I miss having a friend with access to a corporate luxury box at the local arena. It’s the perfect way to see artists you don’t care about enough to pay for your own tickets. [DP disagrees. -ed.]

I know this sounds gross, but stick with me.

Back in the late 90s I had a good friend who was the pop and candy buyer for a large regional grocery store chain. Coca Cola had a box at the newly opened Van Andel Arena and my friend could get us in to pretty much any concert that came around.

We were in our twenties and like all members of Generation X we were very concerned about selling out. Especially now that we had decent jobs that paid pretty well. So when we got into the box my friend was adamant about refusing to allow the sales reps to talk business. That way we could maintain our punk rock integrity despite the fact that we were sitting in a luxury suite in a venue named after the co-founder of America’s greatest pyramid scheme. The only interaction I remember having with the Coke dudes was them offering us drinks and pizza.

We were subverting the capitalist system from within. We were sticking it to the Man! (We were young and silly.)

But we saw some good shows from that box (Tom Petty, Cher) and some mediocre ones (Aerosmith). The only time I really wanted to go to something but couldn’t was Britney Spears; the pervy old salesmen and executives didn’t have any spare tickets for that one.

But the best was when my friend would request seats to shows the sales reps absolutely would have never attended for any other reason than to nurture their relationship with a big client. And that’s how I got to see Marilyn Manson.

Continue reading Ticketstubs: Marilyn Manson in Grand Rapids, 1999 →