I had finally been hired late in the spring of 1987 working as a bag boy at the Fazio's supermarket down on the corner. While I detested paying weekly union dues (this being a temporary job, I couldn't have given less of a rat shit about the UFCW Local 880's struggle against the big-capitalist oppressors) out of my paycheck, there was still more than enough money left over every week to actually go out and do things without having to beg money off of my family or friends.
At the time, I was in no great hurry to expand my Pink Floyd collection. Since before Chritsmas, I already loved The Wall. After many playings, I had finally grown to love The Dark Side Of The Moon on it's own merits. Even Wish You Were Here, while being the greatest album of my lifetime, was still not impetus enough to head out and dig up the rest of Pink Floyd's catalog.
There was a comfort / fear thing at work here. I rationalized it this way -- I was very happy and comfortable with my three Floyd albums. The thought of picking up one that sucked bothered me, because I feared I would think less of the one's I loved. How many albums of the caliber of Wish You Were Here could Pink Floyd have possibly made? Was it possible that everything was good as these three albums? (A whacked-out Spicoli-in-denim friend of mine answered that last question with a beatific grin and the mysterious word "Ummagumma!") Is it possible that they never fell flat on their faces and turned in a bomb? Well, I knew what at least three cuts on The Final Cut sounded like from my MTV salad days in the summer of 1983. At that time, the mere appearance of those weighty, vaguley bovine videos elicted a groan and some spirited flipping-around elsewhere for a few minutes before coming back to see if anything new by Asia, Thomas Dolby, Berlin or The Police was in sight. Obviously, not everything is great. Ergo, be happy with what you have, junior. Get ready for finals. For the time being, that was that.
With a week and a half to go before school let out, Dennis was pulling into the Mentor High School parking lot as Jeff and Flash were yapping it up with one of the Belkins on the radio about some Big Event coming to town that WMMS, of course, was going to announce first.
"So what's the big news?" Jeff asked.
"Pink Floyd!" was Belkin's emphatic, excited reply.
What'd he say? Pink Floyd? Touring? Holy shit! My jaw probably fell straight into my lap at that point, I forgot to notice. Cleveland Stadium? September? Holy shit!
The announcement electrified Mentor High like nothing since Bruce '86 or Prince '84 (they hadn't announced the U2 date yet, after all). Nobody could believe that Pink Floyd were actually together again and putting on a show in the fall, when a bunch of us would be in or about to start college. Nobody seemed to know that a Pink Floyd album was on the way as well, but nobody really seemed to care much, either. Everyone wanted to go...me and my friends included. Brian got a numbered hospital bracelet from Sears later that day, seemingly guaranteeing him a place in line -- this was a newfangled solution to the previous year's Springsteen ticket debacle when everyone camped out all night in the loading docks and raced to the doors simultaneously the next morning, creating a Who-like crush at the front.
Saturday morning at 6:00 A.M. was when Brian Harnak and I met up in my driveway and Brian drove us down to Sears to stand in line for tickets. WMMS was playing Kenny G's "Songbird" on the way down (something I'm sure they'd love for me to forget, but that sunny early morning drive is etched in my mind like it was yesterday). I must admit that we both enjoyed the Kenny G track immensely, by the way. Christ, we thought it was pretty cool jazz. We were young.
Since this would be my very first concert, I had no idea what to expect when we got down to the Sears parking lot. The two hundred or so cars lined up in the parking lot was a hell of a shock. As we stood in a line before the ticket bracelet number was announced, we listened to my little jerry-rigged ghetto blaster (a Walkman with a miniature equalizer and two speakers) which was blasting out (what else?) Wish You Were Here, but the new ticket procedures interrupted our enjoyment a little while later. You see, once the starting number was called, everyone not in possession a bracelet had to stand clear of the line. Way clear, in fact. So, with some grumbling, I elected to sit out on top of Brian's car for a while, sunning myself and air-jamming until Brian returned with the tix.
Brian's face betrayed the mixture of good and bad news. The good news was the got the tickets. Six of 'em to be exact -- more than enough for all of us to go. The bad news, however, was that these prized seats were in batches of three and exactly opposite each other, otherwise they would have been a lot worse than they were. It was going to be three of us in the left hand side of the upper deck, and the other three of us on the right hand side.
Not bad, but as it would turn out nearly four months later, not great either.
A week later, the long-dreamed-of end of my three-year term (with no parole) at Mentor High School just happened to fall on the same day as Brian's 18th birthday -- June 4, 1987. His good friend Tina Shambach and I made a trip up to Great Lakes Mall to find him something cool from (gasp!) Camelot Records late that evening, both of us absolutely clueless as to what to buy. As it turned out, Tina had the right idea, and I cut a brain fart. I picked out a cassette tape of The Grateful Dead's Skeletons In The Closet (I have no idea what the fuck I was thinking about that night), while Tina picked out a CD of Pink Floyd's Animals. I liked the cover (what the hell is that pig doing up there?), and I got a kick from the fact that there were only five songs listed on the album. Lightning may indeed strike twice on the same band with the same number of songs on a different album, so I thought what the fuck? and grabbed a cassette for myself as well.
A half-hour later, we were back at Brian's house where he and Mike Gilbert were busy, ah, "orchestrating" the heat-lightning storm in the skies of Mentor that night. Those two always had a weakness for that bit in Return Of The Jedi when Ian McDiarmid was frying Mark Hammill with tentacle-like bursts of purple lightning. Bless 'em. Anyway, Tina and I gave Brian his recently-purchased birthday gifts (which he recieved with chuckling enthusiasm when he glimpsed the pig floating serenely between the smokestacks of Battersea power station) and we went for a short drive during which I played a piece of my tape in his car stereo as a preview.
"Pigs On The Wing" was, well, interesting and very very brief. "Dogs" came up next and we were far more appreciative of the sprawling feel of that song. I must admit that when the band lapsed into the standard-Floyd flat four beat after the line "you'll be the one to put the knife in" we all doubled over in laughter. Despite the more acoustic texture of the album, there were still glimpses of regular old Pink Floyd after all.
At the time, I was in no great hurry to expand my Pink Floyd collection. Since before Chritsmas, I already loved The Wall. After many playings, I had finally grown to love The Dark Side Of The Moon on it's own merits. Even Wish You Were Here, while being the greatest album of my lifetime, was still not impetus enough to head out and dig up the rest of Pink Floyd's catalog.
There was a comfort / fear thing at work here. I rationalized it this way -- I was very happy and comfortable with my three Floyd albums. The thought of picking up one that sucked bothered me, because I feared I would think less of the one's I loved. How many albums of the caliber of Wish You Were Here could Pink Floyd have possibly made? Was it possible that everything was good as these three albums? (A whacked-out Spicoli-in-denim friend of mine answered that last question with a beatific grin and the mysterious word "Ummagumma!") Is it possible that they never fell flat on their faces and turned in a bomb? Well, I knew what at least three cuts on The Final Cut sounded like from my MTV salad days in the summer of 1983. At that time, the mere appearance of those weighty, vaguley bovine videos elicted a groan and some spirited flipping-around elsewhere for a few minutes before coming back to see if anything new by Asia, Thomas Dolby, Berlin or The Police was in sight. Obviously, not everything is great. Ergo, be happy with what you have, junior. Get ready for finals. For the time being, that was that.
With a week and a half to go before school let out, Dennis was pulling into the Mentor High School parking lot as Jeff and Flash were yapping it up with one of the Belkins on the radio about some Big Event coming to town that WMMS, of course, was going to announce first.
"So what's the big news?" Jeff asked.
"Pink Floyd!" was Belkin's emphatic, excited reply.
What'd he say? Pink Floyd? Touring? Holy shit! My jaw probably fell straight into my lap at that point, I forgot to notice. Cleveland Stadium? September? Holy shit!
The announcement electrified Mentor High like nothing since Bruce '86 or Prince '84 (they hadn't announced the U2 date yet, after all). Nobody could believe that Pink Floyd were actually together again and putting on a show in the fall, when a bunch of us would be in or about to start college. Nobody seemed to know that a Pink Floyd album was on the way as well, but nobody really seemed to care much, either. Everyone wanted to go...me and my friends included. Brian got a numbered hospital bracelet from Sears later that day, seemingly guaranteeing him a place in line -- this was a newfangled solution to the previous year's Springsteen ticket debacle when everyone camped out all night in the loading docks and raced to the doors simultaneously the next morning, creating a Who-like crush at the front.
Saturday morning at 6:00 A.M. was when Brian Harnak and I met up in my driveway and Brian drove us down to Sears to stand in line for tickets. WMMS was playing Kenny G's "Songbird" on the way down (something I'm sure they'd love for me to forget, but that sunny early morning drive is etched in my mind like it was yesterday). I must admit that we both enjoyed the Kenny G track immensely, by the way. Christ, we thought it was pretty cool jazz. We were young.
Since this would be my very first concert, I had no idea what to expect when we got down to the Sears parking lot. The two hundred or so cars lined up in the parking lot was a hell of a shock. As we stood in a line before the ticket bracelet number was announced, we listened to my little jerry-rigged ghetto blaster (a Walkman with a miniature equalizer and two speakers) which was blasting out (what else?) Wish You Were Here, but the new ticket procedures interrupted our enjoyment a little while later. You see, once the starting number was called, everyone not in possession a bracelet had to stand clear of the line. Way clear, in fact. So, with some grumbling, I elected to sit out on top of Brian's car for a while, sunning myself and air-jamming until Brian returned with the tix.
Brian's face betrayed the mixture of good and bad news. The good news was the got the tickets. Six of 'em to be exact -- more than enough for all of us to go. The bad news, however, was that these prized seats were in batches of three and exactly opposite each other, otherwise they would have been a lot worse than they were. It was going to be three of us in the left hand side of the upper deck, and the other three of us on the right hand side.
Not bad, but as it would turn out nearly four months later, not great either.
A week later, the long-dreamed-of end of my three-year term (with no parole) at Mentor High School just happened to fall on the same day as Brian's 18th birthday -- June 4, 1987. His good friend Tina Shambach and I made a trip up to Great Lakes Mall to find him something cool from (gasp!) Camelot Records late that evening, both of us absolutely clueless as to what to buy. As it turned out, Tina had the right idea, and I cut a brain fart. I picked out a cassette tape of The Grateful Dead's Skeletons In The Closet (I have no idea what the fuck I was thinking about that night), while Tina picked out a CD of Pink Floyd's Animals. I liked the cover (what the hell is that pig doing up there?), and I got a kick from the fact that there were only five songs listed on the album. Lightning may indeed strike twice on the same band with the same number of songs on a different album, so I thought what the fuck? and grabbed a cassette for myself as well.
A half-hour later, we were back at Brian's house where he and Mike Gilbert were busy, ah, "orchestrating" the heat-lightning storm in the skies of Mentor that night. Those two always had a weakness for that bit in Return Of The Jedi when Ian McDiarmid was frying Mark Hammill with tentacle-like bursts of purple lightning. Bless 'em. Anyway, Tina and I gave Brian his recently-purchased birthday gifts (which he recieved with chuckling enthusiasm when he glimpsed the pig floating serenely between the smokestacks of Battersea power station) and we went for a short drive during which I played a piece of my tape in his car stereo as a preview.
"Pigs On The Wing" was, well, interesting and very very brief. "Dogs" came up next and we were far more appreciative of the sprawling feel of that song. I must admit that when the band lapsed into the standard-Floyd flat four beat after the line "you'll be the one to put the knife in" we all doubled over in laughter. Despite the more acoustic texture of the album, there were still glimpses of regular old Pink Floyd after all.
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