By some stroke of crappy EarthLink internet magic I was able to book tickets to the Roxy (Los Angeles) for the Mellon Collie club tour. I was 13. My best friend and I spent a full weekend shopping for outfits and for some reason white bloomers, a doo rag and a tube top seemed like the perfect outfit. We showed up early in the morning to wait in line. Someone offered us $800 per ticket which would’ve been a real game changer for Middle-School-Me, but we stayed the course.

Some adorable girls dressed as “Pumpkin Fairies” with wings and bags filled with cutouts of rubber stamps with the SP logo and little confetti, and they threw handfuls intermittently throughout the show.

Billy, you wore knee-high silver Docs and a black skirt, and I could’ve fainted for how wonderful it was. My friend and I were positively electrified, just in ecstasy. We were such massive fans, we knew every word to every song, and the performance was the best I’ve ever seen to this day.

Afterwards I met a Jewish kid at the bus stop who was a Godsmack Roadie and they were at the Rainbow Room. We took the same bus back to Venice and he walked me home and we became very very close friends. He came in and out of my life and we had a long distance love affair years later when he was an infantryman stationed in Iraq. I moved to Texas and greeted him at the airport when he cane home from deployment and we were very in love for one Summer and then it was over. Now he’s a used Ford salesman in Arkansas and we’re both married to other people—but every time I see his pictures with his customers on his used car social media, I remember that night and your album, and I feel all warm and fuzzy about it.

Thank you for that work of art. The aesthetic made a very lasting impression on me. It will always remain my #1 album.