I'm So Glad You Remembered

I wish I remembered more...

This is my first time seeing The Cure and I wore my prom dress. Why? Because I was a strange teenaged girl and seeing The Cure was an event worthy of a prom dress. Obviously.

I was always jealous of my brother and his friends, who were at one of the shows at the Palace that they used for Show. I was too young to tag along so, even though I listened to The Cure daily, I had to wait.

I'm trying to remember details, really specific ones, about this show so in an attempt to jog my memory I'm listening to the album they were touring on that year, Wild Mood Swings, right now (or I was when I started this yesterday. I'm now listening to Disintegration. It's still not helping me remember anything other than it's a far superior album to Wild Mood Swings. Anything Wish or earlier is, really). Some of the songs aren't my favorite, which might be giving them too much credit, but overall it's not a terrible Cure album. There are some gems on there.

I remember wishing they had have played more off of Disintegration and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, which were in heavy rotation in my tape player(!) at the time. Looking at the setlist that I found for the show makes me wonder what I was really expecting. I mean they must have played for around two hours and, although they played almost all of Wild Mood Swings, they did a pretty good job of playing stuff off most of their albums, except for Faith and Pornography which aren't represented at all. I would love to see this show again today.

I bought a bootleg t-shirt off a guy in the parking lot. It's about four sizes too large. I still have it somewhere in a drawer.

The setlist:

Want
Club America
A Night Like This
Push
Lullaby
Dressing Up
This Is A Lie
Mint Car
Just Like Heaven
Let's Go To Bed
Jupiter Crash
Round & Round & Round
Inbetween Days
Strange Attraction
Fascination Street
Return
Treasure
Trap
Prayers For Rain
From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea
Bare
Disintegration

E1:
Lovesong
Friday I'm In Love
Close To Me
Why Can't I Be You


E2: 
Charlotte Sometimes
Play For Today
10.15 Saturday Night
Killing An Arab

E3: 
Boys Don't Cry
A Forest

Conditioner Is Better

I'm not sure that this even counts, but it's in the pile so it got scanned and here it is.

This experience was not pleasant. It basically consisted of Brenda and I being harassed and called "freaks" or "dykes." We both had some portion of our hair shaved, half of mine and all of hers. We were most likely wearing mostly, if not all, black, a lot of black make-up, fishnet may have been involved. I don't know. All I remember is that wherever we went we were ridiculed and stared at. A year or two before this some of my friends and I had become slightly/ridiculously into Adam Sandler movies. I guess we never thought about who else may enjoy him, like stupid ass holes who made fun of people who didn't wear khaki shorts and baseball hats all the time. I'm not sure we stayed the whole show because there's only so much a person can take. We spent a lot of the show holding hands and pretending to be lesbians. I mean, why not mess with them if they're going to be so ignorant. 

Runnin' Frantic Without A Clue

Oops. This is way out of order.

This show happened in 1995.  At some point in my life I put all of my stubs in a box in, what I thought was,  chronological order. Being an imperfect human I make mistakes. So, yeah, this show is from 1995 not 1996.

The scan of this stub makes it look a lot more in tact than it actually is. In real life it looks like it could disintegrate at any moment and it's difficult to see who the band was. It's really amazing that the scanner at work did such a good job with it. I love that this stub looks like this because it means that as it sat in my back pocket it got destroyed by my concert enjoyment.

Is It Coming At Ya Live

I forgot about this show

Therapy? was the opener, a band that I completely forgot about despite the fact that I used to listen to them and found a cassette single(!) of theirs while unpacking my apartment last week.  Girls Against Boys were a band that a lot of my friends listened to so I liked them by default. I think I have a better appreciation for them now than I did back then. 

I Heard Them Once Before

My very first official 18 and over show...fitting since my only snuck into 18 and over show was also the Whigs....

This was my first of, what would turn out to be, very many shows at the Metro. My brother and I drove down to Chicago for this and I don't think we spent the night.  We just drove down, watched them play and then drove back to Novi, getting there very late/early the next day. It's a good thing that live music energizes me. 

I Must Confess I Love It All

I believe this is the only time I saw the Afghan Whigs at the State Theater. It was right around this time that they were having some success and it felt odd to see them at such a large venue (even though the Phoenix is bigger than the State, outside is just different).

I get this feeling, kind of a high, when I see live music performed by bands that I actually like. I could be having the worst day, be sick as a dog or more depressed than I ever thought possible and I leave feeling like everything is perfect, that I have enough energy to stay up for hours and that life has just a little bit of meaning. Maybe that's an exaggeration but not much. At that time the Afghan Whigs were the epitome of this feeling. There was/is something about Greg Dulli on stage...no matter how much older he gets or if he gains a little weight, he just has this swagger or something. I can close my eyes and picture myself at 18 standing as close to the stage as possible, yelling every word and never taking my eyes off him.

They announced two reunion shows next year and I'm prepared to pay a lot of money to see at least one of them. I've gotten so used to the Twilight Singers, a band I absolutely adore, that it will be weird, in the best way possible, to see a full on Whigs reunion. 

His Name Is Kid

And happy day before my 18th birthday to me. I think this show was my idea. Maybe I thought it would be funny?

You want to know what three things do not go together?? My teenaged gothness, Meaghan's punk rock girlness and Kid Rock fans. This show was a disaster from the beginning. What Meaghan and I were thinking I have no idea. It's possible that I was, um, trying to expand my musical genre experience or something.

Even pulling into the parking lot we just knew that this wasn't going to go well. I remember walking from the car and feeling like everyone staring at us like we didn't belong. In all fairness we really didn't. I mean, I didn't listen to Kid Rock, not then or anytime after that (being subjected to him while playing darts doesn't count). The kids there made fun of us, we made fun of them. Meaghan was successful at making a game out of it, talking up the random Kid Rock fans. I mentioned in my journal how I thought she was being ridiculous but at the same time totally hilarious.

We didn't stay for the whole show. I'm not even sure that we made it through one Kid Rock song. It was pretty sonically miserable in there.  As we were leaving we ran into a kid who really wanted to go to the show but didn't have the money. We felt bad that we had no desire to see Kid Rock and had tickets and this genuinely nice kid (with questionable music taste) really wanted to see him and couldn't afford it. We gave him $5, which feels like a lot when you're working 20 hours a week making $7 per hour. 

I Want Something More

It's another one of those shows where I remember nothing. This is days before my 18th birthday. It's funny what your brain retains and doesn't...or I guess how much my brain hasn't.

If I had to take a guess it would be that I hoped for a lot off Against The Grain, as I was in love with that album at the time. I maybe went with my brother. Stupid brain. 

Destroy Us Or Make Us Saints

I  was almost not allowed to go to this show. I would have missed a good one

I used to never get sick and, until I started drinking, I never threw up but for no reason at all on this day, while at a journalism conference instead of school, I lost my lunch, so to speak, and had to be picked up by my dad and taken home early. My parents were pretty lenient with me in general but did have a rule that if you didn't go to school you couldn't go out after school time. I had to do a lot of finagling to get them to allow me to go see Ministry with my brother despite the fact that I left a school-like non-school activity early. I most likely went over my mom's head and appealed to my dad. He was always easier for me to convince.

Let's use the excuse that I wasn't feeling well and not that we thought we might get the shit beaten out of us to explain why we didn't stand on the floor near the stage. Instead we stood on one of the riser levels just behind the floor. From there we could actually see and not get punched in the face (or so we thought).

Those levels got pretty full and if you were lucky enough to get in the front of one you were against a metal rail. It's only natural to hold onto said rail that you're pressed against because you can't put your arms down or you'll hit the person in front of you on the level below.  I was busy enjoying some of my favorite Ministry songs when the guy in front of me start rocking back onto my hands. Being the sassy 17 year old that I was, and by sassy I mean bitchy and self righteous, I started to push him back off my hands. At some point he decided that he wasn't so into that and turned around swinging (at least this is how it went down in my mind). Luckily my brother was paying attention and made up for trying to push me into the Grand Canyon when we were young, pulling me over toward him and out of the way of this dude's fist. I think he felt like an ass hole, almost hitting a young girl, and stopped hitting my hands with his back.

Beards, Buffalos & Bows and Arrows

New Years Eve 1995. I was 4 months into being 16 and having my driver’s license. That night there was no other place my long haired, hard rock lovin’, stupid teen self would have rather been then in Detroit seeing the Motor City Madman, Ted Nugent, perform at his 10th annual Whiplash Bash concert.

Many things made this show special. First, my friends and I drove ourselves to the show. It was one of the first times we were able to do so without having the embarrassment of our parents dropping us off. Second, this was probably the first time any of us teens had been around so many drunken fools in one place (which made for great people watching). Third, we were seeing a local legend at a legendary local venue, Cobo Arena.

Like the Nuge, Cobo Arena was iconic with Detroit music history: Concert albums by KISS (Alive!- Including the iconic arena photo on the album's back cover), Bob Seger (Live Bullet), Journey (Captured), Yes (Yesshows), The J. Geils Band (Blow Your Face Out), and The Doors (Live in Detroit) wereall recorded, in whole or in part, in the arena. We were thrilled to be seeing a show there ourselves. Chills.

When the Nuge took the stage, the first thing that surprised me was the length of his massive beard. As he explained some point into the set, we were many months deep into Michigan hunting season, and as any Midwestern man knows, you grow a beard to keep your face warm during the snowy months. Ted was just following protocol.

To everyone’s pleasure Ted pulled out all the stops those who love him have come to know and expect. He only had some 30 years to perfect his stage craft at that point including : Shooting a hanging guitar with a flaming arrow, swinging from a vine in loin cloth, and riding a goddamn buffalo out on stage while ripping a shredding solo! It was basically a Nuge greatest hits show, so every song you wanted to hear was played… at ear bleeding volume! Even the Damn Yankees showed up at one point and took the stage to play a song with Ted. (bummer part of the night). Yet the crowd ate it up. That’s Michigan for you.

Right before midnight the countdown took place and as soon as the clock struck 12 fireworks shot off for what seemed like ten minutes straight. When the smoke cleared Nuge busted into Stranglehold and my face was crushed. What a time.

Wow, it was almost 18 years ago!

-Rollin’

Geoff