Back when they still called it college rock (circa 1992), a friend and I went to the historic 40-Watt club in Athens (Georgia, not Greece) to see the Jesus and Mary Chain play. The opening act was somebody called Nine Inch Nails.

Most of the crowd stayed out in the parking lot and waited for the main act. My friend and I went in to listen to Trent and company. They were pretty good, kinda punky with a splash of Front 242, and they had a lot of energy considering that they were playing for an audience of, like, twelve.

At the end of their set, the singer (who really needed a tan and a square meal or two) took his microphone stand and proceeded to demolish a Korg Wavestation. I remember wondering how he could afford to do that.

When the main act came on, everyone who had been outside suddenly flooded in. My friend and I had been standing at the front of the stage, and we got a bit trampled. The pale, skinny singer saw it happen, and he got one of the bouncers to help my friend to her feet.

At this point, everything was chaos, the music was an unintelligible blast, and the group had turned all the stagelights out to face the audience, so everything was whiteout. I made my way across the floor to my friend, and I profusely thanked the singer, who said, "Oh, no problem. My name's Trent. Nice to meet you." He pointed up to the Jesus and Mary Chain, who were seemingly bashing away at random, and said, "at least they're SOBER tonight, man..." and walked off.

Anyhow, that's my celebrity story.