Back in the day I had a friend. His name is Carlos. Real name.
Owned a great club and taught me a lot about concert promoting and also had some very useful life lessons which have come into play more than once and introduced me to some people who are still some of my closest friends. Anyway, one day I was over at his house because I had a show coming up and even though we were friends, money was expected to be paid on time and in full or he would cancel your show in a second.
He needed absolutely no notice to get a band or two in his place and fill it up so he had no qualms about shutting you down.
Once money exchanged hands he would smile and he told me to come to the club later that night because he wanted to introduce me to a band he had playing.
Later that night I showed up at the club and was frisked.
Walked a little further and was frisked again.
Carlos’ shows were a little different than the ones I promoted and the crowd was completely different.
Going inside the massive darkened club an opening band was playing and they were awful.
It didn’t matter to the crowd though because they came for one reason and it was to beat each other all night long in one huge mosh pit.
Knowing the crowd, I was shocked to see one of my best friends way in the back where some chairs and tables were set up.
She will always be A list in my mind and to her millions of fans.
I had met her at an outdoor concert two years earlier and when she (lets call her JL) was not touring would usually hang out a couple of times a week. I hadn’t known she was coming.
If she was there, then this band must be one I really needed to meet. She mall type than was not someone who generally came to Carlos’ club.
She would go to my shows there and had even played there a few times but she was always more of a mall type than a double frisking security kind of place.
Her boyfriend was with her but he had to go watch a guy play at a different venue that night who was going to replace a member of their band so almost right after I got there he left.
Conversation was impossible.
The club was basically one big room.
Walk in the door and the stage was in the front and the bar on the right. 1,000 people could fit inside but you would all be best friends at the end of the night.
The music was always turned up to a massive volume.
There were no neighbors to complain and there were so many police officers who earned a ton of money working overtime at the club that any call about noise complaints would be ignored.
When the band stopped playing, Carlos came over and with him was a guy I had seen many times and was the lead singer (lets call him PK) of a band that could sell out every club just like this one all over the country every single night and did.
They had started out as one kind of band and made no money so they switched things up and the next thing you knew they were huge in a club kind of way.
They made tons of money and sold hundreds of thousands of records one night at time.
Their sound belied the name of the band. They were anything but.
With the lead singer (lets call him RP) was a guy I had never met, but had seen.
They were just making it big. Huge actually.
First big monster record had been released the year before.
I say monster hit.
It actually did not crack the Top 40 records but if you are a fan of the band you have heard the album many times and there are very few people who don’t know the intro riff to the very first song on the record.
Apparently the singer was there as a favor to the other lead singer and they were going to surprise the crowd later that night by playing together.
As the night wore on the word started to spread that tonight was going to be kind of special.
Other people I knew started trickling into the club and other bands would finish their shows at other places around the city and were coming in.
By 1 a.m. that 1,000 person capacity had been maxed out. This was probably 25% above that.
This was going to be one night no one wanted to miss.
The place almost exploded when the two came out.
The crowd was expecting the headlining band of the night but when the singer of the monster band came out with him and that riff I spoke about before started blasting out of the speakers there was an eruption of noise that could probably only be matched by standing behind the engines of a 747.
You would not think that kind of noise could be sustained for very long.
You would be wrong.
For about 90 minutes there was not one second I can remember where the crowd was not enthralled and mesmerized and totally into every word and beat.
It was a show of epic proportions.
It was hard to believe that the night was only going to get crazier.
The craziness began when PK said to myself, RH and JL after the show that we should go to Mexico that night. (to be continued tomorrow)
JL: Aimée Mann
PK: Anthony Kiedis “Red Hot Chili Peppers” OR Kurt Cobain “Nirvana”
RP: Michael Stipe “R.E.M.”
OR
JL: Gwen Stefani
PK: Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails
RP: Billie Joe Armstrong
Source: http://www.crazydaysandnights.net
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