The Golden Rage

Ah what day is it? what time is it? what month is it? hell i remember when i had all these things i was going to write this summer, a whole series about the happenings of 20 years ago and i still plan on getting to them they just might now be more like the fall line-up and no not the ever changing Fall line-up, see i don't really fancy writing stoned or drunk and lately it seems i've been getting one or the other or both and so instead of doing something productive i diddle and daddle and listen to tunes and stare out the window or watch the most god-awful shit telly i can find (except for Sunday when i watch Breaking Bad) or i tend to fuck about on the internets and look for things, research things, read things and mostly watch shows that i have been to, mainly cuz i have a tendency to get right fucking wasted when i go and see bands cuz it's all about the sex, drugs and rocknroll now ain't it?

And so last week while i was in a cloud of aromatic smoke i stumbled on to this show, the one up there, i was at that show, just 20 years old and less than a week back from my first foray into the migrant summer work of OCMD, it was a few months before the family would come apart and i was eating more acid than God, in fact the night before this show i had eaten some and spent the night drinking and carousing with my friends and then someone said they had an extra ticket and i snapped it up since i was a bit out of the loop of what was happening in C-town and really all i know is that after very little sleep i got picked up by a quasi-girlfriend of mine and taken to her friends house to wait for the show...

It was around this time when the hangover started to kick and the acid started to fade and i was slumped in the corner while alot of kids, kids being kids 2 or so years younger than me, all flitted about and prancing and preening and making the scene, hell i woulda been too if i hadn't been so fucked and it was one of those times when i realized that i liked drugs alot more than your average hipster except back then we were indie-kids or alterna-nation or something and at least one genius would commodify it, bottle it and sell it in every mall from coast to coast (see Hot Topic) but that would be years later, this here was 1991, but really at the present time i just needed some relief so i started asking the kids if anyone had any pot and they all looked at my dishevelled self and turned up their noses, like pot, what a wastoid, so i returned to slumping in the corner when for some unknown reason i noticed a container on the table next to me, a container filled with orange jello and since i wasn't really thinking straight and was probably still drunk i didn't notice any strange taste, all i noticed was that it was delicious and making me feel better and before i knew it damn near the whole container was gone and then some dolled up little girl walked in and started screaming at me for eating all the jello shots and i laughed and said well looks like i better get to the show and score or i'm gonna be fucked and it was at this point that my quasi-girlfriend pushed me towards the car and off we went...

Predictably things got a bit blurry for me for a bit, my main goal was to find some hits and low and behold i found some, nothing good but i ate two and it just leveled me off enough that i wasn't falling down drunk but i wasn't tripping so hard i couldn't function, and well hell at that point my day was fucking swell, i wandered around on my own most of the day, scoring a stray beer and getting stoned with strangers, bumping into friends from university, a man unto himself enjoying the sunny day and brilliant music... (the line-up was: Rollins Band, Butthole Surfers, Jesus and Mary Chain, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Ice-T and Body Count, Nine Inch Nails and those guys above headlining...)

Now let's just say that in my wayward youth i was a big fan of Jane's Addiction, still am a fan of the old stuff, think it's brilliant and think now without Eric Avery it's a fucking novelty act, but hell the establishment tosses money and before you know it Dave Navarro is doing reality t.v. and Perry Farrell is modeling for John Varvatos, what we learn growing up is that most of the heroes of our youth will fall by the wayside before we're old, very few have the guts to stick to their guns and so sooner or later well you know the story... but back then? these fucking guys were the most dangerous band on the planet, the pit was a fucking meat grinder and all us kids wanted to be just like them, live just like them and little did we know that in a couple of years a whole lot of us would... (when heroin hit the suburbs) but on this night it was a thing of fucking beauty, i remember Perry getting hit in the face by a glow stick to this day and i always thought he was pissed and ended the show early, i now realize he wasn't and not that anyone but me will watch this whole show i see at the end as he's walking off he's fucking buzzing, ecstatic at the crowd and show and everything, 23 year later it made me smile, cuz though i thought the show was short it was one of their longer ones it's just this 20 year old kid wanted it to go on all night...

Somewhere in the middle of that Pavilion is the 20 year old me, i blasted through some poor sucker who had to work security and ran down as far as i could until i hit a wall of humanity and found a space, i was standing on the seat singing the words to Then She Did when some girl i don't know walked over, pulled me down and gave me one of the most electric kisses and danced on through the crowd, i jumped back up and started singing, i don't remember how i got home or what time i got there, i just remember waking up the next morning as if it were all a beautiful dream, thanks to the internets i know it wasn't...