Concrete Blonde / 1990 / The Coach House

Almost like discovering a fine wine not that many people knew about.
This was the Bloodletting tour, and it was great to see them at the CoachHouse, a mid size bar in the South O.C. One of the best LA bands of
all time. The title track muses about the ways and means to New Orleans, the Tomorrow, Wendy finale is chilling. They continued good work in '93
with Mexican Moon. Napolitano now lives in a remote Palm Springs home.

Replacements 1989 / U C I Crawford Hall

A complete array of guitars and lyrics for over 2 1/2 hours at Irvine.
Westerberg really knows how to entertain -- I wish I had seen them earlier
in their career.

Love & Rockets / Dodger Stadium/ 1990 (opening for Depeche Mode)

Dark, gloomy melodies played against a rare summer thunderstorm
in So Cal. (Wow, a Daniel Ash songs just came on
the TV station as I was typing this -- how freaky is THAT?) No shortage
of great songs from the recycled Bauhaus guys: Some favorites
No New Tale to Tell, Ball of Confusion, Motorcycle, So Alive. I do
like a lot of Bauhaus, just L & R gets the entertainment side of it better.

Beck / West L A / 1996

The Odelay tour. Mid size venue. Proved he's anything BUT a loser.
Great publicity on Letterman and Leno pre tour. The kid is good,
and has many influences.

The Violent Femmes / The Coach House 1992

A little past their prime, but what a treat to see them in a small
venue playing all their old greats, plus the American Music new material.
Too much body of work for 2 hours to do justice to. An acquired old
Milwaukee taste, and a good one.

Tears For Fears / Sugar Cubes / Siouxsie and the Banshees
Irvine Meadows Under the Stars / circa 1991

3 bands. 3 great performances in a good outdoor venue. No one
left feeling cheated. Glad to see Orzabal and Smith reunite and start making music again.

10. Lollapalooza / Irvine Meadows / 1992

Featured about 14 bands, including Lush, Jesus and Mary Chain,
Soundgarden, Ministry, Ice Cube, Pearl Jam, and headliner Red Hot
Chili Peppers.

This was a kick ass event. It almost got out of hand with the reverse
cyclone mosh pot during Pearl Jam's performance. Eddie Vedder at the
peak of his powers. Very hot during the day, and cool at night Lush sounded great, Soundgarden was fun, even Ice Cube was entertaining. The only band that looked a little off was J & MC, who got a poor 4 PM daytime billing. They are a nighttime band, and more cultish, so they did not get the energy to feed off like the other bands. J & MC made it up to me in later smaller venue performances.

9. P.I.L / Flesh For Lulu / UCI Crawford Hall 1989

The smaller, general admission venues are far and away my favorite
places to see bands. The energy is elevated, and the bands seems to feed
off it. Crawford Hall was a small basketball court on its last stages
before the big Bren Events Center was put on the Irvine campus. It was
loud, sweaty, raucous -- in other words everything thing that Irvine as
a planned city from 1970 was not. Chief complaint on campus was that
we did not have anything to do at night -- it was (and still is) a city
out of Mary Poppins suburbia. A far cry from Cal St. Fullerton or
the parties up in Westwood (UCLA for the unversed).
Flesh For Lulu was a flamboyant, entertaining band that
typified the 80's big hair alt rock bands. But what a craftsman of songs
with my 3 faves: Siamese Baby, Postcards From Paradise, and I Go Crazy.
Great segueway into P.I.L.
Mainly I was there for Flesh For Lulu. Never much of a Sex Pistols fan, but always found PIL's stuff very listenable. I had heard
from classmates that the Pistols frequently showed up half drunk and played poorly. I guess they partly cleaned up their act since the drug
death of Sid Vicious. Gradually PIL won me over with their spirited play,
constant energy. Johnny Rotten knows how to work the crowd. Things were
really heated up until this epic moment during God Save the Queen: some
idiot decides to throw a glass bottle, missing Rotten's face by a couple inches. To his great credit, Rotten and co. finish the song, and he halts the concerts, tells the stagehands to turn on all the lights, and
tells everyone what just happened. He informs us if the culprit is not
identified, he's outta here! An uneasy silence followed, then a mass of finger pointed towards the center of the now collasped mosh pit. The pen dejo was summarily removed by the beefy bodyguards. Rotten comes back front and
center, smirking, and throws this at us in his heavy English accent: "Now
there's a lesson in all this you need to take home -- POLICE YOURSELVES!!!" Then they launched seamlessly into This is Not a Love Song and the students went ballistic. I still laugh at this incident when I hear their songs on the radio.

8. Oingo Boingo / Anaheim Convention Center / 1986

You never, ever forget your first concert. And I'm lucky my first was
so unique. (OK this is getting really poltergeist -- thier Only A Lad classic just came on the radio this minute -- WTF divine intervention
for this Live Journal entry?)
The background was that this was a free concert won by my ENTIRE
HIGH school. Some Top 40 Schmuck named Rick Dees ran a high school contest for over 200 Southern Calif. high schools. The school who
could write the most self addressed postcards sporting his radio station within
2 weeks would win a free Oingo Boingo Concert, only for our high school.
We were a large school, maybe in the top 10, but shocked we were in the
top 3 with a few days to spare. We were writing cards day and night,
even in class. Our Spanish teacher basically shut down curriculum the
last 2 days so we could write cards the whole hour. Still, we were neck
and neck with Marina HS in Huntington Beach. Our hands were getting tired
from all the writing. Then it was announced: We won! A pre Stuart
Scott Boo Yeah! It was to be a heavily chaperoned teacher concert,
with teachers at all the entrances checking for pot and booze. Not to
be without a plan, a lot of us tailgated in the parking lot beforehand
and went in loaded.
I wondered if Boingo would take their take it down a peg from
what I'd heard about their other concerts. No way-- full intensity --
full slam pit in effect. I was maybe only a buck 60 in those days,
so I got pushed around a bit, but it couldn't diminish hearing all the songs live for the first time. A lifestyle was born.

7. B-52's / San Diego Sports Arena / New Year's Eve 1990

No better way to rock in the new decade than with one of the best
80's bands in SD. This place was smaller than LA venues, making
it worth the 90 min drive. Their only tenants were the Clippers before
they moved up here, and San Diego State. Otherwise it was pure
entertainment facility.

A full, well planned show. A tasteful pause for the countdown
to the new decade, then started right up for another hour past
midnight. They were polished, and on the heels
of the Love Shack CD. I liked their earlier stuff, having grown
sick of Love Shack :) I could listen to them perform things
like Whammy, Here Comes Brenda, Rock Lobster, Planet Claire, and
Private Idaho all night long.

6. Lollapaolooza / Cal St. Dominguez Fields /1994

The concept of the 2nd stage was a great idea. Anytime a band
came on I despised, like the Beastie Boys, their were a lot of
up and coming acts playing on the other side of the field. Some
of the 2nd stage gems: The Verve, the Booradleys, Shonen Knife
(a girl Japanese group),and the Black Crowes

A Tribe Called Quest was fun. I Left My Wallet In El Segundo is
one of the funniest songs ever. The Breeders knew how to play.
Kim Deal did a good job with this group, post Pixies. Green
Day was everything they were cracked to be, although I think MTV
did them a disservice by overplaying the hell out of them, as their
later work suffered. Or maybe it was just the rich band slacking off
syndrome.

But I was there for one reason. The Pumpkins. A lot of them.
Preferrably Smashing. I had seen them before they were huge during
Siamese Dream at the Roxy, an unbelievably small club in Hollywood.
There were not as many great bands in the 90's as the 80s. I really
believe that. But the Pumpkins were great in concert, and in the studio.
The art of crafting the 3-4 minute melodic song has been lost, or misplaced. Corgan and co. have quite an arensal. Disamed (Killer in Me Is A Killer in You), Rhinocerus, most of the Siamese album, and this
was BEFORE Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness came out next year.
Impressive pit, great venue, one slight Jamb neck injury from some
dork jumping on me during the peak of the slam pit , but all healed
in time.

(worst 5 interlude to come)

-Jamb