Dreams Are Unfinished Thoughts - When a Fan Befriends a Drug-Addicted Rock Star

MANTIS ONE

“What do you think you mean to me? / How important you must seem.”

God Lives Underwater: “Waste of Time” – GLU

The year that I got married was the first year since 1995 that I would be without one of my best friends, David Fitzgerald Reilly. My emotions were pulled back and forth, right and left, as I realized that David wouldn’t be at my wedding. David always had a talent for making our friendship so trying, tribulating, and rewarding all at the same time.

June 21, 1995, was probably the date when our story started, even though I didn’t meet David until the next night on June 22. It’s funny how almost every major life-changing moment never really just happens; it develops. I often try to trace why and how David and I met in the first place. To bring it to the absolute moment that would allow me to know that he even existed.

I have to take it all the way back to the third concert I ever attended. Lollapalooza ’92 at Great Woods in Mansfield, Massachusetts, with my high school friend Bill. He eventually became very fundamental in shaping the music I listened to in my mid-to-late teens.

When I entered Bishop Fenwick High School in Peabody, Massachusetts, back in 1990, I was listening to what would be considered classic rock: Pink Floyd, Electric Light Orchestra, Genesis, The Who, Queen, Yes, Rush, Jethro Tull, The Monkees, Private Lightning, Cat Stevens, and Neil Diamond.

My first concert ever was Yes in the summer of 1989. They were touring on the Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe album. My second concert was Jethro Tull in the fall of 1989. They were touring on the Rock Island album.

By the time 1992 had rolled around, I had also gotten into a diversity of modern artists like REM, Depeche Mode, Jesus Jones, EMF, Big Audio Dynamite, Tesla, Midnight Oil, INXS, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, Duran Duran, Public Enemy, Digital Underground, 3rd Bass, Faith No More, Nirvana, Live, and Guns N’ Roses.

Even though I somehow completely skipped over the 1980s’ hair band movement, my guilty pleasure had quickly included some of those producer-based bands, such as The KLF, Enigma, C+C Music Factory, Snap, Blackbox, Shakespeare’s Sister, Pete Bardens, and Milli Vanilli.

Bill talked me into going to Lollapalooza with him, since he had no one to go with. The festival had Pearl Jam touring on the Ten album, Red Hot Chili Peppers touring on the Blood Sugar Sex Magik album, and Soundgarden touring on the Badmotorfinger album. All on the same bill. Even if I had just gotten into those particular bands, I had to go.

That was the tour where a certain band called Ministry was also coheadlining. I had actually never heard of Ministry. Honestly, I just wanted to get through their set to hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

As I sat in the first row of Section 8 next to Bill at Great Woods, I was ultimately led down the path of who I am now. Ministry came out and opened with “N.W.O.” from Psalm 69. It was like a whole new undiscovered world had opened up in front of me.

Prior to that moment, I had no idea what industrial music really was. It was angry. It was raw. It was militant. It was pounding but still empathetic. And it didn’t care if you listened or not, because it was going to be loud! I had never felt a merger of such a human emotion with such a mechanical sound before. I bought Psalm 69 the very next day. I haven’t looked back since.

During my junior year of high school, my eyes opened even further to a larger world of industrial music. As I approached my high school friend Jim during lunch break one day, he had his headphones on. I asked him what he was listening to.

“A band called Nine Inch Nails,” he answered. “Their new album came out this week.”

I had heard of Nine Inch Nails, but I had never actually heard them. He didn’t even ask me if I wanted to hear their music. He ordered me to.

“You need to listen to this song,” he said.

I put on the headphones, and he pressed Play. My introduction into a more commercial industrial genre began with the opening drums to the song “Wish” off the album Broken. I listened to that three-and-a-half-minute song and realized it was exactly what I had been looking for emotionally in music.

That Friday night I went and bought Broken. I also picked up Nine Inch Nails’ first album, Pretty Hate Machine. I spent the rest of that weekend dissecting them, note by note, lyric by lyric.

Through my obsession with Ministry and Nine Inch Nails I then discovered, with much love, Front 242. Jim and I went to see Front 242 in Rhode Island in 1993. They were touring on the 06:21:03:11 Up Evil album.

I had finally found my niche in music. I wanted to know, own, and memorize every industrial band out there.

One day during the summer before my senior year, the local radio station played a song by a brand-new band called Stabbing Westward. Upon hearing that song, I realized that industrial and rock could live together.

I had been completely bitten by the bug. I needed to become an industrial-music-elitist, also known as a Rivethead. Any musical suggestions anyone gave me or if a review of a band even remotely mentioned the word industrial somehow, I bought the album. As a rabid fan of the genre, I couldn’t get enough.

At the time I was in a thrash metal band called Vertical Smile. We had only played one show. We also had only written two songs. I quit Vertical Smile to start my own industrial band.

I had a few friends in high school who had become Rivetheads like me, who also had the motivation to be in an industrial project. My first real band, called Yellow #1, was born. Yellow #1 only made me hungrier for anything under the industrial umbrella that I could get my hands on.

The afternoon of June 21, 1995, was already warm enough in Massachusetts for swimming. My high school friend Dave, also a member of my band Yellow #1, asked his dad to open the pool.

Dave was infamously otherwise known as Dogboy, because of a particular hairstyle that he wore to high school one day. It resembled the character Dogboy from the MTV show Liquid Television.

For these outdoor summer events, often we brought out one of those small boom boxes. We would listen to 104.1 WBCN while we took turns beating each other in the pool with pool noodles.

On that particular day the WBCN deejays were between songs and had mentioned a contest for 104 people to see two bands—Maids of Gravity and God Lives Underwater—the very next night at the Paradise club in Boston.

Oddly enough I was a subscriber to a new monthly magazine at the time, called huH. It focused primarily on new and upcoming alternative bands. Unfortunately, it didn’t run for too long. They had just featured a two-page story on God Lives Underwater that included a full-page photo of the band.

With each edition the magazine came with a free sampler disc of new bands. God Lives Underwater wasn’t on the sampler, but Maids of Gravity were. I really liked their song “Only Dreaming.” I was also very interested in God Lives Underwater, due to the write-up they had received in the magazine. The article had compared them to Nine Inch Nails and Stabbing Westward.

I don’t remember exactly if Dogboy’s portable phone was already outside. Maybe he had to run inside and get it. Nevertheless one of us said to the other, “We should call. I’m not doing anything tomorrow night. Are you?” And the other replied, “No.”

This was a win-only show. Tickets couldn’t be purchased. WBCN was giving away a pair every thirty minutes until they had reached their quota of 104–the station’s frequency was 104.1.

I know it was me who called the station. I don’t think we were the exact caller on our first try. But eventually I made the correct call.

“Yes!” the deejay exclaimed. “You are the sixth caller! You just won two tickets to tomorrow night’s show!”

What should I have done after just winning two tickets to see a band that I had put in the back of my mind to check out, based purely on a review in a magazine? I had to leave immediately, find my nearest music store, and buy the debut album!

We had to go to Soundwaves in Danvers to find the God Lives Underwater album GLU. That store has long since gone out of business, thanks to Newbury Comics and Best Buy. At the time, however, it was owned and operated by the drummer of the 1970s megaband Boston.

They only had one copy of GLU. Dogboy suggested that I buy it instead of him, since I had been the one who called and won the tickets. I wasn’t going to disagree with that! I put down my eight dollars, and we went back to his house.

While we returned to our pool-shenanigans, we put GLU into the boom box. That was the first time I had ever heard David’s voice.

Over the next twenty-four hours, up until we left for the show, I must have listened to that album at least ten times. I embedded the GLU album into my head so well that I felt confident I could sing along to every word on every song.

I was determined to get there early. I even studied their photo from the huH article, so I would recognize them, in case we accidentally bumped into any of them before the show.

Dogboy and I got there maybe a little too early. We were the first ones...