Meeting Lenny Kravitz was kind of cool, and getting to see him perform while being front row in a smaller, intimate setting was also unique, but I was way more excited to see the Red Hot Chilli Peppers concert. The chillis actually had 2 nights booked back to back, and we had tickets for the second night. We had a day to kill which felt like an eternity, until we set up a meeting with a man named Elliot Leftko, a big wig at MCA records in Toronto. Within a flash we were sitting in his swank office face to face, handing him a copy of our new demo tape we had just made. Elliot listened to maybe 30 - 60 seconds of the first song, then he hit the stop button. He went onto tell us our sound wasn't exactly what they were looking for. My guess is the piss poor quality of the recording didn't do us any justice, not too mention Derek's vocals were totally off key and his voice broke up frequently. Elliot said he'd keep our tape "on file" in case any opportunities came along for us, then he tossed the demo into a huge pile of other demo tapes. As we left the office I thought to myself "Our tape is buried in a sea of cassettes. We are never going to hear from this guy."
The evening was upon us and it was time to head home, until Derek said we should go by the Concert Hall and see if we could weasel our way into the show. Derek was a master of "weaselling" and by this I mean the guy had a knack for scoring things for free or getting great deals on stuff. It wasn't like he even tried to weasel people, folks just gave him deals and freebies all the time. I figured he had the karma gods on his side. So now we were in the parking lot of the Concert Hall walking around talking to people. We saw some guys hanging out at a tour bus so we approached them. They ended up being the opening act. They were a new unknown band called Pearl Jam. We shot the shit with them for a bit and even traded demo tapes. The guys were very friendly but they had absolutely no pull, meaning they couldn't even get us into the show for free.
After exhausting all our efforts, we decided to sit on the curb and smoke a cigarette before we headed back to Brampton. Just as we were about to butt out, some guy came out the back door and started banging on a tour bus. A minute later the bus door opened and a scantily clad female exited the bus followed by none other than John Fruscianti, the guitarist of the Chilli Peppers. Derek blurted out "HEY JOHN!" John looked at us quickly then kept walking. A few steps later he stopped and looked at us again. He took a few more steps then stopped and glanced at us a third time, then said "What?" We stood up and approached him explaining how we had tickets for tomorrow's show but before we could finish our sales pitch he eagerly blurted out "Oh you don't have tickets? C'mon in!" John held the door open for us and pointed us down a hallway. We came out of another door right by the front of the stage, so we weaselled our way into front of the crowd.
Not even a minute later the lights went down and the red hots hit the stage. They put on one hell of a show and we were as happy as could be. The next night I was back at the Concert Hall, this time with my ticket and my girlfriend Sue. We arrived fashionably late as I had no interest in seeing the Smashing Pumpkins open up or the unknowns called Pearl Jam. They were nice enough guys but after listening to their three song demo it really didn't tickle my fancy. The chillis killed it the second night as well, they had the entire crowds undivided attention in the palm of their hands. I was up in the front of the crowd once again just like the previous night and I was in absolute bliss.
This had been quite an amazing year so far. I could only wonder what the last two months of 1991 held in store for me...
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