Cloaca Melodia

Fastlane, Asbury Park, NJ sorry, Mike has not yet written about this show... add your own comments if you were also there!

Fastlane, Asbury Park, NJ sorry, Mike has not yet written about this show... add your own comments if you were also there!

Deena Shoshkes The first time I caught the Rollins Band was at Lollapalooza one year before, but I was sick at that show and ended up napping (!) during the Rollins set. Since then Rollins & Co. had put out their explosive The End of Silence album.   The single "Low Self Opinion" had been a big one at WHTG, and I was very interested in seeing the live show in a proper setting (and with me healthy). The club, right off the corner of 4th and Kingsley in Asbury Park, was packed when I and my girlfriend (who I believe was in attendance only reluctantly) walked in. The Fastlane's bleacher seating was quite full with t-shirt and button-down shirt wearing twentysomethings, and the floor was also crowded in front of the stage as well as by the bars on both ends of the room. Not able to find a seat, we walked back towards the front and staked out some standing space. Naturally, Rollins is a dynamic performer. Not one to leap about the stage, he rather stands rock-solid gripp...

Fastlane, Asbury Park, NJ Sweet was touring in support of his breakthrough album Girlfriend . He had stopped by WHTG for an interview the day of the concert.   Sweet kept re-tuning his guitar (it felt) endlessly between songs.

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).  

Fastlane, Asbury Park, NJ..... Gang of Four was touring in support of their latest album Mall .  Add your own comments if you were also there!    

Fastlane, Asbury Park, NJ..... This was the first of many times I saw King Missile live. We had been playing "My Heart Is a Flower" as a single advance of the band's Atlantic Record's debut CD The Way to Salvation , and I loved the song but didn't know anything about the band. When the full CD arrived around it's mid April 1991 release, I looked at the pictures of the band and release that I had seen frontman John S. Hall do spoken word performances in the East Village when I lived in Chelsea in 1990. So I was even more intrigued to see the band perform.  At WHTG, a summer intern named Kathy just started and it turned out she was enthusiastic about King Missile as well. By then we had started to play a dance remix of "My Heart Is a Flower" (by Ivan Ivan). She told me that she had seen people dancing to the song in a club with their arms held high up in a sort of a "U" shape so that they looked like giant bouncing flowers. (I know: very...

The Fastlane, Asbury Park, NJ.... My WHTG colleague John Yarusi was DJing between band sets. When School of Fish was ready to go, he introduced them from the DJ booth as "Columbia recording artists, School of Fish." The band, signed to Capitol Records, was either amused or annoyed at this and the made a bunch of comments about how they must have been signed to a new label without them knowing. The incident made me terrified for years about introducing a band incorrectly when I would make stage announcements for concerts.    

Fastlane, Asbury Park, NJ..... This is the show that I discussed in Gary Wein's book Beyond the Palace . Harding was late for his own gig as he had reportedly skipped over the Stone Pony to catch part of a Little Steven show and hopefully catch a rumored "surprise" Springsteen appearance. At least, that was the word from the promoter's people.  I talked with Wes about this years later and he told me this night was the first time he met Springsteen.