Part I: The First Bite

I have been obsessed with music ever since I got Michael Jackson's Thriller tape as a First Communion gift when I was eight years old. By the age of ten I had a tape collection that every fourth-grader at Claremont Elementary would have loved to have. From the Stray Cats to Bryan Adams to the Fat Boys, it was all there, perfectly organized and alphabetized!

When I was in sixth grade, I became obsessed with Bruce Springsteen. It was the Born in the U.S.A. era, and Bruce was everywhere. I bought every tape he had. Bruce is the sole musician from that stage of my life whom I still listen to all of the time.

By the eighth grade, Bruce was old news, and all I cared about was hard rock (I don't want to say "heavy metal" since groups like Iron Maiden and Overkill scared me). I loved the glam-metal era. Even though most classmates considered me a "poseur", since I had short white hair and a face off of a church brochure, I was obsessed with hard rock. Put it this way: Being busted by my sister kickboxing to "Seventeen" by Winger was not an unusual occurence!

This obsession brought my friend Matt and I to our first concert ever, Tesla and Great White (with Badlands) at the Westchester County Center in White Plains, New York, August 1989.

Holy cow, it was LOUD! That's the first thing I remember. I had never heard anything so loud in my life. Badlands (who had a few small MTV hits in 1989) were the first live rock band I ever experienced and it must have done some permanent hearing damage because even at my second concert a few months later, the noise did not compare. Regardless, a few songs into Great White's set, I was singing "Once Bitten Twice Shy" with 5,000 other suburban punks and it was the most amazing feeling ever. An hour later, Tesla managed to blow my innocent mind as well, and little did I realize the doors that were opening in front of me. From that night on, I was a concert MANIAC!

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