Cloaca Melodia

Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ   This was one of the most fun concerts I've ever attended. I've been to perhaps better concerts, on a number of criteria, but rarely have I enjoyed myself more at a show. post continues.... This was an outdoor concert at Deiner Park, a lawn built over Route 18 and overlooking the Raritan River. It was beautiful September night, with that sort of coolness which, when mixed with activity, is neither chilly nor hot. Mick Jones' B.A.D. II's album The Globe had just connected with the cultural zeitgeist in a way that he hadn't managed since his days with The Clash (and, at this writing, he was not to do so again). Fueled by the big-beat dance-rock sound that was soaring to ascendency during 1991 (in what was also to be effectively its swan-song, as the hammer was even then being cocked to fire grunge's gun square at American musical tastes), "Rush" was just then becoming Jones' only U.S. post-Clash Top 40 hit;...

Fastlane, Asbury Park, NJ..... The day of the show, the Milltown Brothers came by WHTG's studios for an interview with Matt Pinfield. A photo from that visit later turned up in trade magazine Radio & Records (misspelled my name, dammit).  

Tramps, New York, NY This was a showcase for Hitchcock's new album, Perspex Island . Most of the audience was radio people, journalists, A&M Records staff, various music industry types, and 25 members of Hitchcock's fan club. As a radio DJ, a former A&M employee (mail room), an a bona fide Robyn Hitchcock fan, I was in my element. Prior to the show, A&M's promotions staff had a dinner for radio guests at a restaurant up the street from Tramps. It was the first time I was able to see some of my former A&M co-workers. I saw Wayne Isaak there, who ran the New York A&M office (then located in the Fuller Building, at 57th Street and Madison Avenue) and who reluctantly had to fire me when they had budget cuts. I was able to tell him with absolutely no rancor, "Remember when you let me go, you said 'This might be the best thing that ever happened to you'? Well, it was! So thanks!" And it was true, since my firing at A&M indirectly led to...