STAMP ON MY HAND

I was thinking about some of the random shows I've gone to over the years and thought that might make fodder for a new post. Therefore, I now present to you...

SEVEN RANDOMLY AWESOME SHOWS I'VE GONE TO (in no particular order):

1. U2(9/22/87 at Sullivan Stadium, Foxboro, MA)- Where it all began. My first concert. Joshua Tree tour at the height of my U2 fandom. My 13 year old mind was blown by this show even though I was too short to see the stage. I remember them starting the set with "Stand By Me" and ending with "40" wherein the whole crowd continued to sing the refrain "how long..." for at least 10 minutes after the band walked off. My older brother and his friends brought me to the show, and afterwards we had to search for his drunk buddy Lance who got lost in the crowd.

2. REM (9/16/89 at Great Woods in Mansfield, MA)- Though I was never a huge REM fan, this was probabaly when I liked them the most. It was the Green tour and unfortunately the Indigo Girls opened. But that mattered little to my friends and I as we swigged some sort of mystery alcohol out of a Sprite bottle and paid them no mind. A song or two into their set it started pouring rain so we bought cheap plastic ponchos that did nothing. At some point one of us discovered that if you took a running slide down the lawn at Great Woods(this was a "summer shed" venue) the poncho acted as a sled of sorts. We had created our own little Slip N' Slide and had a blast getting completely drenched and drunk. Too bad the temperature dropped when REM took the stage. In the end we were forced to huddle together to keep warm over the distant strains of "Finest Worksong" and "Fall On Me".

3. MORRISSEY (7/3/91 at Great Woods in Mansfield, MA)- When I went to see one of the Morrissey comeback shows last year I knew it could never touch this one. My Morrissey-obsessed friend Nicole waited out all night to get 2nd row tickets and was kind enough to offer me one. Moz was amazing, the band rocked, and Nicole got to storm the stage and hug her idol. Afterwards in the parking lot she cried tears of joy.

4. THE MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES (1/25/92 at The Paradise in Boston, MA)- An all-ages matinee show at the best venue in Boston where I saw so many great shows. Now you can hate on the Bosstones all you like, but in Boston in 92 they were the best live band in town. Hell, this was the first show I stagedove at! Perhaps even better was when Dickie Barrett held out the mic for me to sing on a song I had to shrug and say I didn't know the words. He just smiled and said "That's cool" and started singing again. At one point 15-20 people including me and my friend Rich stood on the stage dancing. I'll always remember exiting the club into the frigid January night covered in sweat.

5. JAMES BROWN (1/17/97 at Lowell Memorial Auditorium in Lowell, MA)- This was at the height of my funk phase and I just had to make a visit to the altar of The Godfather. The sucky thing was that the crowd was predominantly lame white people in their 40's and 50's that didn't want to dance, unlike my friends and I. The best part was when my friend Scott, high on some pilfered Ritalin and beer, was told to "sit the fuck down" by some old fogey in a suit. Scott turned around and screamed, "Fuck that! All of you need to get up and dance! It's fuckin' James Brown!!!" That was sweet.

6. MORPHINE (3/11/97 at The Paradise in Boston, MA)- This was the last Morphine show I ever saw before Mark Sandman died. They played a killer set, but it may have been a bit too much for my friend Scott(yes, the same guy). He had a nasty fever and passed out in the middle of the show. We were right near the front of the stage and a couple girls helped him come to with a cup of ice water. We later found out that one of them was Mark Sandman's girlfriend.

7. PRINCE (7/12/2004 at Madison Square Garden in NYC, NY)- 6th row. Prince. Need I say more? Ok, one thing. He ended with "Purple Rain" and since it had been raining that day everyone took out their umbrellas like lighters and waved them back and forth. It was silly, yet absolutely beautiful.

So there it is. I put the list together by digging through a little box I keep of all the tickets I've colllected over the years. Yes, I am a dork. It's unfortunate that many of the shows I've been to never even gave me a ticket to remember it by. Or I was on some list for it. Some day I hope to be as hard core as Jenny and keep a list of every single show I've gone to. Until than my beer soaked memories will have to do....