You Thought You Had All The Answers

A drive up to Chicago from Peoria for a band that does not play ska

Sharon and I drove up for this one. I remember it being really cold, but I also remember it being at the RIV so what do I know? Parking over there was never easy and we had to walk a bit. The show was pretty packed, as it should be, and we were both super excited to be seeing Social Distortion.

After the show we were sort of milling around and I found a shiny silver winter coat on a bench. I remember thinking whomever left it was completely insane for leaving it when it was so cold (and they owned a silver shiny coat so....). 

Yes I Be

I had no intention of going to this show....

I lived in the dorms my freshman year of college and I became friends with a lot of the girls on my floor. They were all different from each other and yet a lot of us bonded over being away from home for the first time, being excited about boys and classes, getting drunk, whatever. I was very good friends with the two girls who lived in the room next to mine. One of them was super into all kinds of stuff (aka hip hop) that I had never been into for no other reason than I lacked the exposure to it. My friends didn't necessarily listen to it and the radio stations that I listened to didn't play it. I was missing out.

My neighbor friend convinced me to go to the De La Soul show with her. She didn't have anyone else to go with her or she wasn't super comfortable going alone, some reason like that so she convinced me to go with her and I am so glad I did.

This show was so much fun, one of the most fun times I've ever had seeing any music anywhere.  Despite feeling like a complete idiot, I danced a ton, laughed a ton, smiled even more. De La Soul was great. The sound was...well, we were in a field house...

Best show I've ever been talked into. 

Talk Is Cheap

I don't hate the Toasters. I don't actively listen to them or anything but I don't have the same negative reaction to them that I do to some other ska bands of this era.

This blog is making it very difficult for me to forget that I listened to ska. Lucky for me my brain remembers nothing. The proof may be in the stub but that's all I've got.

We drove up to Chicago two weeks in a row for these ska shows? Huh. 

ugh

I have absolutely nothing to say about this.

Never Can Make A Clean Break

This stub is difficult to read. It says Download

This show happened mere days after I left for college, which means I drove up from Peoria for it. I have this feeling, but no concrete memory, that Mateo was responsible for this. I mean, I can't imagine ending up here without him. I owned one cassette tape copy of one Download album.

Sometimes I think I Forgot About You

Apparently the friend who drove me to this show didn't really want to go so we ended up leaving after Drill played.  If I could go back I would have stayed. 

I ran into an old crush, who had repeatedly broken my heart, at this show. I didn't want to leave but also didn't want to put my friend out who drove me there so we left early and went to see our friend's band called Skazilla play. 

Remember the days when all your friends were in ska bands? 

I'll Just Press My Luck

Another stub, another show I remember nothing about. 

I can't even make anything up about this. How did I end up seeing Voodoo Glow Skulls so many times?

Fighting, Learning, Saving, Burning

I would be the worst concert reviewer ever. I guess I would take notes if I did this sort of thing for a living and not wait 15.5 years to write my article.

I did write in my journal that Pennywise was there and "boy were they good." I also said that during Unwritten Law a security guard slammed a kid against a wall so the whole band jumped off stage and fought him. I, apparently, thought this "was the coolest." Yeah, that's my exact quote. I'm guessing that was the end of their set.

The internet told me that the lineup that year was: Face to Face, Dick Dale, Down By Law, Fishbone, Fluf, 311, Blink-182, Beck (really???), CIV, Dance Hall Crashers, Deftones, Rocket From The Crypt, Mushroomhead, NOFX, Pennywise, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The Figgs, The Alkaholiks, Unwritten Law

I remember basically none of it.  I wouldn't have remembered Unwritten Law's melee had I not written about it and kept my high school journals. I am continually amazed by how much I suck at this.