ALABAMA

 

The first non-country concert I saw: STRAY CATS @ Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas. 
The first real punk show I saw: THE DEAD MILKMEN w/BABY M in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 
Perspective is wild, because there were probably less than six years between these two events.

The first record I bought with my own money: CHARLIE DANIELS BAND Million Mile Reflections.
The first cassette I bought with my own money: ALABAMA My Home's In Alabama. 
The first punk tape I acquired: Tough call, but I traded Nikki Jorgensen my copy of BON JOVI's Slippery When Wet for her copy of SUICIDAL TENDENCIES' self titled debut in 1986. 

Notable: 
• Several country concerts pre-dated the benchmark gigs - RONNIE MILSAP, KENNY ROGERS, HOYT AXTON, WILLIE NELSON, DOLLY PARTON and others. Living in Austin had its perks, even though I could have been seeing DICKS and BIG BOYS if I had been a couple of years older. 
• I read a review of HÜSKER DÜ's Flip Your Wig in an issue of Creem that I picked up from the magazine rack in Safeway; it inspired me to shoplift a copy of Candy Apple Grey a few weeks later when I was on an orchestra field trip to Oklahoma City and we went to the mall (because shopping malls were a novel treat to us small/er town kids). Shit blew my mind. 
• My step-cousin visited in 1987 ands saw that I was getting close. She bought me Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death, Never Mind The Bollocks and X's See How We Are and helped me bleach my jean jacket and paint the evil dude from ST's Join The Army on the back. I am eternally grateful, and will always remember how disappointed she was with that X record. 
• Two shows I wish I could revisit now that I know more things: GRIMPLE @ Kelly's Bar & Grill in Norman, Oklahoma (1992 I think) and BORN AGAINST in Cudahay, Wisconsin (1993). They were both milestone gigs, but I was clueless.

Really though...I still am.

THAT FIRST TAPE
My mother cleaned some shit out of my sister's room recently, and handed me a small bundle of tapes that survived the decades. Not quite ready to listen to the tapes of her talking and singing yet, but I was very happy that she held onto the shit from my younger years. I've listened to this tape hundreds of times - but last week I popped this physical copy in a deck for the first time in thirty years was truly special.