Does your first real concert count if your mom and little bro go?

Thompson Twins - "Hold Me Now"

I didn't say this would be pretty, did I? Ah, but how I loved this song when I was 13. I can remember listening to this album in the living room of the duplex my mom, brother and myself lived in when my parents separated for the 5th or 6th time. We weren't there long before my dad moved back in with us. Fun times. Not.

In August of 1984, my mother took me to see the Thompson Twins at The Garden State Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ (now the PNC Bank Arts Center) - along with my little brother (he was about 9 at the time). Berlin opened and my mom let me sit a few rows in front of her, closer to the stage. The concert was not well attended, as I remember. I almost caught a drumstick the drummer of Berlin tossed into the crowd, and sang along when they played "The Metro." The Thompson Twins put on a pretty good show as I recall, but hey, I was 13 and liked them - a lot. So take that with a teenage grain of salt.

Or, you can listen to David Fricke, who wrote in April of 1984, "...they seemed to aspire to be the Pink Floyd of the white dance floor. Except it's a classy ambition that threatens to burst the bullseye simplicity of what is already a sure-platinum dance attack."

Ah yes, classy - a sure-platinum dance attack. To be fair, he was talking about "Doctor, Doctor," I believe, and not this ballad: