Cloaca Melodia

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...

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...

The Marquee, New York, NY Me and my friend Kathy scurried over to this show after catching Elvis Costello and The Replacements at Madison Square Garden , making this quite the music-packed evening. We, unfortunately, missed most of King Missile's set due to this two-show gambit, which was a shame since we were both big King Missile fans (we attended six KM shows together in four different cities throughout 1991). post continues.... Bongwater was terrific, though, and the packed house was fully appreciative. I seem to recall Kramer playing bass with the instrument loose, no guitar strap. It seemed rather unwieldy. One of the most memorable moments in the show was when Ann Magnuson addressed the crowd. "Let me introduce you to my friends. This here is Thelma," she declared, pointing to one of her breasts as the audience wildly cheered the reference to Geena Davis' character in the just-released film. She indicated the other one. "And this is Louise." Pause a b...

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.    

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...

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.        

Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ Setlist I Don't Know I Will Dare Achin' to Be Bent Out of Shape Another Girl, Another Planet Merry Go Round Satellite Happy Town Swingin Party One Wink at a Time Waitress in the Sky Skyway When It Began Nightclub Jitters Someone Take the Wheel Kiss Me on the Bus Talent Show Asking Me Lies Nobody Color Me Impressed Within Your Reach Unsatisfied/Sadly Beautiful Can't Hardly Wait The Ledge All Right Now (brief snippet) I'll Be You Bastards of Young Left of the Dial Alex Chilton

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...

Continental Airlines Arena/Meadowlands Arena/Brendan Byrne Arena, E. Rutherford, NJ I had just reported for work at WHTG as the Production Director two days before this show, and was suddenly handed tickets to both this show and for Neil Young , both taking place the same weekend at the same arena. On top of it, the previous morning show host (Bart Cross-Tierney, who I later got along quite well with when he returned to FM 106.3 with his own specialty show) had departed on my first day on the job and I was asked to fill in on the morning show during the following week (and a week turned into eight years). post continues.... So I decided that I really liked this job. INXS was at the very peak of their success during this tour (The "X Factor World Tour"). The X album's second single, "Disappear," was a top ten hit just then. No small amount of the crowd was teenage girls, swoony at the drop of a beat for Michael Hutchence and his Jim Morrisonesque looks . So I fo...

Beacon Theater, 74th & Broadway, New York, NY One of the main things I remember about this show was sitting a few rows behind Dennis Miller (or someone who looked remarkably like him!). post continues.... I also recall the lights going down halfway through the set, and then hearing the distictive opening chords from Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" (in a way, it's like rock 'n' roll's own Beethoven's 5th). As the lights blaze back on, Sting and his band pull off a fairly fiery version of the classic. I got the call to start my new job as production director at WHTG the very next morning. I would show up and discover the Program Director doing the morning show, having just fired the DJ. The PD would ask me to fill in on AM drive for the following week, and I ended up "filling in" for eight years.

Chameleon Bar, New York, NY..... I had what was really my only booked performance in a music venue as a musician. It was at the Chameleon Bar in New York City, and I was part of Nova Pilbeam, the acoustic duo I had formed with my college friend Marnie Dubow. We had named our musical combo after a British actress who, as a teenager, had appeared in two Alfred Hitchcock films. Nova Pilbeam was a cute and spunky young woman who had a memorable supporting role in Hitchcock's 1934 classic They Man Who Knew Too Much  and then starred in his Young and Innocent in 1937. Two years afterwards, Pilbeam married the great-grandson of Alfred, Lord Tennyson until he was killed in a plane crash during World War II. She retired from acting at age 29 During most of 1990, I had lived in Chelsea -- long before the neighborhood's gentrification, back when New York was a very dangerous place. In fact, that year that I lived in a windowless basement apartment about 75 feet away from the 8th Avenue s...

Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ........ setlist: set 1: Sometimes I Wish I Was a Pretty Girl The Cars She Used to Drive Acid Bird Somewhere Apart Another Bubble The Man With the Lightbulb Head Wax Doll Sleeping With Your Devil Mask A Globe of Frogs set 2: Superman Oceanside Chinese Bones Freeze Ride The Ruling Class Lysander Unsettled Balloon Man I'm Only You Kingdom of Love ( source )

Beacon Theater, 74th & Broadway, New York, NY sorry, Mike has not yet written about this show -- coming soon!

The Marquee, New York, NY...... sorry, I haven't yet written about this show... add your own comments if you were also there!   my ticket from the show

The Marquee, New York, NY.... Yet another band that was woefully unprepared for the Google era (just try searching for "Something Happens"!). Tickets were $13.50/advance, $15/door.  The Irish band was touring in support of their latest album  Stuck Together With God's Glue . I remember the band giving a shout-out to Long Island radio station WDRE and getting a big reaction from the crowd. Everybody sang along when they played "Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, (Petrol)" from their latest album.