Birthday pressies from your favourite bands

In 1988, I went to go see fIREHOSE at long-torn-down Stache's in Columbus, Ohio (I was going to college out there at the time). After doing far too many "prarie fires" (shots of tequila infused with tobassco sauce), I was dragged over to bass-basher extraordinaire Mike Watt. When informed that it was my birthday, the bass man took a magic marker and wrote "BLUE OYSTER CULT FOREVER" on both of my forearms and that band's question mark insignia on me.

And just this past October, Firewater dedicated the entirely appropriate "Drunakard's Lament" to birthday-boy I from the stage of the Village Underground.

On the Fugazi tip: they played the day before my b-day in 2000. I thought that was nice enough. But I was already on the road home when the clock hit 12.