A Week of Concerts in 1994

If someone were to ask me what my favorite concert experience was, I’d not hesitate to answer a week in 1994.  It’s all about semantics when asking questions.  I was amidst my big explosion of my musical appreciation from a musician standpoint, and this week had me going to 3 concerts that I anticipated each and every one for different reasons.

The first Concert: Nine Inch Nails / The Jim Rose Circus / Marilyn Manson

This was my second time seeing them on this tour, but the last show was not all general admission, so I was looking forward to not sitting up high to keep tabs on everyone’s t-shirts.  The arena itself was an ok size (a little smaller than the venue we had seen them at before). The acoustics seemed a little harsh – but who really cares when you’re as close to the stage as we were?

Marilyn Manson was the first opening act, and they had begun to take off in-between the last time we saw them and this time.  Most of the people on the floor knew many of their songs, so the crowd was definitely much more into it.  The pit was pretty rough.  There was some weird stuff happening on stage, but we were having fun.

The Jim Rose Circus was as entertaining as always.  Pretty much the same show as in Muncie, but much closer this time.

The NIN show was very similar to the last show.  But the experience of being up close completely changed it for me.  I came and went from the pit depending on the intensity of the song played.  It was a surreal experience being in the pit during the movie-screen portion of the set.  I had to step out of the pit for a few after I got a minor case of vertigo from looking up at the large screen and moving with the pit.

The show was better than Muncie, and I left quite drained from the pit.  I bought two gallons of water at a gas station on the way home that evening – one to dump on me and one to drink.  It was a fitting way to end the week.

The second concert: Helmet / Quicksand / Orange 9mm

As soon as I hear that Helmet was on tour, I wanted to go.  When I heard Quicksand was with them, I HAD to go.  I was (am) a big fan of their (then) current albums.  I went to the show with two great friends who were at the NIN concert as well.

None of us were aware of any other attached acts, but we thought there’d be one.  None of us had ever heard of Orange 9mm but their tone and ferocity took us, and the crowd by storm.  Minor pits started up from time to time, but nothing that didn’t fizzle out due to the crowd not being completely developed.  It was still more than good enough for two of us to pick up their CD immediately after their set.

Quicksand came on, and you could tell that there was a decent amount of crowd anticipation.  I was so looking forward to seeing them, but their set was only so-so.  Partially because they didn’t quite pull off the meticulous nature of their recorded music, and partially because there was a decent portion of the crown not really into them.

By the end of their set, we had worked our way up to about 2-3 people behind the barrier just barely left of center. We set up camp there until Helmet came on.

The crowd was very much anticipating their arrival, and when the first song hit its stride, the crowd up front just exploded.  Jumping and moving with their trademark stop-start style that gave a rhythm to the crowd.  The pit intensity picked up with the harder, more driven parts of the songs.

It was one of the better performances I’ve been up close at a general admission venue to experience.  I would have waited around after the show to try and meet any of the guys, but the next day I had that pesky thing called school and another concert to go to at the very same venue.

The third concert: Fishbone / Weapon of Choice

The previous summer was my first Lollapaloza experience.  Right in the midst of the lineup was Fishbone, which I was already a fan of because of the wonderful album The Reality of My Surroundings.  It was a great experience, and I jumped at the chance to go see them in a smaller, more intimate venue.

My two friends from the Helmet/Quicksand concert were going as well.  What can I say, We had a lot of overlap in our musical preferences.  My then girlfriend came along too…  She was on the brink of being very ill with the flu, but she really wanted to goregardless.  We got there early enough to be up against the stage.

We were all very impressed with the showmanship of the opening act, Weapon of Choice.  They were a perfect fit to open for a band like Fishbone, but their studio albums weren’t good enough for me to follow up on it.  It still ramped up the audience pretty well.  It was getting crowded up front, and my girlfriend was beginning to run a higher fever.

Fishbone coming out was a lot of fun.  For those of you who don’t know, it’s a larger band with a horn section and all.  They have quite the selection of stage attire, and stage persona that make the concert experience very fun.

I specifically remember hearing many of the more popular songs from The Reality of My Surroundings.  Notably “Fight the Youth”, “Everyday Sunshine”, and I think I remember hearing my personal favorite “So Many Millions”.

The concert was going well, but my girlfriend was feeling more and more dazed.  Not only was she sick, but she’d never been to a concert with a mosh pit in a small venue.  I ended up standing behind her with my arms locked on each side to keep her from getting swept away or pressed against the barrier.

The concert was probably between 1/2 and 2/3 of the way done when everything ground to a halt.  The drummer (Philip “Fish” Fisher) stopped and made everyone else on stage stop the song.  He began talking into his mike with the intention of getting the crowd riled up.  He basically called out my girlfriend (even pointing directly at her with a drumstick) for looking dazed and not as into the concert as he’d like her to be.  We were shocked, horrified, and appalled (myself more so because she was a bit out of it from the fever).  We immediately extracted ourselves from the crowd and left.

I’ve listened to their music some since, but I’ll never support the band again after such a display of calling out a fan in the middle of a set for the complete wrong reasons.

It was a downer to end the week on, but not enough to diminish was was what I look back on as “the week of concerts”.

177 on 8

I golf a little now.  I used to golf a lot, back in high school.  This is an account of my hole in one and I felt compelled to do after taking a nice picture of the ball…

So yeah, I was on the golf team for three years in high school.  A few things to note.  First was that I was required to wear a hat during matches to cover up my non-standard hair color (purple was my favorite).  Second was that I was kicked off the golf team for a practical joke involving Ex-Lax.  That’s a blog for a different time…

Anyway, I went golfing after school with two of my best friends one fall/winter afternoon.  It obviously wasn’t golf season.  It was something to do.  Because I haven’t head from either in a long time, I don’t want to use their names.  So I’ll call my friends Mr. H and Mr. T.

Mr. H was on the golf team with me, and Mr. T was just a friend in common that liked to play for fun.

So we went to play at Saddle Brook which was just a nine-hole course at the time.  Saddle Brook is on the west side of Indianapolis and I’d played there a lot since I had a brother that lived on the course.  But it was just a round for fun, and we were playing like it.  Not taking ourselves seriously and enjoying the activity.

I was playing about average for me.  two thirds of the way through I was headed for my usual score of around 42-44.  Mr. H was right there with me, and Mr. T was way up there.  None of us really cared about our score because it was all about fun.

I found a ball on hole 7 (now hole 16), and laughed out loud because of the corporate logo.  It was a Beanee Weenee logo golf ball.

When we got to 8 (now hole 17), I checked the yardage which it claimed as being 177 on the card, but I thought it was at least 10 yards short.  It’s a cheeky little hole with an elevated, two tier green.  I grabbed my 7-iron and threw a ball from my pocket onto the tee box.  In my usual style, I just set up and hit it without teeing it up and with no practice swing.

Mr. H and Mr. T were both still getting their clubs and one of them asked where my shot was heading.

“Right for the green” I responded not thinking much of it.  It looked like a good placement.  One of them asked where it went.  “I think it went in the hole” I responded.

Without them hitting their tee shots, we all ran up to the green and jumped up with celebration at finding the ball in the hole.

sad

Bad day

I thought I had left the sleepless night and pensive morning behind until I sat down for dinner with my wife. The local news was ending, and there was some image of a small plane in a body of water. She had just gotten off the phone with her mother and we began to enjoy our Mow & Johnny’s take out when the phone rang again. Like anyone else, we don’t like being disturbed during dinner. But it was my father, so we answered the call.

He was calling to ask if I’d seen the news, and when I told him I had just turned it on he informed me that the father of a high school friend was killed in a plane crash. My old friend was seriously injured, and his mother was also in the plane and also injured, but not seriously. Not only was I in the same graduating class in a small high school, but we also lived close to each other. I spent a decent amount of time at his house, and vice versa. We drifted away when college started.

I’ve spent the last few hours trying to let all those that I know who have had any connection to the family know, and I finally have a chance to let it sink in. I don’t think it has at all. I can’t imagine what it’s like for anyone in the family.

I’ve never known how to really deal with death. Does anyone? I’m no stranger to having loved ones passing or being there for the passing of a friend or family member. I just don’t know how to process it. I’ve never been able to. I can go along and function fine in the wake of this type of tragedy, but it’s something that stays with me for years whether I like it or not.

defrag

Yeah, woke up 3 hours ago and couldn’t sleep. So I turned on my aging desktop to attempt to clean some hard drive space. I wound up coming upon a host of emails from ‘95-’96, and I’m having rush of memories.

This was a not so great time in my life, but my friends helped me pull through some nasty sh*t. Many of the emails I came across were ones that meant enough for me to actually keep them. What has made me pause is that most of these emails came from people that I’m not in contact with for one reason or another.

I do this from time to time. I’ll find something that takes me back to times of old, and I’ll wonder why things happened the way that they did. Inevitably I’ll write it off to growing apart or whatever conflict may have happened, but there’s always a period of remembering how things were. In today’s case it a odd mix of bitter, fond, and even gut wrenching.

Hubbard and Cravens take me away!