Secret Transmissions

January 2, 1994. Outside, it is 2 AM. 

It’s a trick, you know, balancing a hot-dog in one hand, working it out of the wrapper so’s just a little bit sticks out, enough to get two bites, maybe, even though it’s covered in Stadium Mustard, coleslaw and chili, while steering with the other hand, trying not to fishtail, driving home, alone, down Lorain, toward Carnegie Avenue.

Especially if you’ve had a couple drinks and all of a sudden there’s a cop you pass every block, every single block, like, I wish these guys were around to help people during the day when there’s actually traffic, Jesus.

But things were so I needed to look forward to this. It was not just that we didn’t cook at home, or that I should have been hungry for some reason. I needed a reward for getting through another show, another day, and I needed to feel I was connected with the city, that I had my own city-oriented ritual, my own personal connection.

So I went to the Hot Dog Inn for one of those dogs, or two or three, and I listened to college radio on the journey home. Not The End, but Honest-To-God experimental radio. I had Wainstead All Night on WCSB, who had his own Harper’s Bazaar kind of list going where he recited all this shit from wire reports, like News of the Weird only it’s the Government that’s weird. 

Or a hip-hop show on WUJC where all the fellahs were giving their “shouts out" or taking the crank calls from guys trying to get the chance to say “fuck” or “ba-ba-booey” on the air. 

 Or WRUW was playing I don’t know what they were playing, whatever the hell it was they decided to play that night. Odds are good it was dub. It still is.

Thousands of people my age might have been listening to The End or Jammin’ 92, but how many could actually have been listening to this stuff at that moment? Doing what? Doing nothing? Sitting in their dorm or using it as a soundtrack in the basement, smoking weed, the radio full of chatter over here, the Dead playing on the tape deck over there? 

These were secret transmissions, in the middle of the night, signals sent through the sub-freezing temperatures reaching, whom? Maybe I was absolutely the only person listening at that moment, skidding through drifts of road-slush, careening past the towering, sightless, Guardians of Traffic. 

Someone was sitting warm and cozy inside a booth behind locked doors in Rhodes Tower or in the basement of Mather Hall, spinning records and telling the Truth before dawn so that a lonely guy driving from point A to point B would have something different to listen to.

Driving slowly down Carnegie, past the new ball park (opening soon) with a messy hot dog in my lap, feeling connected. To that. A mouth full of salt and sugar and fat, ears full of local, unpolished noise, with one hand on the wheel navigating the slippery boulevard. All my senses were full and I was alone. 

And in that place, that personal space, in limbo between the theater and my house, for a brief moment I felt like myself.

Old Fashion Hot Dogs is still located at 4008 Lorain Ave in Cleveland.

Nine Inch Nails @ The Agora

Trent Reznor

Twenty years ago today Nine Inch Nails played the Agora.

This was a dam-bursting moment. Maybe six people in Cleveland noticed when Pretty Hate Machine was released in 1989. In the months and years that followed, as the record gained recognition and momentum, the people of Cleveland began to claim Trent Reznor as one of their own (he's actually from Pennsylvania.)

The radio station The End trumpeted the impending release of Broken in 1992, but then never played anything from it because, as DJ Maria Farina told me, it wasn’t “radio-friendly”. However, no one could ignore The Downward Spiral, and it was universally lauded when it was released March 8, 1994.

Except in Cleveland, where Scene Magazine queried, “how many times can you rhyme ‘hole’ with ‘soul’, after all?”

“All this nihilistic, self-loathing, misanthropic, suicidal posturing is getting to be a bit much, Mr. Self-Desruct. Either jump or come in off the ledge.”
- John Soeder, Scene Magazine

Rolling Stone would eventually rate the album as the 32nd best of the 1990s, between Dylan's Time Out of Mind and The Slim Shady LP. But, you know. Opinions.

The day tickets went on sale for NIN’s first concert in Cleveland since they broke nationally, due in large part to their performance in the original Lollapalooza in 1991. The Agora sold out in less than ten minutes. I didn’t have a job and so was on the phone (because that’s how we used to order tickets) and bought two moments after the lines opened, unaware of my great fortune.

Opening acts include an entirely forgettable warm-up who I remember had some kind of non-lesbian, girl-on-girl thing, followed by a terrifying, horse-faced clown in a tall, pointed witches' hat who began his set by reciting the Wondrous Boat Ride poem from Willy Wonka. That would be the first time I had seen or even heard of Marilyn Manson.

Diana and I had arrived early enough to get great seats in front, you could see the band perfectly over the crowd on the floor. The place was completely packed by the time the headliner began their set, and what little moshing had started during the opening acts got crazy.

I think I stayed in my seat until they played Closer, and then I couldn’t handle it anymore, I wanted to be down there, not sitting. I gave Diana a little apology, handed her my glasses and shoved my way onto the floor.

 Set List 5/9/94

Pinion
Terrible Lie
Sin
March of the Pigs
Something I Can Never Have
Closer
Reptile
Wish
Suck (Pigface)
The Only Time
Get Down, Make Love (Queen)
Down in It
Big Man With a Gun
Head Like a Hole

Encore:
Dead Souls (Joy Division)
Help Me I Am in Hell
Happiness in Slavery

Once upon a time (because I cannot speak for today) being in a mosh pit was not actually dangerous. Maybe I’m kidding myself. But pushing and jumping and picking people up and moving them around is a very exciting way to enjoy a loud, fast concert.

First time I did what your father used to refer to as “slam dancing” was seeing The Replacements at Mem Aud in 1987. At one point I was body surfing and suddenly they were all gone and I landed flat on my back. About a half a dozen hands reached down and helped me right back up - wind knocked out, suddenly upright. Dizzying. Transcended. Stupid.

[tangent]

The Agora show was my penultimate mosh pit. My last would be exactly eight months later, when against my own better judgement I attended NIN's return to Cleveland at the behemoth CSU Convocation Center on January 9. I ran into Diana and her co-workers, and that was awkward. She had moved out a few days earlier. Previously, I was a svelte, 25 year-old member of an underground theater troupe. Now I was 26 and gaining weight, waiting tables in a chain pizza restaurant, and getting divorced.

Exiting the pit that January in 1995, I had a bad feeling in my abdomen. Two months later I would have a hernia operation. Limping out, I stopped an old lady, incongruous in the surroundings, but recognized her, and assumed she must be a friend of my mother's.

"Oh, hi!" I shouted. "Good to see you!" She blinked her eyes at me, blankly. I had made an error. That was Jane Scott.

[/tangent]

At the Agora show, Reznor did not say much, if anything, between numbers. At one point he asked, "Anybody like Scene Magazine?" The audience response was comically uproarious. Then he added, "Yeah. I like to wipe my ass with it."

Scene's Pete Chakerian reviewed the show as the success it was, however.  Reznor "seized the crowd" and "stalked the stage with reckless abandonment."

"You could just smell the sweat in the air ... the rest of the evening kept the same breakneck pace ... Spectacular ... Reznor started tearing up the joint."
- Pete Chakerian, Scene Magazine

If the editors were embarrassed by the gushing of their critic, they tried to make up for it with a photo in the gossip column featuring a fluffy-haired Reznor with his former 80s synth-pop trio Exotic Birds with the caption, PRETTY Hate Machine.

After just a few songs I was back, seated with Diana … the first song in the encore left me shocked and confounded, because I knew every word of the song and couldn’t for the life of me know from where. NIN had recorded Dead Souls for The Crow soundtrack and like a lot of other folks my age we had “discovered” Joy Division in 1988 when they released a singles collection (more nerdy shit: This is why it makes sense that they are playing Love Will Tear Us Apart in the party scene in Donnie Darko.)

What lingers is the memory of a girl in the mosh pit who was near me for just a moment. She shouted, OH FUCK because she’d dropped her cigarettes, I saw them on the floor about to be dashed to bits when I threw out an arm and shoved this big guy to one side, she didn’t miss a moment but swooped her hand down and caught her smokes.

She threw an arm around me, kissed my face and intimately screamed, “I LOVE you for that!”

The 12 Bands of Christmas Sing!

The first "12 Bands of Christmas Sing" was a benefit for Cleveland Public Theatre, held on Tuesday, December 22, 1992. Featured bands included Jehovah Waitresses, Moko Bovo, Hostile Omish, Giant Jack Johnsons, King of Clubs, Hot Tin Roof, Jericho Turnpike, Chuck Mosbrook and The Electric Monkey, 6 Feet Under, The Waynes, Odd Girl Out and Rust (aka Slack Jaw).

All the bands were asked to play at least one Christmas-oriented tune, and it was perfectly all right if it were blasphemous.

For our part, the Guerrillas had written the “Six Hits of Christmas,” to be performed between acts. That night we climbed the million stairs ... there were a lot of people behind us, in front of us, passing us on their way down. We could hear the music and all the people up there. This was going to be our largest audience yet. We found the Green Room, which was very small, filled with guitars and aspiring musicians. We had no props, we had no costumes, it was going to be just us and one chair against the teeming throng.

“Hey guys!”

It was The End's Maria Farina! Maria was hosting the show!

She bopped into the Green Room to find us and give us the low-down. She was sporting a groovy new sequined vest and a flat-topped, wide-brimmed, Debbie Gibson hat.

“So what have you got planned?" she asked.

“Well, we have six short plays to do.”

“Do you need the microphone on the floor?" Maria asked. "You could do your plays between sets and maybe you can help me give away prizes.”

“Okay, cool, uh, we don’t need the microphone, though, we’ll just project.”

We moved out into the house to check out the scene. Man, there were a lot of people here. Guerrillas scurried into the seating sections during a particularly rowdy set by Hostile Omish (the boys intimidated Maria into churning butter) and handed out flyers for You Have the Right to Remain Silent!

Guerrillas were scattered about the space. Hostile Omish concluded their set. Maria looked noticeably disturbed by her butter-churning experience.

“How about that, huh?” The crowd cheered enthusiastically. “Wow,” she continued, “there’s some angry youth here ... Yeah!”

She caught my eye. “And now, here’s a very special treat — the Guerrilla Theater Company!”

A smattering of cheers and cat-calls.

“They’ll be doing some sketches for you throughout the evening, and later we’re going to give away some most excellent prizes like they do in their show, let’s hear it for them!”

A polite round of applause as we appeared from everywhere to take the floor in front of the bandstand. Audience members got up in large numbers to get beer from the concession stand out in the lobby.

“Good evening, everyone!” I called out. My voice was thin and wispy, and it floated gently up, towards the ceiling. A large part of the crowd were talking and weren’t about to be quiet for us, not to mention the hubbub from the now very crowded lobby.

“Beginning New Year’s Day and every Friday and Saturday night from now until the end of time we do a show called —”

All Guerrillas: “'You Have the Right to Remain Silent!'”

“Make sure you get one of these flyers before you leave for a special discount —”

I was losing them.

“— and we’re going to do a very special Christmas play for you now entitled 'It’s A Wonderful Lie'.”

And we did our little play, an indictment of the Savings and Loan bail-out, there on this small stage with people walking back and forth in front of us, struggling against the din. When it concluded we ignored the light applause and quickly did another one, about all the leftist things we want for Christmas, said thank you very much and beat a hasty retreat from the stage.

We performed some more sketches after the next band, and performed an impromptu “Trivia Round” with Maria to give away some prizes.

As soon as our shtick was spent, we grabbed our things and slunk away, even though at the rate things were going, the concert was going to continue well after midnight.

Another disappointing aspect of our not choosing to use a microphone, apart from the obvious, is that there is no recording of our having performed there.