Dramarama (with the Cave Dogs) - Lawlor Events Center, Reno, NV - April 8, 1992

I don’t remember too much about this show, really. Dramarama was one of those one-hit wonder bands, though I imagine the fans maintaining the websites would beg to differ. My friends and I loved “Anything, Anything” and I have probably heard it thousands of times at dance clubs, parties, in friends’ cars or in my own house. I had the CD at one point but I don’t know what happened to it. It’s still a great song, unfortunately it’s not on iTunes, at least not the Dramarama version.

The show was at Lawlor Events Center, but it wasn’t big enough to rate the actual concert part, so it was in a small meeting room, which was a bit weird. I don’t remember the Cave Dogs at all and I only remember their name because Paul writes everything down somewhere.

Public Image Limited (with Blind Melon, Live and BAD II) - Event Center Arena, SJSU, San Jose, CA - March 27, 1992

Big Audio Dynamite may have been the headliner for this show, but we really came to see Public Image Limited. I actually think this is the second time I saw them – I know they opened for another show I saw at Shoreline but can’t remember which one. Turns out the other two opening acts weren’t half bad either. Blind Melon with what was likely one of their only tours – the lead singer overdosed not too long afterward, and Live, who were really quite good and the show compelled me to buy their CD. (A random note – I like to include links in these blogs to the bands webpages, but how am I supposed to locate “Live” in google? There must be a billion entries. I’m stuck with an allmusic.com link instead.)

Johnny Lydon (formerly Rotten) has always been a pretty interesting character, onstage and off. I’ve always admired him and even read his autobiography several years ago which has always stuck with me, especially a breakfast he made once for someone he didn’t like. According to his website, he is now doing bug documentaries for Discovery Channel UK, and has announced that Justin Timberlake should play him if they ever make a movie of his life. Like every self-respecting wanna be punk in high school, I loved the Sex Pistols and saw Syd and Nancy way too many times. Who knew Gary Oldman would turn out to be such a great actor? Anyway, I digress.

In any case, Mr. Lydon was in pretty rare form that evening in San Jose and gave me and my friends probably our most memorable concert moment ever. We were close to the front, at least as close as we were comfortable in a sea of punk kids, so we could see him and the band pretty well. During one of the songs, he turned around, dropped trou, and gave us a nice look at his pale white ass. As if that wasn’t enough, he reached in between his cheeks and pulled out a tampon. We weren’t quite sure what was going on – if the tampon was really in there, or what, but in either case, yuck! He wiggled it around by the string and flung it out into the audience.

We fully expected the crowd to recoil from the flying feminine product. However, to our great disgust, people actually lunged towards it, trying to catch it. To which Johnny smiled mischievously and asked of the crowd, “Who’s got me magic lucky tampon?”

I remember this trip being a real haul. San Jose certainly felt a lot farther than San Francisco, especially on the way home. Luckily we only stayed for a couple BAD songs before we hit the road.

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!