john_mellencamp raze when he dies, i'm sure people will talk about his political activism and the earthy widescreen sonic cinema of "jack & diane" and "cherry bomb". i'll choose to remember the time he wanted me to dance naked. there was also the concert i caught part of when i was thirteen. i was never a diehard fan, but i liked the hits i heard. live, he was a different beast altogether. the sound was so clean and punchy, it parted my hair. he opened with "jack & diane". it was nothing like the album version. it had bite. the band was shit hot. but a drunk woman sitting behind us wouldn't shut up. she spilled her drink on me and laughed. "you know you love it," she said. "he's so cute. i can't help myself. did you hear the violin solo?" she kept hitting me in the back of the head. we complained. no one would do anything about it. so we left a few songs in to get the hell away from her. i've always wondered if we let one tactless asshole ruin what might have been the best show of my life in the place i least expected to find it. you know what the man said. oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone. 221115 ... tender_square (i've always been in the mellencamp camp. so much so that in my cjam days i argued he was better songwriter than springsteen. there's one performance of mellencamp's i remembered catching accidentally on conan years ago, where he was stripped down and jazzy with a stand-up bass and i couldn't believe the range he had. other people at concerts are hell. and it's only gotten worse with cell phones, imo. people act as though a concert is a backdrop for their life and carry on conversations as though the music is an interruption.) 221115 what's it to you? who go blather from