Tori Amos (with A Man called E) - The Crest Theatre, Sacramento, California - September 3, 1992

After Paul and I left San Francisco, we headed back to Sacramento for our second free concert of the day, Tori Amos. Paul’s boss, Dave, had won the tickets from a radio station in Reno, I believe it was the X, and he couldn’t swing the Thursday trip up to see the show.

We were very nonchalant about Tori Amos and in no hurry really to get there. In our minds, she was another slightly whiney female singer akin to those who were all the rage at the time, and the fact that the X was giving away the tickets didn’t make it any more credible in our eyes. Paul described the X as all Rickie Lee Jones all the time. Today, when I look at their playlist, I chuckle when I realize that I like most of the bands they play.

We wound our way back from San Francisco and into Sacramento, stopped at the Beat and Tower Records to shop, went to dinner before the show at Eppie’s (yummy toll house cookie bars!) and basically took our sweet time finding and getting to the Crest Theatre. Once we got there, we (well at least I) felt kind of silly because the show was sold out and there were people milling about outside trying to scalp tickets. Those folks really wanted to see the show, and here we were, ready to just blow the whole thing off. Dave’s name was on a list of folks that were supposed to be let in for free, and for a few minutes we were sweating it because they didn’t want to let us in at all. I don’t really remember how Paul convinced them, but I suspect it might have had something to do with his press pass, and we were in.

We missed all but the last 3 minutes or so of the opening act, A Man Called E. The few minutes I heard sounded pretty good, but who knows. The place was silent and dark and completely jam packed. We had to go all the way to the top of the theatre and sit on a carpeted bench of sorts at the top – not really seats. We had a few minutes to look around during intermission, to notice that the place was probably 80% or so women, most of them together, which is fine, of course, just kind of a shocking ratio for two dorks from Carson City. The lights went down finally and Tori came out and sat at her piano and sang for a good couple of hours.

The concert was the most serious of any I’ve ever seen. Everyone was so silent, so reverent, that it was like sitting in Mass. All of this seriousness made the two of us giggle like little schoolkids for the better first half of the show. The fact it was so quiet made it really difficult for us to keep from cracking up. I’m not sure what we were saying to each other, but it was damn funny at the time.

At some point though, I really started to get into it, and so did Paul I think. She really is a beautiful songwriter, and the power of her with just her piano was unmistakable. By the time she sang, “Me and a Gun,” I felt like a turd for laughing so much. And by the end of the concert, I was hooked and bought her disc pretty quickly after I got home. This is one of the first shows I can remember that changed me from an almost non-fan to an almost rabid one, in a couple of hours. Pretty remarkable, I’d say.

They Might be Giants - Union Square, San Francisco, California - September 3, 1992

A couple of months earlier, during their show at the Warfield, the two Johns announced that they were planning to come back in September to do a free show in Union Square. I heard that and all, but I didn’t really pay as much attention as Paul did – he must have written it down or something. In any event, in September, Paul was ready to drive up again for the day to see TMBG again, this time for free, a Live 105 sponsored lunchtime show.

I still really wasn’t working at the time, so since this was a weekday, it wasn’t a big deal for me to spend another day on the road to see a show. Probably most other folks who came to the show were there on their lunch hour from their jobs on market street or the financial district in San Francisco. Paul and I, well we just drove up from 250 or so miles away.

The whole day was one of those perfect ones where I have retained almost crystal clear memories, at least of the important parts. We had to leave pretty early in the morning to get to get to the city on time and to make sure we got the right kind of parking. I think this was the first time I had ever been to Union Square, at least as an adult. The weather was sunny, warm yet crisp with that hint of fall that I love so much. We got there early enough to get in line to get autographs – Paul got one from Flansburgh and Linnell. I seem to remember that we split it up – one before the show and one afterward, but I’m not especially sure. I’m sure Paul will correct me since he’s probably the most active reader of this little blog.

Union Square filled up with plenty of people that day – and there were also lots of folks at the windows at nearby offices watching and listening, which was pretty neat. The show was great of course, a smaller snapshot of the earlier show we saw a couple of months ago with at least one new song thrown in. It was great to dance like a fool outside with lots of sunshine and breathing room.

After the show, we didn’t head right home…but we did go to our second free show of the day. But I’ll leave that for another post.

Peter Murphy - the Warfield, San Francisco, California - July 11, 1992

This was my third concert in California in less than a week, and it was starting to take it's toll on me - as my dad calls it, burning the candle at both ends. I started getting sick in Reno before we even left town, but there was no way I was going to miss Peter Murphy live, so I tried to power through it.

The former lead singer from Bauhaus, was definitely worth suffering for in my mind. I had a few Bauhaus albums in high school, after all, they one of if not the original goth rockers in the 80s. While there are a lot of Bauhaus songs I like, I probably like the offshoot bands better – Love and Rockets, Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, Daniel Ash..etc, with Peter Murphy being my favorite. I have always loved his voice and he has that gaunt thin white duke thing going on. Much like David Bowie, he still looks virtually the same now as he always has. Maybe those two go to the same plastic surgeons.

Once again, I went to the show with PCH and CF. We took my car, but I don’t think I drove at all, even on the way up. It was also at the Warfield, but this time, instead of crowding down at the front of the floor, we took seats upstairs in the balcony. It was a very mellow show, which was fine with me since I felt horrible. I sucked cough drops through the entire night and was pretty irritated by all of the smoke around me.

Rather than going home that night, we stayed at CF’s mom’s apartment in Dublin. The most vivid memory of that next day was as we were leaving town, CF was driving, and PCH was in the passenger seat. We were at a stoplight with the windows rolled down, when PCH declared out of the blue, “I just can’t stop farting.” CF and I were a little shocked, but not as much as the guys in the truck next to us.

Before we left town, we went to some camera store in San Jose so PCH could buy stuff. On the way home, I slept feverishly in the back seat. I think I must have slept the entire five hours back to Reno. So ended my week of three shows…and I think I learned my limits for late nights and road trips.

They Might be Giants - The Warfield, San Francisco, California - July 7, 1992

A mere five days after driving up and back to see the Cure in Sacramento, we drove the extra couple of hours into the City to see They Might be Giants for the first time.

I am pretty sure this show was just CF, PCH and I – I don’t remember anyone else joining us. In any case, it seems that would be appropriate because other than Depeche Mode, I don’t think there is any other band that unites our friendship like TMBG.

When we all first started getting CD players, CF bought a copy of Lincoln, their second album, on a whim at the CD store across the street from my condo in Reno. I am not positive, but I think it might have been the first CD he ever bought – and if it wasn’t, it was in the first five or so. To this day I’m not sure why he bought it, I guess he heard one of the songs somewhere and thought it was cool. We were all college students, so it took a while to really start building up a critical mass of discs…needless to say we listened to that disc constantly for several months.

TMBG were different from any band I had ever heard before. Silly lyrics, goofy music, just generally happy, fun stuff to hear at any time of day. Listening to it for the first time was very bizarre – after listening to all these tragically hip, gothy 80s bands, hearing lyrics like – “We’re going down to Cowtown, the cow’s a friend to me. Lives beneath the ocean, that’s where I will be….I’m going to see the cow beneath the sea,” was kind of a relief in a way. Plus the two Johns were just plain cool. They used to (and perhaps still do) have a Dial-A-Song answering machine you could call in Brooklyn any time to hear some snippet of music or perhaps even a real new song. They didn’t look or act like rock stars; they were just two geeks with Macs having a good time.

A year or so later, during one of our road trips to the Beat in Sacramento to get music, PCH brought along his CD stereo (or ghetto blaster) in the back seat of his Subaru wagon and he bought the new TMBG album, Flood, and we listened to it a couple of times just on the trip back to Reno. That is the album that made TMBG famous – with Birdhouse in your Soul, Istanbul Not Constantinople, and Particle Man – and we listened to it to death. I think to this day I probably still know most every lyric from Lincoln, Flood and Apollo 18 and can recite them on demand. There’s a lot of construction around here lately and the other day I caught myself singing “They’ll need a crane” to myself.

This was also my first show at the Warfield, which is a pretty cool theater on Market Street in San Francisco. It was kind of strange, there were a lot of tables so it made it hard to crowd up to the front to dance, but we managed. I remember there being a really diverse crowd for a concert – people of all ages, shapes, sizes and styles. Lots of geeks and misfits too.

The show was a blast, of course, and definitely lived up to our expectations. Towards the end we learned they were going to come back for a free concert in Union Square in the fall, and PCH locked that away in his memory bank. It was the first of several TMBG shows for me, and even though I haven’t followed their music much these days, I would never hesitate to see them live anytime, anywhere.

The Cure (with the Cranes) - Cal Expo, Sacramento, CA - July 5, 1992

I graduated from college in December of 1991 and for most of 1992, in the last year of George I’s lame duck presidency, it was very difficult for me to find a job. The combination of the recession, Reno’s lack of opportunities for new advertising graduates, and my fear of moving away on my own kept me from full employment.

In the meantime, I did have a job of sorts, I freelanced at the Reno Gazette-Journal for their Neighborhood Newswatch column. It was one of those jobs where you get about what you put into it. I didn’t really ever want to be a newspaper journalist – I had decided that a couple of years prior, but the reporting was pretty easy, and if I played it right, I could get by with about five hours a week of work.

All of this let me have a lot more fun that summer, for example, this week in July of 1992 when I saw three shows in California in six days.

The Cure was the first of these shows. Again, I don’t remember a whole about the show. I do know that we pushed our way to the front of the stage and I got covered in bruises on my already pale skin. I had a doctor’s appointment that week and I think the doctor was pretty concerned and found it hard to believe I had gotten all that abuse at a concert.

They were supporting “Wish,” with one of the silliest songs on record, “Friday I’m in Love,” and I wasn’t too thrilled to hear the songs on that album. Afterward, I bought the requisite live and greatest hits discs, but really stopped following the Cure’s new stuff for good.