When I left the venue I saw Mr. NFL pulling up to the side door in his coupe with a huge grin on his face. Went to shoot a few local bands (Americana & punk, what a combo) and ended the evening behind a bar as a certain local joint likes to ask me, from time to time, to do some spontaneous celebrity guest bartending. I did this for a bit, making great tips but gave them to the non-inept barkeeps who actually do this for a living. Here's a moment of my bartending last night:
Customer: Can I have a drink with milk and ...
Me: (glaring) NO. Next . . . (looking to next customer). After band #2 I went back behind the bar and at the end of the bar I saw a guy who said 'you lectured me about using this coaster and you never brought me anything to put on this coaster.' oops.

Last night: Monster Magnet, ugly guys in sexy leather pants. Backstage at the venue was far more interesting that activities onstage (including "Erotic Price is Right") with strippers wandering and lounging about and an NFL star looking pleased with life. I nearly took a wrong turn backstage and ended onstage with six strippers: there's no way I could have blended sans high-altitude shoes and microscopic bikini. Monster Magnet put on a to-be-expected loud show with lots of bumps & grinds - the simulated ejaculation with water bottle really irked the front row of post-teens and they threw whatever was in their hands at the band. The barricade looked like it was going to collapse, calling to mind the NIN show several years back at which I thought I was going to get crushed as it moved forward a few feet.

(I had another post which evaporated) Imagine that when you open this there's a quick time movie of me standing and kicking my feet back while I'm singing the title of my blog. This may never actually materialize (as I'm not very good at reading or following directions) here so imagine it. The post before the That Time quote was about Samuel Beckett who alway claimed this date as his venerable birthday, which, because of bad records, may have been accurate, or not. He's an overwhelming fiction writer who was born in Ireland and hightailed it to Paris and lived happily ever after writing the likes of That Time, a short play for three voices.

That Time quote:
A: that time you went back to look was the ruin still there where you hid as a child that last time straight off the ferry and up the rise to the high street to catch the eleven neither right nor left only one thought in our head not a curse for the old scenes the old names just head down press on up the rise to the top and there stood waiting with the nightbag till the truth began to dawn.

Well, off to photograph Monster Magnet etc. and then to points beyond.

Friday the 13 is a fine starting point for these rambling recollections. And an appropriate start is to roll out the rock & roll carpet of memory about Nirvana and Kurt Cobain (who strode off for eternity about this time of year). I photographed, in black & white, the band's appearance in Buffalo New York at University at Buffalo in November of 1993. Surprisingly, there weren't throngs upon throngs of students or public rock appreciators there. Meatpuppets opened, hiding under thick knit caps, and I watched from the sidelines where I encountered Mrs. Cobain as well as shellshocked U.B. students who had been dealing with her diva ways all day. A juicy later post will be my story about her, her handbag, and the tale of her leaving the handbag behind as she drove over the Peace Bridge into Ontario, Canada for her Hole gig in Toronto. But back to Kurt et al. The set was powerful, Kurt wore a trademark tattered cardigan over an Olympia Beer t-shirt. At show's end he destroyed an "In Utero" life-sized figure.