Hold Onto Your Friends

(I was supposed to see Morrissey tonight at MSG but he postponed the show due to illness. And yeah, that's my ticket stub.)

I was in Boston for a program during the Summer of '91 just before my senior year of high school, at the tail end of being sixteen, clumsy and shy.... Mer was in New York and suggested I head on down for Moz at MSG. So I snuck out of my dorm and grabbed the Greyhound from South Station and after a five hour trip, met up with her at Port Authority. We hung out in her room for a few hours, dyed our hair with some Manic Panic (hers purple, mine orange) and glided over to MSG for our true love.

Moz was on this tour to support Kill Uncle, his follow-up album to his solo debut Viva Hate (I'm not counting his collection of singles, Bona Drag). He played a great setlist that evening, July 13, 1991:

Interesting Drug
The Last Of The Famous International Playboys
Piccadilly Palare
Trash
Sing Your Life
King Leer
Asian Rut
Mute Witness
Everyday Is Like Sunday
November Spawned A Monster
Will Never Marry
There's A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends
That's Entertainment
Our Frank
Suedehead
Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together
/Yes I Am Blind
/Alsatian Cousin
//Disappointed

Mer had pulled good tickets for us. We were on the floor, 18th row, and once we stood on our folding chairs, we could see the Mozster just great.

After that little adventure, Mer and I scowled through senior year of high school in suburban hell together. We graduated, and I went back to Boston for college and she to the City for art school. We wrote some letters that freshman year, but in the olden days before email and free long distance were standard (and you can forget about IM!), we immersed ourselves in our respective lives and quickly lost touch. It was not until about five years later, when our younger brothers ended up in the same high school homeroom and talked to each other briefly did I hear that Mer had died of an OD sometime during undergrad.

*****

Over Memorial Day weekend, I was at my parents' home in Jersey digging through my shit, hoping to find my old Moz Kill Uncle tour t-shirt so I might wear it to the upcoming show. Turns out Mom had thrown it out along with my other old concert tees a while ago -- grrrr! Instead, I did find my old yearbook and flipped through it. Mer had written one of those long two page inscriptions that only your best friends would spend time doing. None of that "Have a great summer, be cool, you rule" crap. She wrote a lot for me to remember and think about -- much of still rings true for me today...