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As per request within the Bragging COncerts thread, and the 2 PM's I recieved, I will tell the story again oh how my friend and I conned our way into the hottest show in NYC in 1992. I tried to dig it up in the archives at the old CMJ board but it seems to be gone.
OK...
My buddy Damon and I use to goto Sunday Night shows at the Limelight all the time. At the time, we were also big Mother Love Bone fans (ooh, i can add that to my bragging list. i pee'd next to Andy Wood), and were saddened by his death and the break up of the band...
Pearl Jam was born. Nobody really knew or cared. Damon and I saw that they were playiung the Limelight. Few sunday night shows sold out the place. About 6 weeks in advance, we decided to buy tix night of.... Who the hell would go see the new MOther Love Bone band....
Bout a week or two later, "Alive" started breaking on radio and MTV. Then boom, the Limelight show sold out. We couldnt even find ticket brokers who had tix for this.
With little options, we decided to go down there and try and scalp. What we arrived to was about an additional 1000 people, on top of the 850 the club held and had tix sold for, outside the Limelight looking for tix. There were maybe 5 scalpers there.
It was a riot scene of people wanting to goto this show. I have no idea why they didnt move it to a bigger venue. Sensing the scene, more scalpers showed up, and the fake tickets they were trying to pawn off were hysterical. (Honestly, one guy had index cards witht Pearl Jam written in marker on them) and was trying to pass em off). I'd be shocked if there wasnt a crazed kid who didnt buy em anyways with slight hopes that they would work.
We went by the door and we overheard Peter Gatien (owner at the time of the Limelight,; the guy withthe eye patch, who was recently deported back to Canada on drug charges) tell his doormen, that no guest list outside the bands or labels would be honored, no matter what. They were to be thrown out. Contest winners, friends of the club, nothing!
Damon tells me he is gonna try something. He approaches one of the ticket takers, plays dumb, and tells h9im that He and I were contest winners from WBAB (local Long Island rock station), and that we had won tickets and we came in from Conneticut for the show.... The guy told us there was nothing he could do. We pleaded to no avail. We tired talking to Peter Gatien who was outside, somewhat shocked at the scene that was happening, and was also being bombarded with people begging for entrance. He turned a deaf ear to all of us.
Damon and I walked to a quiter part of the street and hec came up with a game plan. He called his friend at home and asked her to call up the Limelight as pretend to be the DJ Gail Flug and make a little pissing match that the Limelight is breaking terms of the deal, and that this will be the last time they do stuff withthe band, and theyll talk about it on the radio, and yadda yadda yadda, sue em, unless they honor their contest winners (us)...
She makes the call, gets a live person on the phone in the office and gives her schpiel / plea for us.... We go back to the front entrance and are able to get a hold of Peter Gatien, whom Damon again makes his plea saying how it isnt right, how far we traveled.. and so on.... Damon told Peter that he called the statioon and complained...
and then the perfect rainbow in the sky landed on top of us.. As Damon was pleading our case, Peter Gatien get summoned on his walki talkie from the office, that she has an angry DJ from some long island radio station who has just started recieving calls from angry people who are being denied entrance into the concert, when they were ticket winners, and hwo it reflects badly on thr station....
it couldnt have come at a better time...
Seeming somewhat flustered, Peter Gatien, pulled two passes out of his jacket, pointed to his doormen, and told him 'these two are good'.
we played it cool, but once we got inside, we giggled liek school girls at what he had pulled off....
We got in as Pearl Jam was 5 minutes from hitting the stage.... I still have a copy on VHS. it was an azming show and experience all together....
Disclaimer: As the years go by, details get a little sketchier. I think there was some more coniving we tried before making that call , but this was the gist of it.
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