I read later in the New York Daily News that Courtney supposedly made Roseland do extra security, ‘frisking fans at the door’, was how they described it. They thought she was being hostile to her fans. I thought if it was even true that Courtney asked for special precautions (nothing was really unusual for a mid-size NYC venue) she was probably more afraid that one of those idiots expressing their personality disorder by blaming her for everything that went wrong in Kurt’s life after his folks’ divorce might leave their parent’s basement on a mission. Security didn’t do much more than look inside of my purse (missing my stash, or not caring, during the show everyone toward the back of the open space seemed to be smoking pot). They did pat my boyfriend down and make him show the insides of all his jacket pockets. They mentioned metal detectors in the paper (the Daily News reviewed Tuesday’s show in Thursdays’ issue), but I didn’t notice any.

I bought a shirt and a sticker. The shirt had Melissa, Courtney and Eric (a ‘between drummers’ shot, apparently) on the front and “Celebrity Skin-World tour” on the back with dates. Not being able to read the dates from where the shirts were hung for display, it wasn’t until after I bought it that I realized they were the dates for the aborted tour with Manson-including the 4/3 DC show I got a refund for after they canceled. My boyfriend suggested crossing that one out and writing in ‘5/19 NYC’. The sticker was sparkly and said “HOLE” with a new logoish thing going on with the “O.” They also had a shirt with a picture of Courtney on the front, and “Just Shut Up, You’re Only 16” written on the back, another saying “Just Shut Up” on the back and, I think “Celebrity Skin-World Tour 1999”, baby tees & hats with “Hole” on the front, and a few other things I’m forgetting.

During most of the opening act I was either smoking on the couch in the ladies room or standing on the line. Hole went on a little after 9:30. They opened with “Violet,” and Courtney was wearing a blue dress with fairy? angel? butterfly? wings. Melissa was a wearing a gorgeous red outfit. “I thought New Yorkers were supposed to be jaded” she brayed at the crowd. “People say ‘Oh, you can’t play New York’ and I say fuck that!”

This is the set list, as best as I can remember. I won’t swear to the order, except that “Violet” was first and “Celebrity Skin” was last. There were also a few covers I don’t know the names of:

Violet
Dying
Malibu (Large silvery tinsel rained on the audience during this. I was too clumsy to catch it and then too embarrassed to scoop it off the floor. Fortunately, my more-coordinated better half caught some for me.)
Pretty On The Inside
Awful
Boys On The Radio (Courtney had the stagehands hoist her on top of an amp during part of this song. She was then completely blocked by the speakers for at least half of the audience. Coming down she slipped a little, but didn’t lose the lyrics.)
Doll Parts (Courtney came down off the stage, abandoning her guitar, and for several choruses sang “I fake it so real I am beyond fake” then thrust the microphone at the audience for “And someday you will ache like I ache”)
Reasons To Be Beautiful
Use Once And Destroy
She Walks Over Me (Courtney introduced this with “This is the only real guitar riff I’ve ever written. I’m the world’s shittiest guitarist.”)
Heaven Tonight
Playing Your Song
Northern Star
Cum On, Feel The Noize (“Sam really wants to do this song,” Courtney said. I remember Quiet Riot’s original from my early adolescence when the 80’s the party-boy-metal music thing was big. It was a song I sort of liked, despite being most definitively not ‘my kind of music’.)
Celebrity Skin

The crowd was more racially mixed than I expected, but still overwhelmingly white. Largely college/high school age, it seemed, though not exclusively, even besides my boyfriend and me. In the ladies’s room I chatted with a Hispanic woman wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Phillies Cunt”, who was also thirty. I saw unreconstructed punks, young girls in baby barrettes, skinny guys in Kurt T-shirts and one older man in a suit who was probably someone’s dad. I read later than Joey Ramone had been in the VIP section.

At one point people were apparently chanting “MANSON SUCKS.” Courtney asked them not to say that, indicating that just she wants the sniping over with. “I’m really sorry guys,” she said about the previous plans to tour with them-“What can I say? I made a mistake.” Another thing I read in the paper about Tuesday’s show was that she called someone an asshole jock. Wednesday, she advised that “us freaks should make friends with the jocks,” referencing Columbine without mentioning it directly. She dropped Ben Afflick’s name, saying “He’s a jock, and I’m really good friends with him.” (I pondered how the mainstream media can’t tell our kind of freak from the Manson crowd, and how easy it would be to make friends with someone afraid you’re going to kill them.) Going to the subway after the show ended, a very drunk gay guy complimented me on my retro cats-eye glasses and I asked him if he thought we could make friends with jocks. He fluttered his eyelashes and said, queenily, “I can.”

I had read online about Courtney bringing lots of girls onstage, sometimes dodging the security guys to do it. By the show I saw there was a routine worked out: the person (I had heard just girls, but Courtney made a point of saying “Anyone, male or female, under six feet tall, who can make it in the pit can come onstage.” It seemed to be mostly girls) coming on stage would get in half a victory jump before the stagehands would grab their shoulders and sit them down. When the band came back for the encore, Courtney said “Seriously, I want like twenty more people on this stage.” She came out into the audience a few other times in addition to during “Doll Parts.” The stagehands were working pretty hard between following her and watching the fans that were on stage. As they prepared to leave the stage for good, the audience members who made it up clustered around Courtney and I heard her say, “You guys inspire me so much every day.”