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.