Flannelkimono: The Mixtape.

 

My first concert. I was 12!

So, I finally did it. It's been years in the making, but I finally got all of my concert tickets sorted, by date. It doesn't sound like much, but when you consider how long I've been going to shows and how many i've been to...it was a huge project.

I started going to shows in 1989. I spent a lot of time with my cousins growing up. They were older than me, and they exposed me to all of the music that I got into. I got into punk rock at the beginning of my 7th grade year. I tended towards more poppy punk than punk; I would rather listen to Descendents and Bad Religion than Sex Pistols. I really loved The Dead Milkmen. They were clever without being Weird Al levels of dumb, which really appealed to me. I had bought a copy of their newest album (at the time) Beezlebubba on cassette from National Record Mart at Summit Mall and played it over and over, either on an off-brand walkman type cassette player, or on my pink boom box with the broken handle. My cousin had a copy of Big Lizard in my Backyard, and (like we did with most of our music back then), we'd trade back and forth. If I liked anything, I'd either just dub the entire tape, or I'd just record the songs I liked, mix tape style.

I started reading Scene Magazine around this time, which was our alt-weekly. I'd look at the ads, in awe of all of the bands who were coming to town.  I think that was where we found out about The Dead Milkmen playing at the Phantasy, located 45 minutes away from us in Lakewood, Ohio. It was all ages, too. We had to try and go, right?

None of us had money, other than weekly allowances from our estranged fathers. I got $10 every week. I would usually let it stack up for a few weeks and take myself on a shopping spree. We spent weekends with our grandparents, who lived in walking distance of Summit Mall. Since the show was on a Friday, we decided to ask them if they'd take us to the show. They told us to ask our mothers, which was never much of a daunting task, as they left us all wild and neglected and crazy most of the time anyways. The grandparents agreed, the parents agreed, and we got to go to the show.

I honestly don't remember every aspect of the show; I'm mostly going on flashes of memories. I remember the venue being dark. There was carpet that had that wet smell to them, with a bit of stale cigarette smoke for good measure. There was also a pirate ship somewhere in the club? One of the singers from one of the bands was very drunk, and kept throwing up at the side of the stage during the set. I remember the Dead Milkmen doing all of my favorite songs: Stuart, I Walk the Thinnest Line, Instant Club Hit, Bitchin' Camaro. One of my cousins  got a shirt, which was added to our shared concert/skate shirt rotation for a while.

And with that, I was hooked. I started to listen to even more music, usually taking out albums from the library, borrowing things from friends, and scamming Columbia House and BMG Music more than once, like every person who grew up in the 80's/90's used to do. I picked up Scene every week, along with zines that I would find at record stores. I'd go to the mall, and go between the two bookstores and the newsstand, reading every music magazine I could, writing down bands that I wanted to check out. In high school, I lived and died by two magazines: Sassy, and Alternative Press. I had penpals all around the world, who I had met through various music magazines. We'd trade mix tapes and zines, which exposed me to a lot of new music as well. I went to the very first Lollapalooza, and then the second, and third, and..

After graduation, I started to travel to shows, usually in Columbus, which is two hours away from Akron. That's the only good thing about Akron: we're close to a lot of cool places. It takes two hours to get to Pittsburgh, three to Detroit, six to Chicago, Nashville, Toronto...I used to go to tons of shows in Toronto and London, Ontario. I started to go out for multiple days, seeing bands multiple times in multiple places. I've never used any of my vacation time at jobs for actual vacations; it's always been to go to shows. I dropped out of college the first time so that I could go to more shows. I've flown to shows. I've taken trains and buses. I've slept on stranger's floors, and with strangers in hotel rooms.

Since 1989, I have gone to at least one show per year. And the only reason that there's a year with one show is because it was 2020 and we saw one last show before the pandemic changed everything. Even during times in my life where the abuse was more oppressive and my self worth was at record lows, I'd still get out and go to a show. Even when I was with a guy who didn't let me listen to what I liked, I just took that time to get to know everything about metal, which is the only good thing I took away from that relationship.

Life has not been kind to me over the years. I've been through a lot of really dark, awful shit. The one place where things weren't always awful, though? Shows. Music has always been there for me. A lot of the kindness in my life has come from music. I have travelled extensively, just going to shows. A lot of my work with malls now stems from the years of traveling all over to shows, getting to a city early, and wasting time in their malls.

 I'm glad I finally got those stubs sorted out. I'm going to see how much I remember, as I go through my collection.