Friday Night Live

On Friday night, T and I actually went to a live show at a little dive bar in SLC.  One of his coworkers was playing bass and invited us.  It's the first time I've been to see a show since grad school, I think.  T had got up at 3:30 am as usual for work that morning, so he had a Five-Hour Energy around 8 pm to make sure he would be awake for the show.  I thought I could make it okay, even though they were due to go on stage about the same time I usually hit the hay.

We had to drive around the block twice to find the bar, because it was so tiny.  We walked into a very small space that was completely plastered with posters and stickers, walls, poles, and ceiling.  It reminded me of the bar we used to go to in Moscow, ID, John's Alley.  But then I looked around a little bit more and realized this was truly a dive.  There were three bottles behind the bar -- Jack Daniels, Jagermeister, and cheap vodka.  There were two kinds of beer to choose from -- Pabst in a regular can, or in a tallboy.  Period.  T ordered and Jack and coke for himself, and a screwdriver for me.  Once we took a sip, we realized that he had lightly-flavored soda, and I had a glass of OJ.

T's coworker was in the opening band.  We chatted with him and an engineer from the office who had come along as well to hear him play.  He let us know that they hadn't played out in well over a year, and he didn't have high hopes for the show.  He asked if we had earplugs, and T asked, "Are you that bad?!"  He laughed and said, no, it was just going to be really loud.

By the time the opening band started there were about 20-30 people in the bar.  As soon as they started playing, about 10 people dashed out the back door and onto the back patio -- I didn't want to know what they were going to be doing out there.  And the bass player was right -- it was REALLY loud.  They played grunge-y 90s rock, which was just fine by me, but the sound was badly balanced -- you could barely hear the vocals over the bass and guitar.  But they were having a good time up there -- the guitar player was singing for all he was worth, the bass player was rocking out onstage, and the drummer was playing with his eyes closed half the time, putting all he had into it.

When they were done with their set, the bass played came back to chat with us.  He was worried about one song they played that they hadn't practiced, where he had to come in on vocals.  He thought he might have been off pitch -- we let him know we couldn't hear him anyway, so it didn't matter!  Once the next band was setting up, T and I headed home.

While it was nice to be out for once, it kinda confirmed how old we've gotten.  Our ears were ringing, we were both stone-cold sober, and we were ready to head home at 11 pm.  Once we got home, T claimed he wasn't tired at all, and I was feeling pretty awake, so we turned on the TV.  We were both falling asleep on the couch within a half hour.  So much for being young and wild!