Live Wires
TOM MORELLO
THE CLASH, THE ARAGON BALLROOM, CHICAGO, 1982
“Seeing that my favorite musician, Joe Strum-mer, used the exact same little Music Man amp that I had in my mom’s basement made me realize that rock wasn’t something I might be able to do in the future. I was doing it now.”
METALLICA, LOS ANGELES COLISEUM, LOS ANGELES, 1988
“Metallica were sandwiched between Kingdom Come and Dokken on the Monsters of Rock tour. They sounded 10 times louder and 10 times better than any of the bands on the bill, and the entire stadium erupted into a chair-throwing, fence-scaling awesome midday heavy metal riot. I’ve never seen another band deliver such an ass-kicking to the rest of a bill.”
NINE INCH NAILS, LOLLAPALOOZA, 1991
“I had never heard of Nine Inch Nails before the 1991 Lollapalooza tour. Trent Reznor and company put on the most exciting, outrageous, violent, ferocious, industrial punk-metal cage match that I had ever seen on stage. Until that moment, I didn’t think you could ever rock properly with keyboards in a band, but Trent proved me wrong.”
SARAH LONGFIELD
ANIMALS AS LEADERS, THE EAGLES BALLROOM, 2010
“Seeing Animals As Leaders live for the first time (they were opening a tour for Circa Survive, who I also love!) was incredible. I’d been watching Tosin Abasi’s guitar work online a bit and was really inspired by how out-of-this-world it sounded, so getting to see them live was really inspiring. Tosin was also teaching on that tour, so I managed to get a lesson from him that ended up totally changing the way I approach guitar. I consider that show to have a huge impact on how my guitar style evolved.”
DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN / GENGHIS TRON, THE LOFT, 2007
“This concert was the first I’d been to without a parent (I was 14) and it absolutely blew me away. I only got to
