In my last entry, I mentioned the ill-fated Ned’s Atomic Dustbin show. Here then, is the story of that night, and then events that transpired.

Spring 1992.

Michael got wind of a rock show happening in the Great Northern Metropolis of Charlotte, North Carolina. After a fair bit of ticket wrangling and cajoling, he convinced Amy, Pam and me to travel and see the mighty Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. Mind you, this is God Fodder era Ned’s. . . pre-”Not Sleeping Around” and well before the trainwreck that was their cover of the Bay City Rollers’ Saturday Night on the So I Married An Axe Murderer soundtrack.

The SIMAAM soundtrack(!) which includes two versions of “There She Goes“; one by The La’s — which made them very famous — and the other by The Boo Radleys, which should have made them very famous.

Anyway, we traveled on a rainy Friday to the legendary 1313 Club. Legendary. . . every club in Charlotte was lengendary at that point, because they were all owned by Bill Flowers, a fifty year old burn-out who couldn’t hold a decent conversation, but was an idiot savant when it came to booking a venue. Bill also owned The “Legendary” Milestone club, a rat-infested hole-in-the-ground which was the place to play in Charlotte between 1988 and 1997. Speaking of “legend”, legend has it that J Mascis carved “Dino Jr.” into the bathroom wall the first time that Dinosaur, Jr. played the Milestone, then Lou Barlow scribbled “J Mascis sucks” on top of it during Sebadoh’s first engagement there. I’ve seen both, but who knows how the scrawl got there.

Where was I? Oh yes. . . we four traveled to the 1313, and on the way Michael kept bugging Amy to pop in the new Gin Blosssoms album, but Amy stood steadfast in her resolve to play only the compilation that Mark had given her, featuring Polvo’s Channel Changer and Pegboy’s Through My Fingers, and also Jawbreaker’s Bivouac.

In any case, we went to see Ned’s and Hot House Flowers (this is the part of the story where I introduce the central conflict) only to discover that it’s an 18 and over show.

DRAT! For Amy was 17 and I was a mere lad of 16, so we were not allowed into the show. We made heartfelt promises and pleaded and begged, but the doorman stood firm. Michael and Pam went into the club, while Amy and I scalped our tickets, hopped into the Saturn, and set off with a little pocket money and four hours to kill in Charlotte, NC.

Let me take a moment here to kill the suspense and answer the question that each of you is asking in your heart-of-hearts. . . no, I didn’t kiss the girl. In retrospect — and when I say retrospect I mean two weeks later when she dumped her boyfriend — I realized that I should have kissed her, because she was the sort of girl who looked like she wanted to be kissed, and I thought I was the sort of guy who could do the job properly. But, I didn’t.

Gentle reader, I’m not sure how much you know about Charlotte, but in aside from being the financial center of the Southeast is a sleepy little burg, where the street lamps shut off at 10:30 and the sidewalks roll up around midnight. It was well past 10pm and all the movies had already started, it was league night at the bowling alley, both Milestone Records and Repo Records were closed — Repo Records, Charlotte’s only punk rock record store/adult bookstore, owned by Jeff Clayton of Anti-Seen.

So, what are a boy and girl to do? That’s right, we rode around the beltway listening to Bivouac, and stopped at every Taco Bell we could find. There are alot of Taco Bell’s in Charlotte and I think we visited every single one that night, finally returning to the 1313 with time to kill. We sat in the parking lot of the club, laid the seats back and blasted. . you guessed it, Bivouac, until Michael and Pam arrived.

To this day, I’ve never seen Ned’s live, and I don’t know how that show was. Amy and I wouldn’t let Michael and Pam talk about it, so if you have any Ned’s bootlegs circa 1992, pass them my way. I’d appreciate it.

The moral of the story is two-fold. . that means there are two morals, a pair of lessons you should learn from this tale:

The first is that listening to Jawbreaker, while perhaps not actually solving any problems, causes any problems in the foreground to dissolve into the background. It helps to have a cool spring night and a pretty girl around, but these are not strictly necessary.

Which brings me to the second moral, the important one. If the opportunity presents itself, Kiss the Girl. It will probably go poorly, and you may wish you hadn’t, but in the balance it’s much better to wish you hadn’t that to wish you had. And sure, it might make things bad and it might make you miserable, but you’re probably going to be miserable anyway, so you might as well be miserable for a reason. Think of it as Pascal’s Wager, but with lips.

Postscript: Three years later, in the summer of 1995, I kissed Amy. Once. It was like kissing my sister. But at least now, I know.