piercing gear, jewelry and S&M leather stuff in the booths at the bar. The music was good, and we wouldn’t have cared anyway, since we were so proud of ourselves for just getting in.

Happy birthday to my friend Dan this week - now we're both 35 and can get into any bar we want!

Ministry (with KMFDM) – UNR Jot Travis Student Union, Reno, NV – February 7, 1990

Thanks to the web I was able to locate the exact date of this show. Some great fan kept a list of all of Ministry’s tour dates going back to their first shows in the early eighties.

I’m probably one of the only Ministry fans who will confess to really liking their first album, With Sympathy. It was a quintessential early 80s type album, sounding a bit like the Cure, Soft Cell, or Heaven 17, kinda whiney guy singing longing love songs on top of great dance music. Their next album also had a great goth rock anthem, Every Day is Halloween, that gets played over at 80s dance clubs, probably still to this day (it was the last time I went to one in Portland a few years ago).

I think Al Jourgensen kind of distances himself from those albums, since they got a lot harder and started to define the industrial genre along with Nine Inch Nails in the 1990s. I did like Twitch and the Land of Rape and Honey, but I haven’t really progressed with them since then. The Land of Rape and Honey was a really good CD to play when your neighbors were being really loud and annoying and you wanted to respond in kind.

In any case, this was the only small venue show I saw at UNR. It was at Jot Travis Student Union, right near the food court. I wonder what the place must have looked like afterwards, because people seemed to get pretty out of hand. The band was behind a chain link fence, and there was much moshing right in front.

KMFDM opened and they were pretty great. Although some guy told us that it stood for “Kill Mother Fucking Depeche Mode,” which made us feel slightly uncool (or me anyway, but I got over it).

The Cult - Arco Arena, Sacramento, CA - December 28, 1989

I started thinking that I didn’t remember a whole lot about this show, but there are a few nuggets, anyway. This was the first show we went to at the Arco Arena in Sacramento. I know CA and I went together, but I can’t really remember if anyone else was with us. Might have been CE, since she was my roommate at the time.

We got a bit lost getting to the show, since Arco Arena is in the middle of nowhere. We turned off the highway and it was really dark, so we drove for a while without seeing anything, then had to stop at a gas station for directions. Finally, we found the place, it’s quite big, after all.

It was kind of weird seeing a show in a place that normally has basketball games. We were on the shiny hardwood floor. I also remember they didn’t allow smoking inside, which seemed almost unheard of for a concert. Of course people were passing around joints during the show, like most concerts, but no one lit up any cigarettes.

I remember being pretty disappointed with the show overall. The sound was really not so great, and since this was the Sonic Temple tour, the Cult had pretty much transitioned from their sort of edgy days to plain old hard rock. She Sells Sanctuary, one of my favorite all time songs, sounded really crappy. Ian Astbury still had really cool hair, the highlight of the show.

Eurythmics (with Underworld) - Henry J. Kaiser Auditorium, Oakland, CA - November 19, 1989

I was just reminded that today marks the 15th anniversary of this show. So I guess this is a good time for me to blog it. Lots of good stories around this day, hopefully I will document them accurately.

At the time, the Eurythmics were my friend PCH's absolutely favorite band. He collected their music like he collects a lot of other such items – obsessively. A few years ago he paid a couple hundred dollars for two 45” singles of obscure songs from their early days. Not sure if he is still trolling e-bay looking for Annie Lennox recordings from the BBC or some such things…in between getting the latest Biolante movie from the Pet Store…but ah, I digress.

There are some of us who are so lucky to have their first concert be their favorite band. PCH is one of those people. We had enough people signed up to join him on that happy occasion to warrant bringing two cars. BGA and K took PCH in their car, while CA, CE, CL, Shannon/Shay/Kathie and I took my red Subacrusier wagon. We planned to follow each other up to the city and all meet up at the show together.

Luckily, since this was in the days before cell phones, we did stay close together, because less than 50 miles or so out of Reno K’s car began overheating. It was some old Renault or something like that, and I guess it was notorious for such issues. We pulled over at some exit off of I-80, near the turnoff for Nevada City, I think, and spent around half an hour waiting for the car to cool off. I remember that the rest of us played with a nearby salt dispenser while we were waiting.

Finally, after a while, BGA and K decided that we shouldn’t wait any longer. PCH hopped in the wagon, and they waved goodbye, assuring us that they would go home, trade cars, and we would see them in Oakland. That was pretty much max capacity for my car, so Shannon had to sit in the waaay back.

We took off and finished the rest of our little road trip to the bay area. It was a bit eerie, since the Loma Prieta earthquake had happened on October 17 and the SF Bay Bridge was still closed. Luckily we didn’t have to go into the City at all for the show, though Oakland (the bad part) was damaged enough to still have a lot of boarded up buildings.

The show was at the Henry J. Kaiser arena in Oakland, a venue I’ve never visited again – this is the only concert I’ve ever seen in Oakland. We were surprised we didn’t get to go backstage since Shannon’s Dad was friends with Henry J. It was a pretty nice place, and old-school formal theater. I remember the bathrooms being quite elegant.

The opening act was Underworld. They had some stupid song about a bouncing ball and the guy pantomimed it on stage during the song. Many years later though, I would buy an Underworld cd out of choice. Born Slippy is a great song, if you’ve ever seen Trainspotting you won’t forget it.

The show itself was really quite fabulous. I wasn’t the biggest Eurythmics fan in the world at the time – though I had listened to Sweet Dreams and Touch incessantly back in 84 with JS (see 1st TTwins blog). The band was really tight, Annie Lennox sang beautifully and they did some really great acoustic tunes. That part of the show with Annie singing and Dave on the guitar still strikes me as one of my favorite music memories.

During the show, CA snuck in a camera and snapped some pictures, and then almost got in a fight with some large man/woman (we weren’t really sure) – well, he hit him/her in the face, but nothing too bad ensued. We had pushed our way up to the front and it got kind of crowded in there. At one point during the show, Dave Stewart came out with a primitive looking camcorder and panned over the crowd. Months later, PCH bought the video, and with the magic of slow motion and pause, we found ourselves there in the video, thanks to CA and the flash on his camera.

Shannon played the martyr and decided to stand in the back of theatre to wait for BGA and K, so we didn’t see her again until after the show. Unfortunately, they never made it, and PCH still has their unused tickets in a frame. You can see a similar image if you follow the links from here.

The Cure - Shoreline Ampitheatre, Mountain View, CA - September 10, 1989

The Cure was another one of my favorite 80s bands that was on my list of must see shows back at the end of the decade. In high school, the Cure seemed to be a good starting point for the goth kids – Robert Smith had a whiney voice and a huge nest of hairspray and black dye – but their songs were catchy and poppy enough for just about anyone to listen to.

I remember the first Cure video I ever saw – Let’s Go to Bed – I recorded it in the early days of MTV, when I recorded all day and edited out the junk later. I spent a couple of months looking for the cassette/album in record stores all over Reno and Carson with no luck, so I wound up ordering the EP, “The Walk” from Budget Records and Tapes and waiting several weeks for it to arrive. Later I remember I always used to see Cure videos at Macy’s, in their Junior section, for some reason. After I gave up on MTV this was a good place to keep up with Robert Smith’s hair styles.

When I saw them in the fall of 1989 they were really starting to reach their pinnacle of popularity with the release of Disintegration and songs like Lullaby, Lovesong and Pictures of You (recently highlighted in an HP commercial!) Of course I don’t remember that much about the show itself again – but a few tidbits. I remember it was the first shoreline concert where I sat on the lawn instead of in seats, which made it seem more like a day at the park than a concert. The band looked very, very far away. Also, it was the first concert I remember where I saw bootleg t-shirts for sale outside the venue. A guy was trying to sell them to us and we wound up trading him for a bottle of evian water instead…I guess he was pretty thirsty at that point.

Howard Jones (with Midge Ure) - Lawlor Events Center, Reno, NV - July 11, 1989

Howard Jones came again to Reno the last summer of the 80s. It was kind of weird to go back to a concert at Lawlor again after getting used to going out of town for shows.

I remember the show being very low key. We had pretty good seats on the floor and sat on folding chairs. Midge Ure, formerly of Ultravox, opened up and he did an amazing job. His song “Dear God,” is a classic for me and once made it onto a mix tape of atheist songs I was trying to compile. I really only found enough for about 1 and ½ sides of a cassette and never finished it. I remember the girls next to us kept talking during his set and I was really annoyed.

Howard Jones was a bit more simple at this point in his career. He sang a lot from his piano and wasn’t all electronic and programmed like he was in 1985. He really was (and is still I suppose) very talented and though I don’t follow him that much anymore, I can appreciate his influence on my early musical tastes.

New Order - Shoreline Ampitheatre, Mountain View, CA - June 14, 1989

I borrowed a New Order cassette from my friend Al when I was a junior in high school and I was immediately hooked. Fabulous dance music, mostly fun but at times a little dark, it was the most original stuff I had probably heard up to that point in my life. I loved how none of the songs had obvious titles and the really neat art on the covers.

Over my life I have bought dozens of New Order CDs as well as Warsaw, Joy Division, Electronic, Revenge, Monaco and the Other Two. I went to a CD party for the release of Republic. I’ve read Deborah Curtis’ book and seen “24 Hour Party People” (though the shaky camera made me want to hurl). Needless to say the first time I saw them live was a pretty momentous occasion for me.

CA and I stayed in San Francisco before the show, this time on the boat with his mom and stepdad. Our friends AM and RO actually drove up from Las Vegas for the show, which must have been close to a 1000 mile journey, only to stay one night before driving home.

We were pretty close up, in seats at Shoreline, and AM and RO were on the grass general admission area in the back. The Sugarcubes were one of the opening acts, right after their first album was released and before Bjork’s acting career had started. I remember the guy in the band running up and down in the crowd singing like a madman.

I remember New Order sounding fabulous, but they’ve never been a very active band. They stand there and play and don’t get too excited - Bernard Sumner looks downright scared most of the time. But it was definitely worth the drive and a nice start to that summer.

New Order fans are pretty techy, so it doesn’t surprise me that they have one of the coolest websites I’ve encountered in this search. Since I no longer have the ticket for some reason, I was able to locate the right date plus more.

Siousxie and the Banshees - Berkeley Community Theatre, Berkeley, CA - November 11, 1988

I guess after we traveled to Sacramento to see a concert, shows in the Bay Area didn’t really seem that far out of reach. Most of us had cars and enough disposable income from part-time jobs and parental units that making a trip once in a while to see a band seemed like just something you had to do in order to ever get to see bands you like – I guess it was kind of a tax we paid to be cool living in Reno.

I met my roommate, CE, through my friend DA, who dated her as a senior in high school. Cara was crazy for Siouxsie and the Banshees, she had all their albums and she even at times wore the heavy duty black eyeliner just like Siouxsie did. I think DA liked that. Anyhow, CE was crazy for Siouxsie and November 18 was her birthday, so in a sense this was like a birthday gift for her for all of us to go to the show in Berkeley together.

We had originally planned to stay on CA's mom and stepdad’s boat in South San Francisco, but I guess his stepdad wasn’t really that into it, so CA's mom actually got us all a hotel room to share instead. It was pretty nice of her to do that for a bunch of silly teenagers, but she’s a pretty nice person in general. If I remember correctly, we stayed at a Travelodge, a holiday inn or some such place.

The concert hall itself was pretty neat as I remember, and the Berkeley campus is just a beautiful place in general anyway. Lots of neat restaurants, bookstores, cafes, street vendors, political movements – all kinds of things we didn’t have in Reno. I seem to think we ate dinner at an Indian restaurant – or was it an I-Hop J Maybe we had meals at both. I certainly have memories of CE at both, and I think that was one of the only times we really traveled together.

I only remember a couple of things about the concert – one, that Siouxsie had really large thighs in her skimpy teddy/garters. It might have just been that they were so gothicly white that they looked larger from the audience. The other was that they kept shining these really bright headlights on us throughout the show. For the first couple of times, it was kind of a neat effect; however, after 20 or so times of getting blinded, it got downright annoying.

Circle Jerks - Reno, NV - June 24, 1988

The only reason this concert gets posted is because I still have the ticket. It’s a pretty simple ticket – just printed on yellow cardstock – no fancy promoters were involved apparently. I have absolutely no recollection of this show. I must have either been really drunk or it was just utterly forgettable.

But then again, hardcore punk was not really ever my thing. I had some Dead Kennedys tapes I copied from my friend DA and I liked some suicidal tendencies songs and Seven Seconds version of 99 Luft Balloons, but that was about it. Had I lived in San Francisco at the time, I might have voted for Jello Biafra for mayor. Heck, if he was running now, I’d probably vote for him for president. But that was about the extent of my hardcore existence. I’m not sure the Sex Pistols really fit into that category.

Depeche Mode - Cal Expo, Sacramento, CA - April 30, 1988

After we had traveled for Echo and the Bunnymen, it seemed only logical that we would make the far shorter drive to Sacramento to see one of our all time favorite bands live.

It was towards the end of my first year in college at UNR, and four of us decided we would make the trek over the hill to see Depeche Mode in Sacramento, probably the closest major city to Reno that had any decent bands coming through. I had been listening to Depeche Mode since I was 14 and pirated a copy of People are People from a friend of mine in high school. My boyfriend (and still a good friend) at the time, CF, was pretty rabid for them, after having seen them in Europe as well as driving down to San Diego the previous summer to see them during their Black Celebration tour.

Say what you may about Depeche – call them Depressed Mode or that they were new wave pussies or whatever, but I still love the songwriting in some of those old songs, Everything Counts, Somebody, Shake the Disease, I could go on and on. I guess by now at the ripe old age of 34 I have sort of outgrown them, but at 18 I knew every song and every idiosyncrasy of every album by heart.

I still love and often quote a lyric from “Blue Dress” – You can’t change the world. But you can change the facts. And when you change the facts, you change points of view. And when you change points of view, you can change the world.

Anyhow, we started out pretty early for the trip to Sacramento. You have to climb over Donner Pass from Reno to get there, and for some weird reason that late April day, it was snowing. Lightly, mind you, but enough to cause some slowdown in the traffic and question myself whether or not we would be able to drive back the two hours much later that night.

Cal Expo is an outdoor amphitheatre, so luckily, it was a warm spring day for the concert. The place was pretty packed full of black-clad teens with spikey hairdos and boys with pierced ears, which was still a bit unusual in 1988.

I remember the show itself being amazing to me. I actually got chills during a couple of the songs. I came out pretty energized and thrilled, and for many years later I considered that concert to be the best I’d ever seen and one of the most powerful.

I kept my Music for the Masses t-shirt from that show for well over a decade and wore it until it shrunk more to a kid’s size. People obviously still go for that stuff, since I was able to sell that old faded t-shirt on e-bay to a guy in Germany a few years ago.

Echo and the Bunnymen - UNLV, Las Vegas, NV - March 22, 1988

This was the first concert I ever traveled any significant distance to see (33 miles from Carson City to Reno doesn’t really count). We always loved Echo and the Bunnymen in high school and the cassette of Songs to Learn and Sing is one of the only ones I still have, even though I never listen to cassettes anymore.

This was one of those bands we thought we would never see live. A couple of our friends had moved to Las Vegas after high school and they had seen lots of cool concerts and we were jealous being stuck in Reno at UNR.

Lots of people who have never been to Nevada have always assumed I lived near Vegas. No, Nevada is big. It’s the 7th largest state in the union, in fact. The trip from Reno to Las Vegas is about 435 miles through some of the most desolate stretches of highway, nothing but two lanes and sagebrush. We knew it would be a long haul to make the trip, but we figured that it was worth it.

We drove out in my friend Kim’s car and must have set some kind of land-speed record for a Honda – we got there in 6 hours. In the middle of nowhere during the trip we got a big scare when a cop came out of nowhere, pointed at us to pull over, then proceeded to pass us by going around 100 or so. We sat there for a while waiting for him to show up then were very relieved when he didn’t.

The concert was on the UNLV campus at some fancy performing arts center. The whole place seemed so huge to us hayseeds from up north at the Reno campus.

Probably the stupidest thing I did was to not wear my glasses to the concert. I had these tortoise shell glasses that I mostly wore to drive and see the screen/chalkboard at school, and for some reason I thought I looked cooler without them. Yeah, sure, but I could barely focus on Ian McCulloch on stage. Oh well, at least I could hear the music.

My friend Kim had actually lied to her boss and said she had to go to a wedding that weekend and therefore needed Sunday off from her typesetting job at the newspaper. Ironically, now that I know him better, he might have even wanted to join us if he had known where we were going.

Oingo Boingo – Lawlor Events Center, Reno, NV – 1986/1987

For whatever reason, Oingo Boingo was one of the only bands who regularly came through Reno on their tours. I know I have seen them at least five times, but I only have one ticket – from their farewell tour I saw in San Diego.

The first time I heard Oingo Boingo was in the car (Al’s infamous Green Duster, to be exact) on the way to my second Thompson Twins show in Reno (referenced in the previous post). Afterward, I remember acquiring my first Oingo Boingo cassette, Nothing to Fear, at a pawn shop in downtown Carson City. My friend KR and I really wanted some tapes they had, and they would do a two for one straight trade. So we walked all the way back to my house (a good 30 minute hike) and back, with crappy cassettes we didn’t want in order to acquire the Oingo Boingo cassette for me and the Violent Femmes for her.

I also remember telling a friend of mine that I was going to see Oingo Boingo and a few days later she said, “What’s the name of that band you like? Hooga Booga?” We laughed about that for ages.

Anyway, the 1986 tour we saw must have been for the Dead Man’s Party tour. As reviewers on Amazon declare as well, it was a quintessential 80s album in my mind. Simple, catchy, fun songs, kinda dark and cynical at times, yet always fun to dance to. In 1987 they were likely touring on BOI-NGO, the weird album where they tried to change their name and get a little more serious.

I have scattered memories of both shows, and I’m not sure which is which. As for the music, Oingo Boingo was always tremendously fun to see on stage, tons of energy, great sound, a fabulous supporting horn section.

For both of the shows I was there with my same core group of friends that we always had together for such events. A few things I remember, randomly:

· One show my friend DA wore his Friday shirt – a nickname we had for his favorite Hawaiian shirt he wore every Friday. He loved that shirt, a nice brown and white simple design. However, during the concert, a girl who had a big crush on him grabbed onto the shirt and ripped it. He tried to sew it up, but alas, the Friday shirt was never the same again.

· During perhaps the same show, a bunch of us were waiting around outside to see if we could see the band leave. There was a guy we knew vaguely from school who thought it was really cool to shout “ASSHOLE” over and over again during the concert. We thought he was a complete dork, but evidently the band thought he was okay, because he got invited backstage. Go figure.

· The dancing on the floor could be pretty intense at times. One time I came out to catch my breath and when I looked down, my shirt was completely unbuttoned and I had been walking around with it wide open.

· Final random event – after one of the shows we went to the MGM (may have already changed to Bally’s by then, don’t remember when that happened) to eat at the coffee shop and hang out. While there, we saw the bassist from Oingo Boingo and most of us got his autograph. It amazes me that I can’t even seem to find that ticket in my piles.

Thompson Twins - Lawlor Events Center, Reno, NV - November 8, 1985

A little over a year after I first saw the Thompson Twins, they were back, supporting their new album, Here’s to Future Days. I of course had long before purchased the 12” single of Lay your Hands on Me, and I was again pumped to see them again.

This time I went with a new, cooler set of friends who knew how to prepare for a show. We left Carson City early in the afternoon and got to the concert hours early to wait for a good spot on the floor, since it was general admission. On the way to the show, we listened to Oingo Boingo on the tape deck. It was the first time I heard them, and I would go on to see them many more times.

While we were sitting there waiting in line for our spot, one of my friends decided we should go get something to drink to make the wait go by a little faster, and after all, it was November and we were cold.

So two of us walked up the hill a bit to the 7-11 to buy liquor. My friend had a fake ID, or I should say, a real drivers license that belonged to someone else. Funny thing was, the person in the picture had brown hair while my friend’s was blond.

In those days in Nevada, when you were under 21 your license showed a photo from a side view, kindof like a mug shot. When we selected our items and went up to the register to buy them, the clerk said, “Hey, that’s not you. You’re a blond.” To which she immediately and confidently replied. “Of course it’s me. I dye my hair. See?” She turned to the side, held up her hair so the clerk could see her roots, and convinced them that indeed she was the one in the photo. I think she was 16 at the time.

So, we came back triumphantly and warmed up all of our friends with a stash of booze. I think it was Bacardi.

Again, while the concert was great fun, I don’t remember much about the performance itself. I know that OMD opened for the Twins one of the times I saw them, however, I can’t remember if it was this show or the previous one.

Howard Jones (with Marshall Crenshaw) - Lawlor Events Center, Reno, NV - November 1, 1985

Reno didn’t get a whole lot of shows in those days, at least shows for your average discriminating new waver. So I had to wait over a year before one I wanted to see came to town again. This time I was at a new high school with a new group of friends, most with cars.

When my friend KR and I went to buy our tickets for the show, they only had upper level seats left so we were ready to sit upstairs. Then the clerk told us he had a solo seat on the floor. Without even asking Kim if she wanted it, I said, “I’ll take it!” and thus I had to sit down there in a seat by myself. A bunch of us went together, and KR sat with the rest of our friends upstairs.

I’m generally pretty shy, and I suppose much more shy then at 15. So I was a bit uncomfortable for a while, sitting in my seat all by myself. Marshall Crenshaw was kind of boring, mostly acoustic guitar and him singing, so for a while I found myself questioning my decision. Everyone just sat in their seats looking bored, no dancing or anything.

But when Howard Jones came on everything changed, I knew all of the songs and most everyone left their seats and moved up front to start dancing.

While I was up there I actually ran into someone I knew, BGA, who had graduated with JS and I had met a few times the previous year at various parties. My most vivid memory of BGA at the time was his yearbook picture that had him proudly sporting a republican tie. This time, however, he was tieless and dancing, having a great time. The girl he was with didn’t look all that happy to be there. I found out many years later that she was K, whom he later married, and it was one of their first dates.

Thompson Twins - Lawlor Events Center, Reno, NV - September 22, 1984

I was fortunate to have my very first concert be with what was at the time, my very favorite band. I started listening to the Thompson Twins in the summer of 1984, after I had finished my freshman year in high school. I don’t remember exactly when or how I was introduced to them, but I do remember hearing “Hold Me Now,” over and over on the radio, and listened to my little red cassette at home.

Sometime early that summer I also scored my first boyfriend. I started dating JS, who I met through my Catholic church youth group, early in the summer. He took me to my first real party, where we danced to Thompson Twins and Prince, I had my first real kiss, and subsequently puked in the bushes in the backyard after too much booze.

My parents loved JS so they let him take me just about anywhere, even though I was just 14 and he was 17. He had his own car, a cool orange VW rabbit, and we spent his days off that summer driving up to Lake Tahoe and listening to music, primarily Eurythmics, Depeche Mode and, of course, the Thompson Twins. I bought their second album, Side Kicks, and we loved it, singing along happily to songs like Lies, We are Detectives, If you were Here, etc. We especially loved “Watching,” for some reason, which now strikes me as a rather goofy song. Around the same time I also discovered that I could buy import 12” remixes of all their songs at the larger record shops in Reno and I was hooked, spending $8 to $10 for these cool discs with maybe 3 or 4 songs, and sometimes a bonus track. It was just the beginning of the tremendous investments I would make in music overall.

Needless to say, when the Thompson Twins announced they were coming to town, I was ecstatic. A year prior I was supposed to see my first concert, Billy Idol, whom my best friend KR adored; however, my parents wouldn’t allow me to go ‘cause I was too young, and realistically, none of us had cars to drive the 30+ miles to the show anyway. But with the Thompson Twins, I had it all, a date with a car, my favorite band, and permission from my parents.

My friends at school were also pretty obsessive. We counted down the days before the concert, hung pictures of the band in our lockers, and a couple of my friends even stalked the band as they walked around the shopping mall in the bottom of the MGM Grand Casino. They took a picture of the two key band members’ backs, touched things they touched, and probably giggled a lot. Unfortunately I missed that, but I did see the pictures. One of these friends would later jump up on stage at the actual show and get kicked out for her trouble.

My memories of the actual show are pretty fuzzy. I remember the excitement leading up to it, the crush of people as we pushed our way up front, and my thrill to see Tom Bailey up on stage with his red hair and 80s trademark, the long tail. I thought he was totally hot.
Some random stranger in the crowd gave Joe a joint. I wound up losing one of my shoes in the melee, and searched all over to try to find it at the end, only to see about 50 other shoes that weren’t mine piled up in the front after the show was all over.