Virtually Home

Driving south through Iowa at dusk I went to Lincoln for a job interview of sorts. I reveled in the driving. It turns out that solo slogs across the lonely plains states, singing along to my car stereo, are my idea of a good time. It was the kind of interview that seems only to exist in my field: the one where someone already knows they want to hire you but the job may or may not exist. I gave a talk, met a bunch of really cool people, and spent a nice afternoon in a town I have only visited in songs. I left Lincoln for Omaha, crushed under the weight of not getting my hopes up.  I planned to get to the venue at some point after doors opened, which is not my usual modus operandi. I was going to play it cool. I should preface this by saying that there is no such thing as a casual Mountain Goats fan, in my experience. Mountain Goats shows are a deeply and unsettlingly communal experience. The unsettling part comes because, in spite of having lived a life I cannot identify with ...

On Friday, after a little bit of scrambling to print concert tickets on account of complications involving multiple malfunctioning printers, non-access to computer labs and missing ID cards, Zack and I picked Jacob up and, after a brief stop to add fluid to Zack's power steering system, we headed south on I-35 to Dallas. The weather was happy and sunny, and we basically had a sing-along all the way down. We ate some really terrible wings at a Church's Chicken attached to a gas station and headed to House of Blues. (Prepare yourself -- all of my photos from this show were taken on my poor iPhone, whose camera lens is scratched.) Finding the line proved to be kind of difficult, as there wasn't much of one, but we ended up inside behind three OU students (they were the extent of the line) who'd come down for the show and who informed us that, unless we spent $15 dollars at the bar or in the gift shop, we might not end up so close to the front as we would expect. A fift...

Saturday was less a music festival and more a Monsters of Folk festival. For me, anyway. I skipped out on seeing a number of minor bands that I didn't mind missing in order to stand in line at MOF's autograph table. We were near the end of the line where they cut it off, and I was nervous that I would be the first one NOT to meet the band (which is what had happened at the venue the night before) but it all worked out. The guys were all surprisingly nice, and I got to have a (brief) conversation with each of them. Afterward, Cliff and I contemplated the decision between seeing half of Broken Bells' set, and being ideally placed for Monsters of Folk's set. As obsessive as this sounds, we chose Monsters of Folk. If it had been The Shins instead of Broken Bells, I think my decision would have gone the other way. I dreamed recently that I got to go back to ACL and see all the bands I didn't see when I was busy seeing other bands. It was excellent, but turned out to b...