Pierre Kezdy, one of the most humble, genuine, and nicest people I have ever met, passed away yesterday. Meeting your heroes sometimes ends in disappointment, but Pierre treated me like an old friend. My full story around that trip (Colorado 2014) is at the bottom of this post. My heart goes out to his family (he has young kids), his close friends and former bandmates. I wish I could have hung out with him more.

The mix on this one starts out a bit weak, but gets way better at about the 10min mark.

I’ll pull out some of my favorite NR shows and post them as time allows. Here is the first one. I was a HUGE NR fan in the late 80s, thanks to Mike Yoas turning me onto them when All Rise was released. This was NR’s first trip out west in 4 years, and my first time seeing them. I even tried booking them in Sacramento, but they wanted $500! That is a lot of money when you made $4.25 an hour. I had my videocamera at the show and tried to videotape, but band manager Karen Bemis shut me down- I was so bummed. Instead, we learned that KALX was broadcasting the show live, so I brought in a boombox and recorded the FM signal while watching the show. I then got a better quality recording from Radley Hirsch, Gilman’s soundman. This recording is Radley’s version, with “New Dreams” spliced in from my boombox at the 45:00 mark.

Recorded by: Shayne Stacy and Radley Hirsch
Equipment used: Montgomery Ward Boombox and Radley’s gear
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy with Nakamichi Dragon and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card.

Meeting Pierre:
In 2014, I flew to Denver on a whim since Naked Raygun was playing, my wife and kids were out of the country, and last minute flights were super cheap. I get to the venue early and ask the promoter if I can get permission to video. He goes back for a bit and tells me that the band wants me to come backstage with them. When I get back there, everyone was so nice to me, but Pierre was amazing. He treated me like I was an old friend. I told him I worked at Intel and he says “oh, you know about electronics. can you fix my phone? my camera is taking too many pictures”. I tried to explain that Intel has nothing to do with phones and I just ended up fixing it for him. 😀
I would have to say that out of all of the encounters that I have had with musicians (and there have been a lot), meeting Pierre has been #1. What a kind, generous man. (Having Jeff sing “Broken Things” a Capella to me 1:1 backstage in long beach may be #2 as well)