Punk Rock MisAdventures

KoRn, today, is one of the biggest bands in the world.  And in 1998,

after the release of their album "Follow the Leader", they may as well

have been the only band in the world to me and my high school best

friend, Christina Wheeler.

The band's first two albums had been all but played out by our circle of

friends in anticipation for Follow the Leader's release date which kept

getting pushed back.  When it finally did come out though, it blew us

away.  It seemed to have some sort of addictive quality that made it

impossible to take out of the CD player.  To quote Christina's

high school boyfriend, Doyle, after we pressed the repeat button a fourth

time since coming back to her house after school:  "Don't you guys have

any other CD’s?"  With eyebrows raised (and pierced with safety pins on

the same side as Jonathan Davis), we replied in irritated unison, "Uh,

yeah."  You see, tickets to the "Rock is Dead Tour" (which featured

Videodrone, Rob Zombie, and of course, KoRn) were going on sale that

Saturday at 10 am and we HAD to know that album beginning to end or we

would surely embarrass ourselves.  (I know, right?)

Now, these were the days when shopping on the internet wasn't really all

that popular.  Not to mention that neither I, nor Cori (our other

partner in crime on this particular excursion) had the internet at our

parents' houses.  Christina's parents did have internet, but the only

computer in her house was in her parents' room and her mom made it

pretty public that she was surfing porn on it all day.  (Especially when

we brought boys over. Gross.)  So our only option was to get up super

early and go to the Tacoma Mall Rite Aid which had a Ticket Master

inside.

The last time KoRn had played at the Tacoma Dome, floor seats sold out

in like a minute.  We HAD to get tickets on the floor so that we could

be in the moshpit.  The moshpit was the natural habitat of all of our

punk rock/metalhead friends and the KoRn moshpit was the Mecca of all

moshpits.  So we all met up at the mall at 7 am to make sure that we

would be the first people in line.  And we were the first people in

line.....on the wrong side of the store.  We figured this out pretty

quickly though, and became the 9th, 10th and 11th people in line which

is, apparently, just close enough to the front of the line to get the best

seats in the balcony.

SEATS?!  BALCONY?!  We can't MOSH in SEATS in a BALCONY!!!

We were devastated to say the least, but our devastation lasted only a

short time as we formulated a plan to skip school the day of the concert

and go to the venue to beat the crowd.  Surely, we would see the band

arrive…we could tell them our sob story and they would see how

sincere and awesome we were, allow us to mosh on the floor and be our

best friends for life.  Or a more probable outcome would be that a radio

station had to be giving out tickets and if we were the first people

there, who better to give them to?  Either way, we were sure we would

make our way to that moshpit and have ample bruises to flash to our

fellow classmates the following day at school.

Skipping school was to us like it was for many teenagers: an art form that

we had perfected.  Well, maybe not quite "perfected" since Christina had

accumulated so many "unexcused absences", (She was out of purple hair

dye and grounded.  The logical time to go to the mall was during school

hours.) that she had to get a note from a doctor to miss any school or

she would go to juvenile hall.  We spent the night before the concert in

her room listening to Follow the Leader while she chain smoked and

chugged whole milk like it was her job, in an attempt to accumulate

phlegm.  Hopefully, this would be enough to get her a doctor's note since

she couldn't list her symptoms in Spanish at the only clinic that took her health

insurance.  Sure enough, it was.  As we were waiting for her note on our way out,

the woman at the reception asked in broken English, "You are sexually active, 

No?" and before we could stop giggling, WHOMP!!!  Huge Sack O' Condoms on the counter for all to see. We tried to refuse, but the receptionist didn't seem to get it, so we

took the Sack O' Condoms and made our way to the bus.

We met up with Cori at the Tacoma Dome around 9 am (doors were at 8 pm)

and we weren't even the first people there.  We were, however, the first

people there who had seats.  All of the others had come that early so

they could reserve their places right up front against the grate.  Fuck

that, you can't mosh against the grate.  You can barely move or even

breath for that matter.  When asked why we came that early we responded

with, "Free condom?"  This provided our immature brains with hours of

amusement.  We blew them up like balloons, dared each other to eat the

flavored lubricants and hoarded some of the more delicious water-based

ones to make into miniature popsicles later.  (The oil-based ones didn't

freeze.)  There also were female condoms in there, which none of us had

ever seen before, but we quickly discovered they made fashionable

bracelets after we removed the condom part from the ring and painted it

with glitter nail polish.

Cori disappeared to make out with some random dude as she often did.  He

had a short ponytail, a long goatee and oversized pants held up by a belt

made of hemp…we all agreed he was pretty hot.  Christina and I both had to shit and

didn't want to use a Honey Bucket, so we took a walk around the building

to try to find somewhere with running water to drop our respective

deuces.  In our quest for a suitable facility, some security guard

flagged us down to bum a cigarette.  He agreed to turn a blind eye while

we snuck backstage and said the bathroom was to the right when we walked

in.  "You girls might even be able to just hide out in there until the

show starts and sneak in if you want to."  We both looked at each other

in agreement and the plan was set.  We walked with our heads up and chests

sticking out in an embarrassing attempt to appear as confident and

inconspicuous (yeah right) as possible through the backstage entrance

and headed straight toward the bathroom.  We heard someone

behind  us saying, "Um. Excuse me ladies!" We pretended not to hear

them and rushed to the backstage ladies bathroom without ever breaking

our awkward posture.  We did our business, of course, and then......and

then.....what now?

Doors weren't for about another 7 hours and if we left that bathroom

someone was sure to kick us out.  We stayed in the stalls playing "guess

the number" and "20 questions" via notes passed and written on the

envelopes our concert tickets came in.  The cleaning lady kept coming in

every hour, so to avoid suspicion, we shared one toilet and switched

stalls after every time she came in while also alternating who sat on

the tank and who sat on the seat with their pants down.  I think she

started to catch on after a while.  She knocked on the door at one point

asking how much longer I was going to be in there.  "Ummmmm. I'm having

some stomach problems today."  I replied while we both tried not to

laugh. "It might be a while."

Hours had passed and we could hear the roar of the crowd as people entered

The Tacoma Dome.  The doors were finally open.  Now seemed like a safe time to

leave the bathroom and walk from backstage to the floor.  Plus, we were starving.  We started to make our way to where we thought the entrance to the floor might be

which lead us through a small catering area. No one stopped us from

walking through so we figured no one would notice/care if we had a small

plate of cheese and crackers.  We figured wrong.  We were thrown out of

there within seconds, but not before Christina managed to devour an

entire block of Rob Zombie's cheese.  (Rob, if you're reading this,

we're sorry.  And it was delicious.)  They even confiscated Christina's

ticket, but  they didn't get mine because I lied and said I didn't have

one.  After getting the boot, we walked around to the front entrance to

where the scalpers were  and pooled our money to buy an even shittier seat

than she had before.

We did manage to sneak Christina down to sit with me and Cori.  Our

friend from school, Paul, was there, too.  Down on the floor, blown up

condoms were flying everywhere as Videodrone began their set.  Less than

a third of the crowd was moshing, though.  Christina and I heckled the

non-moshing floor-seaters while Cori and Paul disappeared to go make out

somewhere.  Others around us joined in (with the heckling, not the making

out).  By the time Rob Zombie's set began, we had had inspired a full-on riot

in section 11A which later turned into its own moshpit.  FUCK

YEAH!  We started our own moshpit!  In all the excitement we started

daring people to jump from the seats down to the floor.  "It's not that

high!  Just do it! Pussy!"  We even prepared ourselves to jump with

them.  Before his set ended, though, there were security guards in

orange shirts shoulder to shoulder in front of our section.  No more

plotting.  We would spend the rest of the show in section 11A moshing

between the seats that were banging painfully against our calves as we were

shoved into them repeatedly.

KoRn played an unbelievably amazing set which included "Faggot" and "Kill

You" (my two favorite songs by them) back to back.  To this day, they

remain one of my favorite bands to watch live.

The following day at school, the hot topic (not the store) at the lunch

table was, of course, the concert the night before.  Everyone who was

there went on and on about what they felt were the highlights of the show

while others whined about how much they hated us for going when they

didn't.  We all swapped moshpit injury stories.  When seeing the bruises

on our calves, Doyle commented, "Your legs look like chocolate-chip cookie

dough."

"Yeah, we got them from moshing between the seats."

"You were in that moshpit in the seats?!  That shit looked crazy!"

"In it?  We started it!  We tried everything to get to the moshpit on the

floor and when we couldn't we started our own."

"You girls are crazy."

"You think that's crazy?  We snuck backstage and hid there for hours, but

we got kicked out for eating Rob Zombie's cheese."

"Oh my God!!!  You went backstage?  And you ate Rob Zombie's cheese?  You guys

are the shit."

And we were.