It’s one thing to look back and identify the greatest day of your life, and it’s entirely another to know you’re living it.

Because I forgot how to speak, Tosha Weaver answered my question about the TDK cassette marked “Prince – The Black Album” that she handed me. “It’s the real thing, straight from the mix console.”

The next two hours before I could go home couldn’t pass fast enough. I drove as fast and legally as possible and went straight upstairs. I plugged in my best headphones and spent the next 44 minutes and 38 seconds indulging in urban myth. My first listen toThe Black Album was like admission to a secret society. How many people on earth had also heard this music? According to the Rolling Stone article I read a year prior, maybe a hundred copies survived the recall ordered by Prince himself.

I made two copies on TDK SA-90 tapes: one for Darren and the other to play until the tape wore out. I put my original in a drawer. When I saw him the next day at school, I handed Darren his copy. He read my handwriting on the label in controlled disbelief, “Dude, what is this?”

I was beaming. “Wait until you hear it; it’s straight from the mix console.” I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded cool when Tosha said it.

Darren’s voice raised an octave, “This is real? How did you get it?”

“I just found out I work with Miko Weaver’s sister. She gave it to me yesterday. That’s your copy.”

His mouth fell open a little, “You work with who, nigga?”

I could only shake my head, “Dude, I had no idea ’til the other day. And look, she said we could walk into the aftershow with her. We’d just have to get tickets.”

That was much easier said than done. While a walk-in solved the problem of us being 17 trying to enter an over-21 concert, we still had to buy tickets. And money wasn’t one of our two hurdles.

First on the list was needing to produce ID at the ticket counter that showed I was four years older than 17, and that would be after I had a close enough spot in line to even buy a ticket. Enter Problem 2: Prince fans are rabid, but Bay Area Prince fans? We’ll camp out, flood phone lines, fan out in teams to camp out at multiple spots, whatever it takes.

Then, after you roll all of that together, we were trying for an aftershow in the early days when Prince just started doing them. This was very new in 1988.

Four hours and two skipped classes later, we had our plan: we would give a copy of the album to someone already in line in exchange for them to buy our tickets. Since there was a four ticket limit, we stood a good chance of finding someone buying only one or two tickets for themselves. We didn’t have much time to pull it off, as tickets went onsale the next day at noon. I saw a potential problem, “We have to already be in line.”

“Why is that?” Darren asked.

“You figure it’s gonna sell out in minutes. People will be posted up outside a bazillion record stores, and you can forget Ticketmaster downtown; it’ll be a zoo there. We need to be in line close enough to the front to make sure we can cut a deal.”

Darren caught on, “Maybe trade our spot with someone in the back as a Plan B.” He thought for a moment, “Here you go: post up overnight in a low traffic area. Not even in Oakland. I know a Rainbow Records in Alameda that has a Ticketmaster outlet. Can you sleep out? I can’t.”

I shook my head, “No way my mom will let me.”

“Let me work on it.”

Later that evening, Darren calls me. He’s on his way to pick up another friend, Simeon, and drop him at the fairly-remote record store with a lawn chair and a blanket. We have our overnighter. His price? A copy of The Black Album.

One hour later Darren calls back: Simeon’s first in line with no one else in sight.