You know, I also saw Jefferson Airplane. Except by then they weren't even Jefferson Airplane anymore, they weren't even Jefferson Starship. They were just Starship. And it was perhaps the worst show I've ever been to.

I won the tickets - the local rock show had a segment called "the 2am free-for-all" and I successfully answered some obscure Bloom County trivia (the strip was ending). It was the summer I went pretty much nocturnal and made helicopter models. I had to get my grandmother to pick the tickets up at the station, and then I had to get them from my grandmother. I was two years shy of my driver's license (which, in NM, is 15 with a permit) so any involvement with these tickets meant involvement with my father.

I asked a girl to go with me. Hardest thing I'd ever done. She said no. So I asked a buddy. I'm positive it's the first and last concert he ever went to.

Imagine - it's 1988. "Built This City" is already making "worst of the '80s" lists. And it isn't even a normal concert venue - it's the Santa Fe Ski Area, during the day, during summer. So nobody has any parking. It's also the only concert I'm aware of ever playing there. There was no parking, just buses from the base camp up to the summit that were running an hour or more behind schedule (as my father dropped us off, we did dandy). Nothing but bored Santa Feans that, for some reason or other, decided to come see Starship at 11,000 feet.

The opener was some Greatful Dead cover band or other, and they were.... okay. But then an hour passed. Another. Someone started a Wave and it quickly erupted in violence down by the stage. Some poor crew member was sent out to be a warm-up comedian - and he wasn't funny to begin with but the audience was not in a laughing mood. I hope they paid him really well but I'll bet they paid him nothing.

Finally, two and a half hours late, Starship slinks on stage, less Grace Slick. I believe she had determined that singing "Built this City" at random ski areas in New Mexico during the day was not what she wanted to do with her life and bailed. Either way, the audience was Not amused. I've never seen anyone else pelted with dirt clods. People were literally tearing chunks of grass out of the ground and hurling them at band members. At one point all 2000 of us were standing and shouting over the PA.

I believe they played like 5 songs and then the chaotic mass exodus began. Oddly enough, the show finished exactly on time because my dad picked us up.

he didn't even ask how the show was, because that's the kind of relationship I have with my dad.

The girl's mom was the librarian. I didn't check out a book for six years.