Dyelirium

So….my sis and I were in the car the other day chatting away. We somehow made our way to the topic of worst vacations. My worst vacation had to be when I went to Las Vegas and my purse was stolen…with everything I had in it…on the second day of the trip. I had three days left in Vegas with no money, no camera, no iPhone and no ID. It was awful, but it wasn’t really so musically related.

The subject of horrible trips sparked the thought in my head of the worst concerts I had been to, and having been to so many – I can say there have been plenty of bad experiences. I’ve gotten into fights, had an asshat put a cigarette out on my jacket, gotten groped by nasty dudes, found that the band sucked live, etc. So I posed the question to my online friends – What was the worst concert experience you’ve ever had?

I got some pretty good feedback, and some made me nod in agreement, and several made me laugh. I was told of a harrowing experience of having to go with an ex who wouldn’t give up his ticket. That would SUCK. I was told of having to deal with pretentious bands with a “Fuck you if you don’t like us” attitude. These bands can piss off. Several spoke of getting wounded at shows. I have TOTALLY been there. No fun. One person admitted to feeling like a chump when she was duped by a roadie into actually believing he was the actual musician. Hope you burn in Hell, scum. Finally one person admitted to going to see Deep Blue Something Cue Breakfast at Tiffany’s and felt nothing more needed to be said. He’s right. ‘Nuff said.

All of this chatter brought me back to crappy vacations and the second worst trip I ever took. This one definitely had a music connection. I guess it was a double whammy in a sense. It was a craptastic trip that turned into my worst concert experience.

Why? It wasn’t because I couldn’t afford it. It wasn’t because I had some lame work schedule that prevented me from being able to go. Dude, I would have totally called off sick for even a lame band. It was because…wait – I don’t want to give it away just yet. I think it is best to just start at the beginning of this sad comical adventure.

The year was 1991, and I was the tender age of 19. It was around that time that I had become deeply entrenched in my obsession for live music. I was going to concerts all the time…I mean like..weekly, ok? It seemed like I was seeing whoever happened to be in town. Some of the bands I saw are almost embarrassing to name. I was definitely in need of an intervention.

This, however, was a very special concert. Progressive rockers Queensryche were on a tour, and my best friend Lisa and I were VERY into that band. I have Lisa to thank for introducing me to their music. She gave me the albums The Warning and Rage for Order and ordered me to listen to them, advising that I would not be disappointed. I wasn’t. In fact, I became obsessed with their unique sound and even more consumed by lead singer Geoff Tate’s incredible talent as a vocalist. There were no daydreams of beautiful boys or desire to emulate their style. It was just a pure appreciation for the music they made.

The tour I mentioned above was called Operation: LIVEcrime, where the band would be performing their very awesome 1988 concept album Operation: mindcrime in its entirety. Oh, and by awesome, I mean Pink Floyd’s The Wall awesome. This album ‘spoke’ to me. This was a very big deal at the time since there really weren’t that many bands that would perform an entire album like they all seem to do now.

It was such a big deal that my best friend Lisa and I bought tickets right away for the show at Milwaukee’s Mecca Arena since a Chicago show wasn’t announced until later.  By the time the Chicago date was announced we were already locked into the Wisconsin show. Bummer.

We decided that we would make a mini-vacation out of it. We made plans to drive up to her grandmother’s home near the Wisconsin Dells for a day of screwing around and then make the drive to the show in Milwaukee the next day. Everything seemed to be going off without a hitch. We had had a great day in the Dells, and we were on the road early the next day blasting tunes, singing and laughing like we didn’t have a care in the world.

We were on some open stretch of highway in the early morning of a warm day in May with the windows down when I caught the familiar sweet smell of an overheating engine. There weren’t any other cars around, so I knew it must have been our car. Wait…let me rephrase that – her father’s car. The car he told us to take because it was in better shape than either of our cars. Before I could say anything, white puffs of steam and smoke began billowing from under the hood. I told her to pull over, but she was apprehensive since there was nothing that even remotely resembled civilization around us.

She insisted on driving on to see if there was an upcoming exit where we could find a phone, a gas station…anything. The car began to choke and splutter, and she barely made it to the shoulder before it jerked to a stop where it seemed to flip us off and die. We sat in silence – two 19 year old girls with zero mechanical knowledge in the middle of Bumblefuck before the age of cell phones. I looked up and in the distance I saw a gas station sign poking up above the trees.

After a few more minutes of wailing obscenities to the sky that nearly brought us both to tears, we decided that we had no other alternative but to grab our stuff and hoof it to that gas station. An hour later we got to the deserted gas station where we were informed by the thirty-something female attendant with a countrified drawl that, first of all – we were in a tiny town called Johnson Creek pronounced “crick”, and second – all of the shops in town were closed already all two of them and wouldn’t be open again until the following Monday. We couldn’t even get a tow. Could our day have gotten any worse? In a word? Yes.

The gas station employee called her boyfriend, Cal I will never forget his name…. to see if he would help us out. A sweaty, burly and bearded dude wearing dark glasses showed up in a beat up truck and pulled up and promptly went back out and pulled our broken down car to the station for us. The nicest thing to happen all day it seemed… He took a look at it and then handed us the bad news that the car had overheated to the point of parts of the engine actually melting. It could not be fixed.

At this point, I had lost hold on reality and actually suggested that we hitch a ride to Milwaukee so I could see this concert. Lisa, believing I had gone completely insane, ignored me and asked to use the phone so she could call her father. After a short conversation, Lisa slammed the phone down and announced that we were stuck in Johnson Creek…er…Crick for the night as her dad refused to make the three to four hour drive to get us that night. We were told to use the credit card he gave her for an emergency This totally qualified as one. and find a motel and wait until the next day. She ignored my pleas to see if we could rent a car to go to the concert. Yeah, I was actually pissed at her for it.

Cal offered to take us to a motel not far away and even agreed to pick us up the next day to bring us back to the gas station the next morning. We actually accepted the ride. What in the Hell were we thinking? We were 19. We weren’t thinking. My present self still shakes her head in disbelief when I think about this. The present me will barely walk across a well-lit parking lot if there is a stranger present, let alone accept a ride from one! After marathons of Criminal Minds, I am certain that such an act could only lead to the necessity of the fictional characters of Bones to identify the bits of me that would end up found strewn along some back ass road in the middle of Nowheresville, Wisconsin two years after I met some gruesome fate at the hands of a psychotic serial killer.

Anyway, we got to some nasty Bates-esque motel and were informed by the greasy wife beater wearing manager that the closest place to eat was just down the road. After a two mile walk down a pitch black and deserted highway, we made it to a all night truck stop that contained creepy-ass characters that scared the living shit out of us. We quickly took our food to go and got out of there and walked…in the dark…for two miles back to the gross motel. By the time we got there we were too pissed off and exhausted to even eat, so we just passed out.

I woke up to the sound of Lisa talking on the phone. When she hung up, she turned and looked at me with a very serious expression and said, “Well, my dad said that when we get back to the gas station, my uncle, his girlfriend and their illegitimate children will pick us up.” It was the funniest thing I had heard since the car broke down. We gathered up our stuff, and, true to his word, Cal came by and took us back to the gas station. An hour later the cavalry arrived in a minivan and took our broken down selves back home. I don’t think we said a word the entire ride.

Three months after that lame ass trip, Lisa bought me the video boxset of the concert, complete with the unused ticket, for my birthday as a cruel joke. The cruel part was that the concert was filmed, in part, at the show we were supposed to see. That day, we swore to each other that if Queensryche ever, by some miracle, decided to play Operation:mindcrime live in its entirety again, nothing – NOTHING – was going to stop us from seeing that show, regardless of age and any distance that may have grown between us. The years passed and we talked about it from time to time and always reaffirmed our oath to get to that show and witness it along side each other – a show we were sure was never going to happen.

Much to my complete shock, in 2006, I heard that Queensryche was going to stop in Chicago on their tour that year and were to not only perform all of Operation:mindcrime but all of Operation:mindcrime II as well. I was VERY excited, but there was a great deal of sadness that surrounded it. There was no way that the promise Lisa and I had made as kids could be kept. You see – the year before the tour, Lisa, my best friend of over 25 years and my constant concert companion had passed away.

I went to the show with another friend, but it wasn’t the same and was filled with mixed emotions. It didn’t feel like karma was blessing me for what I had gone through fifteen years earlier. Lisa wasn’t there to laugh and commiserate with me about that messed up trip we took so long ago. The band was awesome, but I just couldn’t get into it at the beginning of the show. Partway through, however, I experienced a bizarre sensation that wherever her spirit may be, she was enjoying that show through me somehow and wanted me to feel the same. I really can’t explain it, but it felt very real, and I somehow got past the sadness I was experiencing and just cut loose and had a great time.  Because of that feeling, that 2006 Queensryche show ended up being one of my BEST concert experiences…ever.

Dye & Lisa’s Queensryche Hit List (Just a few from an old mix tape Lisa made for me. I still listen to it in memory of one of the most incredible people I had the absolute honor to have as such a huge part of my life.)

Gonna Get Close To You (Rage For Order)

The Lady Wore Black (Queensryche)

Screaming In Digital (Rage For Order)

Suite Sister Mary ( Operation:mindcrime)

Anybody Listening? (Empire)

Spreading the Disease (Operation:mindcrime)