Ten years ago this month was this the debut Negatives’ show? April 16, 1998: Lloyd Cole’s Negatives headlined Mercury Lounge, with support from Brillantine & Mark Geary. Highlights of Lloyd & the Negatives’ set included “Past Imperfect,” “Negative Attitude,” “Brand New Friend,” “Lost Weekend,” “Don’t Look Back,” “Four Flights Up,” “Like Lovers Do,” “I Didn’t Know That You Cared,” “So You’d Like To Save the World,” “Undressed,” “Jennifer She Said,” “Perfect Skin,” “Impossible Girl,” “Today I’m Not So Sure,” “That Boy,” “Tried to Rock,” Jonathan Richman’s “The Modern World,” and Negative band-member Jill Sobule performed her hit “I Kissed A Girl.”

(That would be right, it was our first show with Jill. My wife says the best show I ever did, even if Dave and Jill did ‘lose’ the chord progression in Don’t Look Back for pretty much the whole second half of the song!! The great think about the Negatives is/was that we laugh about that sort of thing. What else makes sense? LC)