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.