Tales of a Rock 'n' Roll Never Was

Here's how I remember it The Cocteau Twins played at the Orpheum Theater in about 1991 and my girlfriend and I got backstage after the show. My girlfriend had clued me into Robin Guthrie's sarcastic and gruff nature and said that she thought he and I would get along well. There were about 20 other people milling about but Robin was ignoring all of them, just sitting on a couch. I went up to him and said "I got you figured out, I know who you really are!" "What the fuck are you talking about?!?" he snapped back. I said "You're from Glasgow, you're a fat bastard. play guitar and have a scruffy beard. Admit it, you're actually Big John Duncan from The Exploited!" "OH FUCK RIGHT OFF MATE!" he shouted back at me, and then laughed and told me I was alright. He then said I should go ask Liz about her Exploited tattoo. I asked him if she really did have one and he said she didn't, but she DID have a home m

Here's how I remember it: Late 90's The Mekons were playing at First Ave. in Minneapolis. I don't remember what they were touring in support of. One of the last songs they played was a then-new song that had a chorus of "Belly to belly, back to back".  Never being a big enough Mekons fan to know their catalog, but enough to see them live with a free ticket, I had a good time. I went by myself, as was the case most of the time. During the entirety of the Mekon's set I kept staring at this long-haired, bearded hippy playing the balalaika near the back of the stage. The guy looked really familiar but I just couldn't put my finger on where I knew him from. After the band was done I was standing around on the dancefloor talking to some friends when the hippy balalaika player walk past me and it suddenly hit me. I spun around and tapped him on the shoulder. He too spun around and looked very surprised. I said "the whole show I was tryin

The half-a-time I saw The Damned Here’s how I remember it. The Damned were scheduled to play a drunk show at First Ave in 1986. The drinking age at that time was 19. I was 18. And pissed off that I couldn’t go to the show. A week or so before the gig the manager at Northern Lights, the cool record store downtown, said that The Damned were going to do an in-store record signing and asked me if I was available to be “security” for the event; basically just keeping an eye on the throngs of miscreant Damned fans to make sure they were not stealing records, drinking, smoking weed etc. Of course I accepted the unpaid offer, hell, I was going to be there anyway. The day rolled around and my then-girlfriend and I arrived half an hour before the band was scheduled to show up and the place was already pretty crowded. I got the low-down from the manager of the store and took to my post at the top of the stairs where I had a bird’s eye view of the entire layout. Soon there was a lin