Madison Square Garden, New York, NY.... Elvis had just released his Mighty Like a Rose album (which kicked off his '90s "wandering in the wilderness" period) about a month prior, and we were playing "The Other Side of Summer" quite a lot at WHTG. I had seen Elvis live before in two very memorable concerts (on the spinning songwheel tour in '86, and an outdoor show on Elvis' birthday in '89), so I was psyched to catch him again. The tour was dubbed the "Come Back in a Million Years Tour 1991," and it would feel like a million years before I was to see him live again . As icing on the cake, The Replacements were, somewhat oddly, the opening act for the show. I had just seen The 'Mats back in March , and they were terrific, so seeing them yet again would also welcome. I had no idea that drummer Chris Mars had already left the band (replaced on tour by Steve Foley, who later worked with Tommy Stinson's Bash & Pop as well as Brenda...
Brendan Byrne Arena, E. Rutherford, NJ.... It was a couple years before Neil was bestowed the "Godfather of Grunge" moniker, but this tour made clear he had an affinity with noisy, scruffy bands of younger vintage. A great show all around. It was my first time seeing Neil, so I was pretty psyched. He had snapped out of his weird '80s era with a vengeance on 1989's Freedom and 1990's Ragged Glory albums. I was pretty blown away with how hard he rocked at the show. My most vivid memory of the concert was a giant microphone with a yellow ribbon on it getting a lot of applause (due to the Gulf War being still in progress at the time). The opening acts were pretty memorable as well. I was struck with how low-slung Mike Ness played his guitar. And during Sonic Youth's feedback-drenched finale, Thurston Moore used his guitar as a bridge between the front of the stage and a security barrier and he carefully shimmied across it, all the while spewing caterwauling nois...
Cat Club, New York, NY..... In part, I went to this show to see King Missile as the billed opener, but something happened and they didn't perform. It was a bummer, but the night ended up getting weirder and weirder. One member of the group I went to the show with was a very attractive woman, and at the show she met Jay Blumenfield, the guitarist for the band Too Much Joy. He bought her a number of Jagermeister shots during School of Fish's performance and she became more than a little bit drunk. She also knew School of Fish frontman Josh Clayton-Felt, and Josh invited us to come to an afterparty at the Limelight, the church-turned-music-venue on Sixth Avenue at West 20th Street. So my group, with Jay from Too Much Joy in tow, walked over to the Limelight for the afterparty. I was already starting to have misgivings about staying out too late, as it was a weeknight and I was on the air at WHTG at 6 AM the following morning. When we got to the Limelight, though, the bouncer woul...
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