After not having gone to many live shows in the recent past, my
prospects are seriously looking up as of late. However, waking up
on Saturday morning to buy concert tickets for Coachella reminded
me that merely waking up early isn’t hardcore. It’s far
more impressive to wait all night in line with rednecks, junkies
and fat Bruce Willis look-alikes.
In June of 2004, my friends Adam, Andy and I heard that Amoeba
Music was doing a promotion for the release of Sonic Youth’s
new album, “Sonic Nurse.” The promotion was that the
first 60 people in line when the store opened that day would
receive a free ticket to a Sonic Youth show at the Troubadour with
each copy of the CD that they purchased (there was a two CD limit
per customer).
There were 120 tickets, and if the first 60 people all bought
two CDs, they would get them all. Therefore, we had to make sure
that we weren’t past the 60th person in line.
We arrived at 2 a.m. and Adam did a count and saw that we were
numbers 36, 37 and 38 in line. We thought we were pretty much
assured tickets.
Of course, nothing is ever that simple.
We were situated at the corner of Amoeba at the intersection of
Hollywood and Cahuenga boulevards with a couple of Southerners, one
of whom was named Claude. He had a cassette player and a copy of
“Daydream Nation.” Adam, after listening to the album
on cassette, said that the recording quality of the medium
convinced him that “Daydream Nation” was the best Sonic
Youth album, something he hadn’t felt before (listening to
“Candle” on cassette is a testament to what he was
talking about).
Hanging out with Claude was interesting, if only because he was
the first redneck Sonic Youth fan I’ve ever met. The missing
teeth and wedding ring on a guy who wasn’t much older than us
(we were 19) was a dead giveaway. Compared to some of the other
people we met, though, Claude was Ward Cleaver.
At 4 a.m. a normal-looking man in basketball shorts approached
us. After a minute, he casually asked us if we “(had) any
blow.” It was one of those subtle conversational throw-ins,
like when you’re talking up a girl at a party for 45 minutes
and you get on the subject of some band (like, say, The
Replacements) when she casually chimes in that her boyfriend loves
The Replacements almost as much as he loves her.
But this guy wasn’t done. After we said we were
“fresh out,” he nodded and began to walk away. Then he
turned around with a hopeful-yet-mischievous expression and
inquired, “What about some tweak?” Ridiculous.
Soon, nature took its course and we needed to use the bathroom.
Fortunately, there was a Jack In The Box directly across the
street. In hindsight, this was a horrid idea, because since then
we’ve realized that this location is by far the worst Jack In
The Box on the planet.
The sign on the door claimed that the restaurant opened at 6
a.m., which was in 20 minutes, so we decided to wait by the
entrance.
I guess the workers were aware of our plight and decided to
screw with us, because they didn’t open at 6, 6:15 or even
6:30. Instead the employees loafed around, pretending to look busy
and giving us dirty looks. Finally, at 6:45 a.m., the manager came
to the door, shook his finger at us, and propped a table and chairs
in front of the door so we couldn’t get in. Now that’s
service.
By 8 a.m., a new problem had developed ““ our primo
positions in line had been compromised. Apparently some people had
been calling their friends and telling them to drive over to Amoeba
and get in line, pushing us back to around the 52nd spot. We
didn’t appreciate this, and neither did the fat Bruce Willis
look-alike standing behind us.
The next two hours were spent fighting for position and scaring
away cutters. The highlight came when a couple of random kids who
couldn’t have been older than 15 tried to cut directly in
front of us. Bruce Willis read them the riot act, which included
some semi-serious threats of bodily harm, while Adam brandished a
large broomstick he had found.
Adam acted as crowd control, pounding the stick on the ground
and looking menacing while Bruce Willis guffawed and made
(hopefully) empty threats and Claude sat nodding with a toothy grin
while listening to his Walkman.
Finally, after a maddening final two hours that played out like
the last quarter of Super Bowl XXXVIII in nervousness and
intensity, we got into the store and got our copies of “Sonic
Nurse” and, more importantly, our tickets.
So was this night of lost sleep worth it? Probably. The concert
was a blast, even if the band favored “Sonic Nurse”
just a bit much.
The moral of the story? If you’re going to wait all night
in line for tickets to see the ultimate hipster band, go to the
bathroom before you leave home.
And bring a really big stick.
E-mail Humphrey at mhumphrey@media.ucla.edu if your
boyfriend loves The Replacements more than he loves you.