BY AMY Z. QUINN FOR THE INQUIRER It’s May 29, 1985, and my best friend Laura and I — all of 13 and 12 years old — are standing in front of the Spectrum, clutching rainbow-hued Ticketron passes to see Madonna. Not only is this Madonna’s first U.S. tour and her first time in Philly, but more important, it’s our First Concert Without Parents! One of my older sisters drops us off at Broad and Pattison, and we strut around the Spectrum for a bit before taking our seats, leaving frosted-pink lipstick stains on the cigarettes we brazenly smoke out in the concourse. (Sorry, Mom.)
We chat up some boys, though most of them are either with their parents, making them automatically less cool than us, or just enough older than we are that they seem dangerous. The boys don’t really matter too much, though — we know they’ll come and go, but we’ll definitely be BFFs. After the concert ends, Laura’s dad arrives in his wood-sided station wagon to take us back to Manayunk. We’re hoarse from screaming, clutching glossy tour programs and oversized black T-shirts with the words “Virgin Tour” emblazoned across the chest. (This is long before anyone will think of stamping the word “Juicy”
across a young girl’s behind, though the net effect is probably the same.)
That summer, roaming the arcades of the Wildwood Boardwalk, Laura and I wore our Madonna tour T-shirts cinched with wide belts over leggings, with flats and cartoonishly large plastic jewelry – the kind of outfit Lily Allen, who was born that summer, might rock nowadays. Like millions of other li’l wannabes, we used our Madonna fandom as a way to push boundaries with our parents. “You can wear the crucifix earrings but no rosary around your neck, and no, it’s not OK to let your bra straps show.” That kind of thing. They could see we were growing up fast. We could, too, but we were still impatient. MORE
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