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Me on LibraryThing Me on Last.fm
Let these bouts of rain we’re having continue, at least in some sort of manageable way. (Doubtless I’d be saying something else if I were living near the Angeles National Forest.) But they do make the mornings lovely in that the air, for however brief a time, scrubbed clean.
Then-current album: Steady Diet of Nothing
Opening act: that’s part of the story, really
Back of ticket ad: because when I think of Fugazi, I think of, once again, 97.1 KLSX, The Classic Rock Station. Don’t you?
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The wall of monotony these blue and white tickets had to have created when they were all on the bulletin board must have been even more dulling than I remembered. I was rather patient having that up for so long.
And…the show which resulted in me being made fun of for a while to come. You know who you are.
So a little context. First off, I was never a punk, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me at all. I learned about it, of course, but I learned about it in slapdash fashion, random mass cultural reference points. And aside from the Ramones and maybe the Dead Kennedys I knew even less about American punk as such than UK punk, such were my interests, such were my senses of continuity. By the time of this show I had long since internalized the Sex Pistols and the Damned, felt the Clash weren’t as interesting as their fans claimed they were (no change there), and had some sort of sense of groups like Crass and other acts on varying levels of fame (or more likely, non-fame). Beyond that, not really sure what I knew and what I didn’t, nineteen years back is a long while. Sure I knew what punk was anyway, they slam-danced and there were anarchy symbols and, um…yeah…
I suppose I’d already been to a punk show of some sort a couple of times — Agent Orange opening for the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Butthole Surfers/Redd Kross/L7 thing if you squint, Rollins at Lollapalooza, but it all depends on context and what it is and isn’t supposed to be and whatever. And I’d only just heard of Fugazi — I’d never actually HEARD them, I should note, but I had heard of them. I was vaguely aware of Minor Threat and the Rites of Spring as well, but mostly I just knew Fugazi by reputation, as this right-on band that were really dedicated to their fans, wanting to keep the ticket prices low as well as their records and CDs, and that supposedly were hellaciously great live. Reason enough to buy a ticket sight unseen (or song unheard) and so off I went with a slew of friends to a show where at the same spot two nights before I’d seen Ned’s Atomic Dustbin get the crowd going with their own moshing antics. I had a pretty good guess that things might be a little more random here.
But it was just a guess, and maybe on my own or maybe with some of the folks I was with — Steve M. and Kris C. once again for sure, though I’m positive most of KLA ended up at this show almost by default (again, cheap, but throw in Fugazi’s reputation as flagbearers for independency on all levels and there you go) — I ended up at the edge of the public balcony at the Palladium, though near the back wall of the venue as most of the curving flow of the balcony was already pretty well packed. The place in general was pretty well packed — the ticket prices were, again, nearly impossible to beat, so little surprise it was one hell of a turnout. The value of such a concrete demonstration of principle in action serves as its own statement — it’s almost a trump card argument, in that even if you didn’t think anything of Fugazi’s music (or even knew of it at all) then you could appreciate the stand being taken, if one wanted to read it that way. It was a rare thing in my experience.
By this time as well the full sense of romance, if there was such a thing, in the build-up to a show well turned into more of a general anticipation. As mentioned, so many shows were starting to come fast and furious — and the pace would soon quicken some more — that my entire senior year at UCLA would be a blur of show memories were it not for the tickets providing some sort of signposting. Everything was settling into a good general groove, for lack of a better description, even as curveballs could appear out of nowhere — as was going to happen here.
The playbill and/or flyers for the show had indicated that there were three bands all told, with Fugazi headlining. Somewhere I’d heard that they were dedicated to always giving good local bands a break so I was also interested in catching these equally unfamiliar names, just to learn some more and hear some more than I might otherwise. The venue was, as mentioned, pretty reasonably packed by the time the first band appeared, and they were…well, they were okay. They did their thing, it all sounded like the vaguely generic ‘oh right, punk…I guess’ stuff I’d heard over the moons in an extremely haphazard way, as noted before. There wasn’t really anything totally remarkable to my brain about it all, though I remember the lead guy got in some pretty big jumps, hair flowing behind him, and that there was definitely a vocal contingent there to see them. From the back of the venue it struck me more as timekilling whatever and so I patiently waited it out.
Eventually the second band took the stage and there were plenty of cheers for them — “Local favorites,” I thought — and they got into what they were doing pretty quickly. It didn’t take me long to realize something else as well — they were good. They were REALLY good. Some performers grab you with their sheer presence, others with the intricacy of their performances, others with something more — whatever it all was it was firing off on all fours here. The quartet began with a blistering drum-led introduction, so I seem to remember, and from there it was off to the races and a half, and all the cliches you could want had to have been coming to my mind. Two excellent singers more or less trading off lead turns — a bit like Ride, I might have thought — and the whole being something that wasn’t ‘just’ punk at all.
I had to have drawn comparisons to the Ned’s show two nights before in my head, because I remember thinking to myself more than a few times, “Man, if these guys are just the next opening act, Fugazi is going to have to COMPLETELY rule the roost.” It was almost shocking, it was just that spectacular. I appreciated these guys’ sheer style in the face of opening for one of the most highly respected and appreciated bands I’d heard about around that time.
So they wrapped up their set to plenty of cheers — and after a bit they came back. “They were called back for an encore?” I would have thought. “I’ve never seen that before! Damn!”
They started up with one song, then without a break switched to another, I was enjoying it completely and at some point the words of the chorus started to actually sink in a bit:
“‘1-2-3, repeater, 1, 2, 3, repeater.’”
“Funny, isn’t ‘Repeater’ the title of…an…al…bum…”
Yep, there ya go. I had seen an entire set of Fugazi on stage without realizing it was them. At. All.
Part of me had to feel completely ridiculous. Beyond description. Quite obviously I hadn’t said anything to anyone by that point — maybe I was on my own in the balcony, maybe I was just too into the show to say anything, who can say. But part of me had to laugh, it was so wonderfully ridiculous. Couldn’t've believe that had happened and yet, there it was, it had, and one hell of a crazy joke it was. I think I immediately confessed this to Steve and Kris after the show and I have no doubt they were looking at me as if I was nuts. (Or more than likely calling me a freak — which Kris still says to me to this day by way of greeting, bless her heart.)
But at the same time, it was really an enjoyable and unexpected experience. Sure I’d come in knowing Fugazi’s reputation but without knowing anything else about them, and without knowing it was them on stage, I was able to simply appreciate the quartet just as they were, and they were honestly, truly magnificent. Sometimes all the praise one hears isn’t hollow, sometimes it all comes from the heart because that’s exactly the kind of reaction they provoked in others. All that sheer power without being flailingly angry, all that appreciation for what rhythm can do just as powerfully as feedback if not more, it was a wonder to behold — and I don’t even think there was an incident of Ian Mackaye telling off the crowd.
So there were only two bands that evening, Fugazi and the much more generic but okay enough openers with the lead guy with the long hair jumping all around and all. I worked out what their name must have been and filed it away in the same mental storage bin as so much else.
Which enabled me, about three years later, to scratch my chin a bit and go:
“Wait…so the band who was really the opening band that night was…the Offspring?”
At least it didn’t take me that long to work out who the headliner was.
Then-current album: Doubt
Opening act: Ned’s Atomic Dustbin
Back of ticket ad: oh 97.1 KLSX, you and your classic rock ways, because it was ‘real’ music and because it would last, and it wasn’t like you were ever going to play any new stuff that might come out from bands from, say, Seattle any time soon. Not at all.
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Sometimes the thing that surprises me the most about the individual tickets are the prices of the shows on them. For the life of me, this far away from it, I can’t tell if $19.50 was too cheap, too expensive or just right for the time.
Meantime, the show of repeat performances, but on different — arguably brutally different — arcs.
This could I suppose be considered a sequel to both the earlier entries on these bands, on both Jesus Jones and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. The time of the show tells me that this was *that* month — something with both preordained returns to the charts and the unexpected first time appearances soon to follow. Released that month: Guns’n'Roses’ Use Your Illusion, Nirvana’s Nevermind. Released just before it: Pearl Jam’s Ten (with Metallica’s Metallica not far behind). Released just after it: Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger. RAWK, the month of RAWK, lots and lots of RAWK, etc. etc. etc. Etc.
The presumption that history has now forced on the time is that of the great readjustment, the perceived recognition of ‘oh wait, there’s also this going on too.’ That said the real shock that month came courtesy of what happened at the end of it, when Garth Brooks’ Ropin’ the Wind crashed in at number one; following NWA’s Efil4zaggin earlier that year also topping the charts — and lest we not forget, Skid Row’s Slave to the Grind similarly going straight to number one soon afterwards — it was the clearest success of Soundscan as some sort of barometer of measuring taste via immediate fan reaction and ‘actual’ sales, as well as the first full validation of what is now considered clear orthodoxy in some corners: that American popular music (English language division) can be essentially defined by shifting hierarchies within country, hip-hop and metal/hard rock, plus the mutable category of pop as the overarching field that draws on all three, its own open sense of what a hook can be, and goes to town. An exaggeration, hyperbolic, but not too far removed from a perceived truth.
Not that I cared about that at the time. I was just a college student who DJed on campus radio and read Melody Maker. What was I supposed to take away from all that, beyond judgments from thousands of miles away?
I think I had suggested to Angela — my date at past shows like the Kitchens of Distinction and Tin Machine — the idea of seeing Jesus Jones a while beforehand, having enjoyed that first go-round that year very much. She knew who they were and was up for it; not sure if she knew about Ned’s Atomic Dustbin but they were only just starting to get a little more traction. And that is indeed exactly what they were getting; “Grey Cell Green” was — just — mentioned in similar contexts as songs like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” at times that month because it was starting to get KROQ and MTV attention to a larger degree. Within a couple of weeks the comparison would seem ridiculously absurd and from the vantage point of history completely unbelievable and yet, there it was.
I was all jazzed up, no question — both bands had put on great shows that year, Ned’s not just six weeks before this date, and by this time I knew the drill with the Hollywood Palladium as a venue, so with whatever else I had on my plate at that time — the start of my senior year at UCLA, planning my applications to grad school, much more besides — I think I treated this show with less overt anticipation and more ‘hey, bring it as it comes’ attitude. So the time swirls by and a couple of weeks after Tin Machine’s promo show here it was back to the salt mines of long waits outside, getting frisked by security and making sure not to trip on the sunken step on the way down to the main floor.
The first sign I knew something was up was the appearance of a slew of people wearing Ned’s shirts around me — more, in fact, than I recall seeing of Jesus Jones. Perhaps not too shocking but I think at one point I asked myself if everyone who had attended their previous show had come to this one, because it sure seemed like it — the memory of three guys moving their way up to the front of the crowd, hands on each other’s shoulders in a line so they could keep together, all wearing individual Ned’s shirts, sticks with me. Bromance before its time or at least the coining of the word, though I’m sure the three in question would have reacted badly to any term applied, even if it was as simple as ‘male bonding.’
They were there to mosh, though, that much was clear as soon as Ned’s took the stage. Arms and legs and bodies once again, and if it wasn’t the first time I’d seen it it was definitely one of the most frenetic. Something tells me that enough people had might have already seen the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video, but I’m not sure — it had just been released to radio a week beforehand — and something might have carried over from that. Might — again, it wasn’t like everything was suddenly invented right around that time, but things were about to be codified and presented to a much wider audience, and such behaviors were going to be not merely expected but somehow required.
That all said, though, the other thing that was apparent was that Ned’s were on fire — they absolutely KILLED. I’d seen plenty of good opening bands before but this was the first demonstration of the principle that the opening band should go out there and win people over as if they were the headliners, to not take the job of opener lying down or too politely. It wasn’t like they were trashing Jesus Jones over the mike or anything, but it clicked — they had a friendly crowd, it always helped, but they played damn well, put on a show, “Grey Cell Green” had the place going completely nuts. Angela and I were watching from the center of the floor at a safe distance from the flailing limbs and had a great time with the show, all the thunderous applause and cheers at the end well deserved. We wondered if Jesus Jones were going to be able to top that, but I had to have said something about that killer show they did at UCLA — we decided to watch from the public balcony and decamped there.
But Jesus Jones never quite got it going. It was a good enough show, but something of the unhinged, of the moment edge when they had performed earlier in the year, riding the wave of the number one song placement and all, had perhaps understandably dissipated. It was a little too slick perhaps or, more likely, the band were just a little too tired. The punishing nature of touring — especially if you’re either still scrabbling on the way up or just trying to maintain at a certain level — may be its own cliche several thousand times over but it’s still no joke when you’re trying to get from one side of a big country to another and back again, and maybe Ned’s were able to combine being the new if temporary chart wonders with an inevitable freshness to their advantage — something that came to mind at a later time when I saw Ned’s yet again, but that’s for the future.
So in the end the show wasn’t either a splendid success nor a washout, however much it was biased more to one group’s advantage in the end. It was ‘just’ a show of the time, one of the many I’d attended and yet attend, taking place during the month when the musical world changed or seemed to but which didn’t seem that way to me. I couldn’t be surprised by either band’s set any more except in terms of energy or intensity or whatever it could be called, but I could at least say it was an okay night out with someone I liked. Talk of musical revolutions and all that aside, that’s all that one really needs.
And that’s how my afternoon went out on a whale watch run — no whales seen, alas, but some dolphins turned up, too quickly for my camera to catch. I did like how even as the waves were choppy these guys were just literally above it all (but the bird was above even more). A full set of photos here.
The recipe here comes courtesy of Ina Garten — there are a slew of potential recipes out there, notably from Jacques Pepin, but this one sounded sharp enough. The pastry itself was a premade pie crust in this case, so it was halfway between the tart as Garten describes it and what I made, but it still worked very well — the other major change was the use of strawberry jam from Avanti, as I had no apricot jam to hand.
So the idea for this came from a recipe with the last basket called ‘easiest Armenian potato bake,’ though honestly the only thing that seemed even slightly Armenian about the recipe would be the paprika. I didn’t have that around but I did have some cumin, while the shredded soy cheese was something I’d bought recently just to experiment with a bit. End result was basic but tasty, and half of it I’ve saved for dinner tomorrow to boot.
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1/8 cup peanut oil
4 1/2 cups raw diced potatoes
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 small onion, chopped
1 tablespoon parsley
shredded cheese to taste
Stir all ingredients together carefully and pour into a greased casserole dish.
Bake at 325*F (160*C) for 1 hour or until potatoes are tender and top is golden. Add cheese ten minutes before cooking is finished.
I’ll preface this entry by noting that while I’ve been running each entry off a ticket — thus the name of the series — not every show I’ve seen is one where there was a ticket or where one was saved. If I tried talking about each of those I’d rapidly get lost in the weeds, not being sure of dates or tours or more, but there are some shows that do deserve a little mention here and there. This is definitely one of them.
It was fair to say that everyone in the apartment at UCLA was David Bowie-obsessed. We were all music freaks to one extent or another — myself, Steve G., Jen, Xana — and we all definitely loved Bowie, each in our ways. Our collective answering machine message (and there’s a phrase that I just realized is utterly dated) had as its backing music “Suffragette City” (for the “Oh Henry get off the phone” bit, you see), and by the summer of 1991 I had rapidly kicked myself several times over the fact that I’d missed his appearance at Dodger Stadium the previous year for what he’d claimed was his retirement of his back catalog. Amazing what I fell for at that time.
Somewhere along the way I joined a fairly well-organized group of Bowie fans centered around a zine called Sound and Vision. Somewhere around here I’ve still got the back issues and their obsessive coverage of that 1990 tour, and always enjoyed each issue as it appeared. At some point in early 1991 the word surfaced following said tour’s conclusion that Tin Machine was due to release another album, and while I admittedly regarded the first album with a bit of hesistancy, hey, it was Bowie nonetheless, and now something more was due.
I can’t recall the exact circumstances, but at some point I received a flyer announcing a contest via the zine. Turned out that Tim Pope, known primarily for his string of videos for the Cure, was going to be directing a promotional concert appearance by the band to help launch the album in late August, with the resultant footage to be screened on ABC’s off/on again In Concert series, which played late night either on Fridays or Saturdays, I can’t remember which. The contest was designed to allow a number of fans to attend the show, each with a guest, with the caveat that while the zine could guarantee the passes, one would have to pay one’s way to get out to LA as needed. Since I was already there, I leaped at the chance and sent off my entry, whatever it involved, and crossed my fingers.
I was hanging around the apartment some weeks later — pretty sure it was something like late July — when the phone rang. It was one of the zine editors, introducing herself, and I almost immediately guessed, “Wow, I must have won! Why else would they call!” So I was pretty charged up.
Turns out things were about to get more charged up than I realized. As she explained, while the contest had attracted plenty of interest, not enough people had been able to book travel to LA to fill all slots. The upshot:
“Send me as many names as you can and they’ll be on the guest list.”
I think my jaw dropped.
I immediately booked all four of us at the apartment for this and promised the editor I’d get more names when I could. I remember when Xana came home later that day and I explained to her what happened the look of happiness when I made it sound like I’d won tickets turned to sheer shock and full-on squealing when I said, “So you’re definitely going to see David Bowie!”
After that it was a matter of getting a hold of friends. A LOT of friends. The numbers rapidly multiplied, as I contacted people, a lot of whom were fellow concert veterans I’ve already mentioned. Steve M., Kris C., Eric J. Lawrence, Angela, Kirsten, Aaron, David S., Jason, the list kept going and going and more and more people were added to the list over the next few weeks. It rapidly became a thing, and I seem to remember leaving phone message after phone message with the editor, or sending out letters or something — I had only just gotten an e-mail account through UCLA around that time and didn’t really appreciate what it was then, so this was about the only way to get the word going. I was crossing my fingers and hoping for the best but everything I heard back said it was okay — and to keep adding names. Clearly they wanted a hopefully obsessed crowd for this thing (who could blame them?).
The day arrived and all we knew was that we were supposed to meet at the Forum in Inglewood. I forget how we all got there but we did, in any number of cars and combinations, milling about a bit and dealing with demi-officious types from the label or the network or whatever trying to coordinate this thing. We were then separated into groups and put in chartered buses for wherever we’d be going for the show. I can’t recall who all was in my bus but it was me and my roommates, Angela, at least a few others, plus other hyperfans who’d ended up in this thing via the zine or wherever else. A BBC reporter was interviewing at least a couple of fans for radio coverage as we drove along, and the whole thing felt pretty fun. At some point we’d learned that this was going to be done at LAX, but we weren’t exactly sure where beyond that.
Then it happened. The bus stopped on some seemingly random street corner, the front doors opened, there was a slew of excited chatter near the front of the bus…and Tin Machine walked on.
Honestly I think there was a moment of shocked silence, then the cheers and applause began. Yup, Bowie was there and he happily made his way down the aisle, doing a bit of gladhanding as he went. I honestly think I was too bowled over to react, I just remember staring at him as he walked past our seats with a smile, looking towards someone he recognized in the back of the bus, and just turning to my roommate Steve G. in the seat behind me. He had a gaping shocked smile as we looked at each other and I have no doubt that was exactly how I looked too. Whoa my god, Bowie was RIGHT THERE.
He ended up sitting and talking with the BBC reporter a seat or two from us, and at one point signed an autograph for the then recently released collection Early On, Rhino’s handy compilation of all his earliest singles in the run-up to his full debut in 1967. Yeah, I was jealous of whoever got that. Lots of chatter and sometimes whispered conversation with my group and all around us — we couldn’t NOT talk about him but we didn’t want to be, you know, in your face or anything. Not at all.
Damn, it was Bowie, RIGHT THERE!
The location of the show was indeed at LAX, located near the edge of the whole complex where they’d built a little stage that ended up framing jets landing in the background (from side to side, not directly head on, for rather obvious reasons). When the bus arrived we all bundled out, Tin Machine heading off one way to get ready and the rest of us directed to a stage area where a number of folks were already. Sure, they might be closer, but hell, we’d just been on the damn bus with Bowie, we did NOT care. It wasn’t a huge crowd anyway — two hundred people perhaps, something pretty small along those lines — and while the whole thing was a made for TV experience and we were essentially unpaid extras (I don’t even think they provided water), hell, were we caring? Not at all.
I remember being with Xana, Jen, Eric and Angela in the crowd as we were facing nearly stage center and after whatever introductory hoohah there was Tin Machine took the stage and broke into a brief set of songs, mostly from the second album about to come out but concluding with “Heaven’s In Here” from the debut. It was a fine enough performance, not deathless — much like the band — but not bad at all. The rhythm section of Tony and Hunt Sales did their thing — though Hunt’s blooooze vocal assault on “Stateside” was definitely one of the more unlikely things Bowie’s ever dealt with, so I’m glad that was a one-off — Reeves Gabrels looked like the son-of-Fripp guitar geek he was and Bowie, well, Bowie. There ya goddamn go. The man was a pro, and the weird tension between trying to create Sonic Youth-referencing art noise and working his listener-friendly way as a frame to it all was all part of the experience. It wasn’t a sprawling mess of a rock show, he was just too polished for that, and he’d already seen it all anyway. Somehow the romp through Roxy Music’s “If There Is Something” made sense as a result, turning a song from the group seen to be one of his few real rivals in the seventies in his own nod and random celebration; it wasn’t the creative weirdness of the original by any means but it was a good enough bar-band-gone-high-fashion rework.
Near the end of the show Steve M. and others appeared, explaining that somehow they’d been delayed by who knows what weirdness on the organizers’ end, so they unfortunately had missed most of the show. I remember feeling pretty bad for them and still do, it shouldn’t've been that way! After it ended we all bussed back to the Forum, but most of us immediately went over the apartment — we’d noticed that there were local ABC news crews around as well as the actual camera people, and our hunch was right: there was a short story about the show on the news broadcast that evening at 11. I am pretty sure you could see the back of my head in the crowd at one part, but unfortunately the tape I made’s misplaced so unless something turns up on YouTube or the like I’ll never know.
A few weeks later, at around the same time Chris Roberts published an extended article about the show in Melody Maker (at one point described the surreally wonderful experience of getting to sit around backstage with Bowie as he tuned his guitar for a bit), the show was broadcast and most of us reconvened in the apartment to have pizzas and beer and whatever else and see how it all turned out. The Tin Machine footage was intercut with someone Bowie mentioned in a bumper was one of his own current musical favorites — Morrissey, from the show that became the Live at Dallas video release. I was (and remain) a fan, as were a number of folks there, but others gathered at the apartment not so much, so the range of reactions was amusing to say the least.
What there was of the Tin Machine set played was fun enough, most of the songs aside from “Heaven’s In Here” took a turn, with the final song broadcast being “If There Is Something.” At one point Xana swore she saw herself and after it was done we rewound and rechecked the tape a few times and yep, there they were — Eric J. Lawrence doing a little dance in one corner of the frame, showing the stage and the crowd in front of it up and from the side, and next to him Xana and Jen, watching Bowie’s every move on stage and with a huge smile on Xana’s face in particular, pure happiness through and through. Who could blame her?
Can’t seem to find this footage anywhere on the Net yet, sadly, but I’ll keep looking. So no ticket, nothing tangible from that experience — but damn, was that ever cool.
I liked how last week’s question turned out so since Wednesday has been my regular ‘break’ day for this whole thing I’ll make this the day for this whole deal.
So my question to you all — what was your worst concert experience? I don’t mean simply that the band sucked — maybe they were great. But the overall experience was THE worst, the crowd was horrible, parking sucked, you got hurt, something bad went down — that sort of thing.
Then-current album: God Fodder
Opening act: Swervedriver
Back-of-ticket ad: 97.1 KLSX, “The Classic Rock Station.” An incredibly logical sponsor for a tour featuring two bands that weren’t more than a couple of years old each.
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I like how the ticket promises an ‘open dance floor.’ It is the Roxy, so that it is true and all, and yet something about the idea doesn’t quite work.
So, the band that I had to hope would be good just because of their name.
I think I first heard about Ned’s Atomic Dustbin through one of the Melody Makers I irregularly purchased in 1990 — somewhere in one of them was an ad for a UK tour and, well, of course I would notice the name. I couldn’t NOT notice the name. I had no idea that the band had taken it from an old Goon Show episode — the first part’s here, and the rest is online as well — and for all I knew it was some joking reference to a friend, or there was a guy named Ned in the band or who knew what else. As up to then the only Ned I knew of at all beyond myself was Ned Beatty the novelty of the band being called that was more than enough.
Around March I read a review of God Fodder in another Melody Maker and completely missed the joke of the album name. Completely. COMPLETELY. In fact I think it took me years to realize what the joke was, which somehow makes sense with a lot of things in my life and how I completely zone out and miss them (and I’ll have the ultimate concert story about just that in a few entries from now — and trust me, that one will have you wondering if I’m just insane). But the review made the band sound good and gave me some sort of context to deal with, but beyond that, I either hadn’t seen their earlier singles or things around or if I had I didn’t recognize them for what they were. It took the American release of the album a little while later, along with the domestic release of the “Happy” single, for me to finally get around to them and listen and go “Hey, that’s not bad. Pretty fun, actually.”
Which it is, still. I haven’t listened to them in years upon years, but then again you could say that about a lot of the bands I’ve been talking about, memories all inculcated and burned into permanence, however fuzzy with time. What the band did seemed randomly fun and jumpy and all over the place with a weird lineup featuring two bassists that only sounded like one bass and a whole quick fuzz/pop/punk/whatever thing that was all kinda goofy. Jonn, the lead singer, might actually have been the secret weapon in plain sight the whole time — his low, almost flat but still engaging singing was the kind of thing you could call conversational and have it meant, it sounded like a guy talking about whatever in a fashion that wasn’t artless but wasn’t demonstrative either, an unlikely guy for anthems who sang them anyway (which is what “Grey Cell Green” sounded like then and now, so there).
So the point was that they seemed worthwhile to check out, and it also helped that Swervedriver were opening — by this time I was fairly conversational with the whole ‘Creation = shoegaze’ supposition, and even though Swervedriver were approaching it much more from a reworked Dinosaur Jr. context, drawling vocals mixed with a romanticized Americana, it made sense to hear them through that lens. I’m not sure if I had actually heard them yet, though — Raise was a little ways off from an American release still and I’m not sure I’d heard the early EPs yet.
Nonetheless, another show at the Roxy, a nice nighttime show instead of an all-day roast in the sun, two bands I was up for, the rest had to follow and so a few days after surviving Lollapalooza there I was in much more confined surroundings. Steve M. was with me again, as well as EJL and maybe Kris C. and a few other KLA folks, not sure. That and a bunch of people in extremely bright T-shirts, but more on that in a bit.
For Swervedriver I remember sitting back with some of the folks I was with at a table and just watching and getting the sense of them. Sure in retrospect I should have gone up front but hey, I was saving my energy, I figured. I remember being impressed by the general shagginess of them all — I don’t think they were the hairiest band I’d ever seen but they were up there, dreads and all. “Deep Seat” is the song I remember most from the performance, just the elegant way that everyone in the band seemed to tradeoff and cycle through their parts, each guitar bit, each time the bass came to the fore, a gentle cycle.
There’s somebody I remember more, though. Where we were sitting wasn’t at the edge of the open floor but further back, so there were a few tables in front of us. At one of them were these three people, two guys and one woman, pretty unremarkable and for all I know they were just out like us for about the same reasons, into music, into UK bands, whatever. But this one guy of the two, whoever he was — didn’t look out of place or remarkable or anything — had this bizarre, stupid habit. It seemed like every two minutes or so, more for himself than who he was sitting with — maybe — would break into this ‘yeah, smooth drums!’ air routine where he would close his eyes and drum along with Swervedriver, no matter the pace of the song. In fact, he wasn’t really drumming along with Swervedriver at all, but he was just doing his tasty drum lick in the air or whatever it was meant to be.
Now this wouldn’t have been remarkable at all if he only did it a couple of times, and god knows I must have my own unconscious habits at shows. But this guy wouldn’t seem to stop, he was addicted to this weird move. Maybe he was a real drummer and had to do that, maybe he was a frustrated drummer and could only do that and nothing else (and maybe not even that). Maybe his friends humored him. Maybe they weren’t his friends. I do remember pointing him out to my tablemates and none of us being able to figure out his deal. Whoever he is, I hope he is happy wherever he’s at now, drumming away to the heavens in those random competitions you see on YouTube.
That left the Ned’s show and the T-shirts. For all that pretty much every band had their own merchandising down by that point, whether on club level or arena, there was this subset of current British bands that were seen to be defined by a few things: T-shirts, strange haircuts and leaping around a lot (see also Jesus Jones as discussed earlier, and we’ll yet see them again). Ned’s pretty much had that down to a science, and if I had every T-shirt they put out my closet would probably be full. (I did order a lot of their T-shirts over time, though — again, the name. I HAD to, me being me.) I’m pretty sure I somebody wearing the shirt that read, in this format:
ABC
DEF
UCK
One of their best, “FREE PEE-WEE HERMAN,” didn’t come out until a certain arrest a few weeks later. I ended up picking up a fairly basic shirt that read “DID YOU MISS” at the top of the front, followed by the band logo on the rest of the front. If your answer was ‘yes,’ the back of the shirt provided the answer: “THEN YOU FUCKED UP.” True. Impudent admittedly.
So I went near the front of the stage for the show and they all bounded on stage and everyone in the audience started bounding about and pretty much it was nothing but flailing and legs and hair for the next hour. Perhaps strangely, perhaps not, the song I remember most of all was “Terminally Groovie” thanks to its frenetic stop-start pace and the way that Jonn would beckon the audience into screams and cheers at the end of each chorus — all worked nicely enough even as I was looking around to make sure I wasn’t clocked in the head by a random body or three.
At some during the show a woman who was out with her friend somehow glommed onto me as some sort of guard against all the chaos. Why she thought I was much of a guard I’m not entirely sure, given I’m not exactly built like a linebacker, but we ended up talking in bursts a few times during pauses in performance. Friendly person but that’s about all I can recall, except that her friend seemed a little frightening and surgically enhanced so I was glad I was talking with her instead.
And from there to the end of the show home, sweat-soaked and smoke in my hair from all the cigarettes, the usual feeling I would have coming back from shows for the next few years. It was about this time I definitely learned how much of a smoke trap long hair is — something nobody tells you before it happens to you for the first time.
Full line-up from the top: Jane’s Addiction, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Living Colour, Nine Inch Nails, Ice-T, Butthole Surfers, Rollins Band
Back of ticket ad: 75 cents off a steak fajita melt from Jack in the Box. Oh don’t tempt me. Really, don’t tempt me. Don’t catch my attention at all. Go away and die.
–
Browning, ragged but oh so clear, this ticket, telling me to be rebellious, outrageous, to take the day off — which would have been easy since I wasn’t working on Sundays anyway.
And yes, this show, this festival, this whole thing, the whole kit-and-caboodle. And here we go into ‘the nineties,’ I guess.
It wasn’t like there hadn’t been some sort of high profile alternative festival of some sort before in America — and I’m not talking about Monterey/Woodstock/Altamont/etc, that was old, that was something people went to before I was born. Dismissive and somewhat snotty of course but that was the point, I remember the only kind of nostalgia fest in 1989 about it being the twentieth anniversary of Woodstock that I enjoyed were the Randee of the Redwoods ads on MTV. But there had been, as I mentioned in the Charlatans entry a while back, the two Gathering of the Tribes festivals in 1990 organized by the Cult, and little surprise that it took a band who had been through the far more well established festival tradition in Europe to prompt the idea of an equivalent over here. It may not have received national attention but it did capture the imagination, and was the role model in my head.
And it wasn’t the first package tour that had come through and made a mint in my own memory. For me that was the Monsters of Rock in 1988 — Van Halen, the Scorpions, Dokken, Metallica and Kingdom Come, quite the quintet to scratch one’s head at now. I hadn’t gone but I knew plenty of people who did, so none of that was surprising, that one could get a bunch of acts together and take it all nationwide and make something out of it. Putting it and whatever alternative was meant to be together in one place at one time *and* taking it on the road, that was the stroke of some kind of genius or marketing elan or bookers’ backroom agreement or whatever it was.
I’m trying to remember the perspective among those of us who went. That was a group of at least three — myself, Steve M., Kris C., all KLA people, all duly sarcastic about many things, all intrigued enough by the idea to get tickets as soon as they went on sale, all rather dulled to the idea that this was supposed to be something deep and meaningful. Mostly I think I was looking forward to this as a chance to see some bands again — the Buttholes, NIN — some bands for the first time, especially Siouxsie, who had become a massive fan of in the previous years, and one band for the last time, or so I thought. Jane’s Addiction had already started going on about how they were going to be breaking up shortly and this tour was the swansong, this was it. (I seem to remember at least one friend of Steve’s saying that they had to already be planning a reunion at some point — whoever it was, I salute you for your perspicaciousness, because it was more on the ball than mine.)
So more than anything else, that’s what I was looking forward to, that and the to-me novel experience of a full day’s show in the sun at a venue I’d never been at before. I vaguely recall getting together what I called a ’summer goth’ outfit, given that Siouxsie were on the bill and all — which I’m pretty sure consisted of a black T-shirt of some sort and black shorts. Hey, it was hot out (and it was, and while I salute the full-on goths that DID go in the full outfit down to the last spike of the hair and all, you were all collectively demonstrating why I could never go that route around here…it is too — damn — HOT). Thus dressed up (or down), I joined up with Kris and Steve and off to Irvine Meadows, as it was called back then before Verizon bought everything.
Steve had done Irvine Meadows shows before and thus warned us in advance about what he called the Bataan Death March between the parking lot and the venue itself — time makes it seem like more of a slog than it was, but the heat would have made it a slog even if it was a distance of fifty feet. Built into a hill looking out over the flat terrain of east Irvine and the El Toro air base, the venue itself wasn’t anywhere near as huge as Dodger Stadium but it was still a pretty impressive sight for a first time visit. We had ended up getting seats in the grass section at the back, probably at Steve’s suggestion, meaning we brought along a towel or two for sitting on and claiming a spot more or less in line with the stage on the steep grass section as noted. Bright sunlight, a distant stage.
Down below in a little sort of courtyard area we’d passed by a vague collection of dispensers of some sort of clothing and food and the like down below, which probably made me think more of the similar sorts of people I would see with their booths at UCLA every so often. The crowd trickled in as it did and so did bootleg T-shirt sellers wandering around — and I picked up two, as they were both of better quality than the official T-shirts being sold (which featured a terrible fractal design that looked nothing like the design that had appeared in the print ads for the whole thing). I had god knows how much sun block on and the three of us relaxed and chatted away and listened to the announcements from the KROQ feed coming through and generally shrugged our way along through till, as Steve said, “Grandpa Hank” showed up.
Thing was that the Rollins Band, Butthole Surfers and Ice-T sets all kinda blended into each other. I’d seen the Buttholes already, I knew Rollins’ own solo work vaguely, and Ice-T was, well, Ice-T — EVERYONE knew who he was, even if you had the albums and singles or not. But the memories of the heat and shimmer and general ‘I think I don’t want to move all that much’ impulse meant that it was all this undifferentiated flow of stuff from down below, no matter whether it was Rollins going on about things or Gibby and crew once again doing things with sirens and vocal distortion and Ice-T introducing a new little project of his called Body Count that would yet be heard from some more. If it was a dawn of a new era, it just felt…hot. As noted. Though I do remember two gothed-up women happily grooving to Ice-T down in front of us, which felt about right somehow.
And then as things were sorta/kinda drawing towards late afternoon and the shadows were sorta/kinda starting to stretch out some, a whole bunch of fog appeared on the stage — to our general amusement because it just didn’t quite work. Nonetheless there had to be some sort of atmosphere going and Trent Reznor wandered on, singing the song “Now I’m Nothing” I’m pretty sure but I’ll probably get corrected there by someone along the line. For the first time I remember the crowd actually getting pumped up, people coming into the audience area to stay rather than to rubberneck briefly and then leave. We were all fans and we loved it pretty well, even if some of what was on stage looked a little familiar from our various past times observing Mr. Reznor at work (“Okay he’ll tackle the keyboardist right about now…”). But for the first time in the whole day there was an actual energy, a reason to be there, rather than a sort of sense of ‘well this is all an interesting experiment I suppose.’ Then again that was probably just my head talking.
Living Colour was enjoyable too — I’d liked the band for a few years, Vivid was actually one of the first CDs I bought back in 1988 — but I admit I was thinking that this would be a good time to get a burger or something. It’s a bit of a sad fact but I wasn’t the only one thinking that — still, I caught a good chunk of the set, including what remains my favorite song by them, “Type.” Siouxsie and the Banshees was way more to my interest and, happily, by that time it was actually dark and the stage lights needed to be on. They were touring for one of their most uneven albums, Superstition, but even that had a killer single in “Kiss Them for Me” which made up for the dull stuff like “Got to Get Up.” (Based on one the Twice Upon a Time singles collection they also did a lovely version of “The Last Beat of My Heart” but I admit I don’t remember that at the time.) Combine that with a rip through “Peek-a-Boo” that was an understandable audience hit given how it had owned KROQ three years back and what I’m pretty sure was the conclusion, a fiery “Dia de Los Muertos,” and there was, once again, an actual sense of full energy at work.
That left Jane’s. By this time we all had to be a bit tired and exhausted; even with the sun fully down and night settled in it had been a long day by default thanks to the lack of shade and the general sense of not wanting to move or do much — and two to one says this is a large part of the reason why I’ve never been to Coachella yet, but that’s another story. And I couldn’t be surprised by Jane’s now as I had been earlier that year; like NIN or the Buttholes I had a context to draw on. Still, I was figuring that knowing that they were that good — and that they were playing one of their last hometown shows, as the tour had only just started and was going to make its way across the country from there on out — that the show would be a barnburner.
So it proved, even if it was the familiar touches that hit the hardest — “Been Caught Stealing” completely beating the heck out of the recorded version, “Three Days” being the monster anthem that it always was, “Jane Says” getting the crowd singing along. Lights and glowing skulls and all sorts of Mexican-inspired art everywhere on the monitors, what looked to be a bunch of people going insane down in the pit, it was all a way to see things out, whatever sort of vague only-clear-in-his-head vision Perry Farrell always had for how huge Jane’s should have been or how huge they were going to be or whatever it would be. I’m sure there were more rants about this and that during various midsong breaks, maybe even something about the following year’s election but I doubt it.
It couldn’t have felt like it was going to be the start of something at all, it felt like it was going to be the end, a definitive one. The end of Jane’s and then things would just keep going from there in musical life, up against ‘the mainstream’ or whatever it was supposed to be. There wasn’t a feeling of rebellion in the air at all, there was just a lot of exhaustion at the end of a long day, waiting for the parking lot to clear some so we could leave and make our way back north. I’m sure Kris and Steve and I just talked our way through all that and back up the freeway. Lollapalooza would go on about the country and then…
Who knew?
