Concert stories are great. They are probably my favorite kinds of stories.

I don’t know why I like them so much, maybe because I have so many. In fact, someday I hope to write an entire book of them.

I will write about driving all the way to Milwaukee to see Local H open for Stone Temple Pilots on the Friday before my biggest day of finals.

I will write about crowd surfing the length of two football fields during the Beastie Boy’s set at Lollapalooza.

I will tell about eating lunch with Rancid and hanging out with Ruby. I’ll write about singing on stage with Scott Lucas and even include pictures.

I will start the book telling about my first concert: Kenny Loggins. I was 10 at the most, but I still remember the rush of hearing “Footloose” and “Danger Zone” blaring out of the speakers.

The book will chronicle all of my interesting concert experiences, with each chapter going into extreme detail of the strange things that may have occurred.

And when I get to Metallica, I may just avoid making an idiot out of myself and tell some other stories. Maybe just little things, but things that are funny or unusual. Like these:

When I first got to the show, I really had to use the little boys room but wasn’t about to wait in a line and miss the beginning of the show.

After all, it was my job to be there (and such a tough job it was). Anyway, I caught the first few songs and then went back up to find a nearly empty restroom.

What shocked me about the visit was the friendliness of the other bathroom-goers.

These were the same guys that used to beat me up in high school and now they were peeing two feet from me and talking about how Metallica rules. I couldn’t help but wonder what made the men’s restroom at a Metallica concert such a friendly environment.

It was really strange. I’m sure no one in the there knew each other, but everyone just chatted away like it was a Metallica Anonymous meeting or something. And how I managed to fit in, I guess I’ll never know.

I mean, some of these guys had the lyrics to the entire Ride The Lightning album tattooed across their bodies (not like I was looking), while I would be lucky to know all of “Enter Sandman”. Yet they treated me like a brother.

So I left the bathroom feeling all warm inside and got back to my seat to find that four 12-year-old punks had piled into the row in front of me.

These kids were your classic punks, you know, trying to look all retro in their frayed khakis and early ’80s T-shirts.

Anyway, about halfway through Metallica’s show, one of the kids pulled out a cigarette and lighter he probably stole from his mom’s purse on the ride to the concert. He lighted it and started passing it around his group of punks.

They were all taking drags off it like it was mary-joe-wanna (except for one kid who just said no) and trying to look just like the big kids sitting a few rows up.

The smallest of the punks grabbed the cigarette just before putting it out and took what looked to be a record-breaking drag on it.

Not even 20 seconds later, the punk was sitting back down in his chair with his head between his legs. After watching all of this, I knew I just couldn’t let it slide.

I had to insult him, especially after he insulted Corrosion of Conformity, a group of guys I somehow felt a bond with. So I said slightly under my breath, “That’s what you get for smoking before you enter puberty.”

In the words of the great one:

“Smoking is the worst. I hate cigarettes. I have never smoked, no one in the posse smokes. The smell of it makes me choke.”

— Vanilla in Ice By Ice

---

Corey Moss is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.