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.
