Some people. I mean, come on…
My first exposure to the Pixies was when i was in Europe with the also now reuinited Skinny Puppy on their Mind TPI tour. Must have been 1987….
The Skinny Puppy guys were driving me crazy. Cevin was fight with the tour manager on a daily basis. It was just not an environment that i was particularly enjoying. I was helping to set up the stage and sell merchandise for Puppy. It meant i had a fair amount of down time during the day. So i wrote long notes to the Throwing Muses and the Pixies begging them to get me off the Skinny Puppy tour. I would write them on the back of the posters for our shows and then leave them a kind soul from the club to hand off to someone from the Pixies and the Throwing Muses the next night.
And if that weren’t enough…
Did i mention that i once had dinner with Michael Stipe? But by now, who hasn’t? He liked my shirt. I was tour managing the left wing of the socialist wing of the Democratic Party, Consolidated, when we were playing in Athens. The drummer for Consolidated (Phil) was putting together a compilation album for In Defense of Animals and Michael was contributing a song. He came and joined us for dinner.
As someone who, having listened to the Pixies, the Throwing Muses, Skinny Puppy, R.E.M., and Consolidated for more years than I can think of, but because of living in Anchorage — who nobody cool goes to when they’re touring — never having had even the chance of seeing these artists in concert, let alone having dinner with them, I want you to know that I say this from the deepest, darkest depths of my heart:
You lucky bastard.
;)
Sorry. Just had to get that out of my system.
(And yeah, R.E.M. does still rock — their Bumbershoot show was excellent.)
No, I have not had dinner with Michael Stipe. In fact as a friend pointed out, “When you could make out the words Stipe was singing, it was time to stop buying REM.”
That was like, around, oh, 1984, maybe 85.
Can I vent about how little use I have for U2 here, or is that off topic?
i was lucky. met the right people at the right time.
Namedropping is no fun, but Tina has been on my case to tell more stories from my touring days. You don’t often hear this from someone who has a blog, but i hate talking about myself. It’s a little easier on a blog. I’ll probably sneak another tour story or ten in at some point. Most of my friends have little to no clue about this part of my past as i just don’t talk about it very much.
I always wanted one of the tours i was on to go to Anchorage. Nothing even came close. General rule of thumb – if there isn’t another place within a five or six hour drive from where you live, you get nothing. And it needs to be a chain of places so that you are always doing six hours drives.
R.E.M. has had many great records since the mid-80’s. Document, Automatic for the People, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Monster…i have to admit not loving the last couple, but they weren’t terrible.
And pops, i agree, Bono should stick to politics at this point in his career.