Back in August 1989, my sister was home for the summer from college. I was working at the local pharmacy for maybe $3.25 an hour, while Kim toiled away as the receptionist for a hair salon for something like $4 an hour (a fortune at the time). We were sitting in our non-air-conditioned living room one humid afternoon, listening to each other sweat, when the radio station in the background announced they were giving away tickets to see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at Lake Compounce. Listeners had a chance to win every hour between 9 AM and 9 PM for the next three days.
I don’t know why we wanted to win those tickets. Neither one of us were huge Tom Petty fans, and his Alice in Wonderland video for “Don’t Come Around Here No More” quite frankly scared me a little. Perhaps it was dehydration from sweating so much. But in that moment, the Longo girls made it their mission to win those tickets.
You kids have no idea what it’s like to try and be the ninth caller in a home with one phone line and a rotary dial. We quickly devised a system in which, when we suspected they’d play the “Call in now!” jingle at any moment, we’d wait with all but the last number dialed, hovering over the rotary like two cats waiting to pounce on a hapless dust bunny. If they didn’t play the jingle, we had to hang up, wait a few minutes until the current song was about to end, and dial all but the last number again. I sat next to the phone, finger poised at the ready, when Kim had to work Saturday morning. She tagged me out Saturday afternoon so I could massage my severe finger cramp and head over to the pharmacy. Our mother, who had a strict rule about no TV or radio being on during meals, waived this commandment so we could listen in for that stupid jingle between bites of dinner. We called in every hour for thirty-six total hours over three days.
We did not win.
The concert was Thursday, August 31. Kim and I exchanged defeated glances—there may have been tears—and talked about maybe buying tickets, even though they were set at the astronomically high price of $27.50 each. Again, let me reiterate: neither one of us was an avid Tom Petty fan. And we hadn’t even heard of The Replacements, the band opening for him. But we’d wasted a lot of time dialing in for those tickets. Kim had sprained her index finger. I’d developed what would become a lifelong aversion to the telephone. We had to do something to justify wasting three days dialing, over and over, just to listen to a busy signal. So we bit the bullet and bought tickets.
And went to one of the best concerts of our lives.
The Replacements were quite possibly under the influence—I still remember the guitarist holding up a hand to ward off the stage lights and mumbling “I’m not feeling very pretty tonight” (incidentally, he died about five years later of an overdose, but at the time, we thought he was hilarious. Please remember we were pretty innocent, and someone being on, say, heroin, was absolutely foreign and unrecognizable to us). But their songs were catchy, we recognized at least one of them, and for all I’ve read of their reputation for atrocious stage antics in the years since, they were absolutely at peak performance levels that night.
Then Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers came on stage.
We knew all the songs, and he was so vibrant, larger-than-life, and high energy, it was impossible not to be elated—it’s the only word I can think of to describe how being at that concert felt, even twenty-eight years later—for the full seventy minutes he was on stage. I was no longer afraid of the scary Mad Hatter cartoon-looking man from “Don’t Come Around Here No More”—instead, we were watching a passionate, exuberant musician sing for us, and he clearly loved what he was doing.
Kim and I left that night—pausing to buy a concert tee before exiting—Tom Petty converts. The next day, we drove out to Record Breaker in Manchester to buy two cassettes: Don’t Tell a Soul by the Replacements, and Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever. (As our savings were recently depleted by concert tickets, Kim bought one cassette, I bought the other, and we made copies for each other.) Full Moon Fever became the soundtrack to my autumn of 1989, interspersed with the Replacements and the Traveling Wilburys.
Over the years, Tom Petty’s voice consistently reminds me of being young, happy, and in the presence of someone who loved what he did. He makes me think of rocking out with my big sister on the lawn of Lake Compounce, and how every dime of that $27.50 was worth the finger cramps of not winning.
To have all those wonderful feelings of elation conjured up by one arguably raspy voice has been a gift. When my sister texted me Monday night to ask if I’d heard the news, it was fitting she and I should share that Tom Petty moment, too. I pulled on my old concert tee, got under the blankets, and thumbed up Full Moon Fever in my iTunes library.
Hit play. Closed my eyes and let myself feel every emotion Tom Petty’s voice has ever conjured up for me.
And smiled.
I don’t know why we wanted to win those tickets. Neither one of us were huge Tom Petty fans, and his Alice in Wonderland video for “Don’t Come Around Here No More” quite frankly scared me a little. Perhaps it was dehydration from sweating so much. But in that moment, the Longo girls made it their mission to win those tickets.
You kids have no idea what it’s like to try and be the ninth caller in a home with one phone line and a rotary dial. We quickly devised a system in which, when we suspected they’d play the “Call in now!” jingle at any moment, we’d wait with all but the last number dialed, hovering over the rotary like two cats waiting to pounce on a hapless dust bunny. If they didn’t play the jingle, we had to hang up, wait a few minutes until the current song was about to end, and dial all but the last number again. I sat next to the phone, finger poised at the ready, when Kim had to work Saturday morning. She tagged me out Saturday afternoon so I could massage my severe finger cramp and head over to the pharmacy. Our mother, who had a strict rule about no TV or radio being on during meals, waived this commandment so we could listen in for that stupid jingle between bites of dinner. We called in every hour for thirty-six total hours over three days.
We did not win.
The concert was Thursday, August 31. Kim and I exchanged defeated glances—there may have been tears—and talked about maybe buying tickets, even though they were set at the astronomically high price of $27.50 each. Again, let me reiterate: neither one of us was an avid Tom Petty fan. And we hadn’t even heard of The Replacements, the band opening for him. But we’d wasted a lot of time dialing in for those tickets. Kim had sprained her index finger. I’d developed what would become a lifelong aversion to the telephone. We had to do something to justify wasting three days dialing, over and over, just to listen to a busy signal. So we bit the bullet and bought tickets.
And went to one of the best concerts of our lives.
The Replacements were quite possibly under the influence—I still remember the guitarist holding up a hand to ward off the stage lights and mumbling “I’m not feeling very pretty tonight” (incidentally, he died about five years later of an overdose, but at the time, we thought he was hilarious. Please remember we were pretty innocent, and someone being on, say, heroin, was absolutely foreign and unrecognizable to us). But their songs were catchy, we recognized at least one of them, and for all I’ve read of their reputation for atrocious stage antics in the years since, they were absolutely at peak performance levels that night.
Then Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers came on stage.
We knew all the songs, and he was so vibrant, larger-than-life, and high energy, it was impossible not to be elated—it’s the only word I can think of to describe how being at that concert felt, even twenty-eight years later—for the full seventy minutes he was on stage. I was no longer afraid of the scary Mad Hatter cartoon-looking man from “Don’t Come Around Here No More”—instead, we were watching a passionate, exuberant musician sing for us, and he clearly loved what he was doing.
Kim and I left that night—pausing to buy a concert tee before exiting—Tom Petty converts. The next day, we drove out to Record Breaker in Manchester to buy two cassettes: Don’t Tell a Soul by the Replacements, and Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever. (As our savings were recently depleted by concert tickets, Kim bought one cassette, I bought the other, and we made copies for each other.) Full Moon Fever became the soundtrack to my autumn of 1989, interspersed with the Replacements and the Traveling Wilburys.
Over the years, Tom Petty’s voice consistently reminds me of being young, happy, and in the presence of someone who loved what he did. He makes me think of rocking out with my big sister on the lawn of Lake Compounce, and how every dime of that $27.50 was worth the finger cramps of not winning.
To have all those wonderful feelings of elation conjured up by one arguably raspy voice has been a gift. When my sister texted me Monday night to ask if I’d heard the news, it was fitting she and I should share that Tom Petty moment, too. I pulled on my old concert tee, got under the blankets, and thumbed up Full Moon Fever in my iTunes library.
Hit play. Closed my eyes and let myself feel every emotion Tom Petty’s voice has ever conjured up for me.
And smiled.
Of COURSE I still have the concert tee. Why would you even ask such a silly question?
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