A Hasty Stroll

I was rushing and rushing to get through the first draft of Spy Rock Memories, Part 7, and the story kept getting longer and longer. I mean, I knew exactly when and how it was going to end, but it was taking forever to get there.

It wasn't just that I was determined to finish the draft tonight so that I could get started on editing it tomorrow; I also wanted to get over to the city to meet Aaron for one of our patented late night wanders about town. But by the time Part 7 had finally topped out at around 8,200 words (probably 3,000 of which are going to have to be cut right back out of it), I was already supposed to be on the street corner in the West Village where we were meant to begin our walk. I tore down to the subway, knowing it would take me at least 20 minutes to get there, only to find that the ever-deteriorating MTA (you know, we're a poor country, we can't afford things like reliable public transit anymore the way modern, progressive countries like, say, Turkey can) wouldn't be sending a train my way for another 20 minutes.

So some hasty rearrangements had to be made, we met in the East Village instead, and headed more or less straight for the Williamsburg Bridge for the walk back to Brooklyn. Still a very nice walk on the first night this week with normal, almost cool temperatures, but it lacked a certain meandering quality possessed by all the best late night summer strolls. We talked about MRR, circa '77 until now, and related punk rock media, cultural and philosophical issues, and Aaron gave me a copy of his new book, which apparently includes an interview of yours truly and another interview conducted by yours truly with AVA editor Bruce Anderson. Riveting stuff, as I recall, though it's been a few years since I last perused either. Anyway, check out the new book at Last Gasp or on Amazon or any of the other usual outlets; it looks pretty good, and I'd be reading it right now if I weren't busy typing this.

Woodstock

Aaron Cometbus writes to say, "After coveting your copy of Woodstock Nation for two decades (!), I finally found my own at a sale a few weeks back. Also, at a different sale, an original copy of Guitar Army, which I've also always wanted."

Really? Two decades? I remember him remarking on it - and yes, that would have been somewhere around 1989 - at my house up on Spy Rock, where I enjoyed the luxury of an entire room devoted to books, though it sounds a bit grandiose to call it a library (grandiosity was not, however, a quality I lacked in those days). And I remember him making mention of it occasionally - very occasionally - over the ensuing twenty years.

But I don't recall ever getting the sense that he was truly covetous of it, because most likely there are several points at which I'm sure I would have just given it to him. To be quite honest, I'm not even sure, having disposed of large numbers of my personal possessions as I downsized from a six-room house in the mountains to a modest apartment in Brooklyn.

And to be even more honest, although I will, the first chance I get, rummage through my remaining books to see if the hardbound original printing of Abbie Hoffman's acid-drenched (in more than one sense) memoir of the biggest countercultural event of modern times, I'm unlikely to read it again anytime soon. I'll be more motivated by the awareness that if Aaron, an avid and devoted book collector, has had to search that long and hard for it, it's probably worth a fair bit of money.

Oh, I know, that sounds terrible, especially on this 40th anniversary, where every doddering old hippie with half a functioning brain left (actually, I think the bar has been set considerably lower) is joining with youthful romantics who weren't even born in 1969 to weigh in on What It All Means.

Not a heck of a lot, I'd venture to say, and before you accuse me of being one of those doddering old hippies myself (oh, what the heck; go ahead), allow me to point out that I at least have the advantage of having been there. Well, for a little while, anyway. Less than 24 hours, actually, since I'd apparently I'd already formed my lifelong habit of arriving late and leaving early when it comes to rock and roll shows, but enough, I think, to get in the proper spirit of things.

The San Francisco Chronicle (of course) hosted this charming discussion, hosted by The Worst Rock Critic in the History of Rock Criticism (that would be the ever-vapid and unctuous Joel Selvin) among three old-timers who had not just attended Woodstock, but performed there, and while much of it sounded like three cranky old men (it was actually just two cranky old men; the guy from Santana, still in his early 60s, sounded reasonably coherent) whiling away yet another afternoon in the arts and crafts lounge at the retirement home), it did bring up the interesting point that it's very difficult to establish agreement on exactly what happened and when.

In the age of cell phones, blogging, Youtube and ubiquitous handheld videocams, that may sound like a strange notion, but for the Woodstock story we're largely reliant on the pre-modern oral tradition. Oh, there's the movie, of course, which I haven't seen since the 70s and could probably not sit through ever again without the aid of powerful drugs, but that was constructed more as a commercial ("Come Visit Hippieland!") than a documentary, and bears about as much resemblance to reality as the musical Hair.

And with both age and - in many though certainly not all cases - a lifetime of drug use diminishing and distorting the recollections of those Woodstock veterans who remain among us, it's likely that the festival will eventually pass into the realm of pure legend. If it hasn't already. Which it probably has.

I've caught myself being scornful of those who endowed the story of a few hundred thousand people standing in a muddy field with more significance than it merited, as well as those whose memories of it have gone slip sliding away into la-la-la-we-all-loved-each-other-land, only to discover that my own grasp on matters was by no means as firm as I would have liked to imagine.

In connection with this Guardian article by a lady who presumably wasn't there and thus bemoans how modern rock festivals don't have the same "spirit" (perhaps, but they certainly have better bands, better sound, better facilities, etc.), there's a link to an alleged (hey, it's on Wikipedia) schedule of the bands who played at Woodstock. The first shock was at how many crappy bands were allowed on the bill (Quill? Who the hell were they? Sha Na Fucking Na??), but the real bitchslap to yours truly's grip on reality came in discovering that either I saw a bunch of bands that I don't even remotely remember, or that my recollections of how and when I arrived at the festival are questionable at best.

For years now I believed that the first band I saw on arriving Saturday afternoon (more about that in a minute) was the Grateful Dead. According to the schedule, however, they didn't play until 10 o'clock that night. There should have been four of five bands before that I did see, including a couple that I quite liked and a couple others that I don't think I would have liked at all. Don't remember any of it.

Bear in mind that I hadn't had much if any sleep since the previous Wednesday; on Thursday my friend Jim and I had finished our shifts as University of Michigan janitors at 11 pm, loaded up the VW (naturally) van, and left Ann Arbor at about midnight. With us were Leslie, Jim's long time girlfriend, and Mo, a girl I'd met a week earlier and in a moment of late-night amphetamine-fueled madness, invited to go with us. Jim's van being incapable of more than 50 mph, and that on level surfaces only, we figured the trip would take about 14 hours, providing we didn't waste any precious time sleeping or eating.

There may or may not have been stimulants involved in this cockamamie plan - this being the summer of Nixon's Operation Intercept, marijuana had become almost completely unavailable, with various kinds of speed rushing in to fill the gap - but we did have a glove box full of LSD and what was allegedly mescaline, but could have been anything, including the aforementioned amphetamines. We also had a giant American flag, large enough to cover everything and everybody in the van twice over, which Jim and I had "liberated" from the University flagpole back in Ann Arbor.

I don't recall having packed any other essentials, or perhaps nothing else seemed essential; at any rate, things went smoothly until somewhere in western New York we were pulled over by a state trooper who first threatened to shoot Jim's obstreperous German Shepherd (in retrospect, it's hard to blame him; that dog was truly obnoxious), then accused us of stealing our flag from the University of Michigan (I was truly astounded at his detective skills, which seemed to border on the psychic, until, many years later, it occurred to me that in a university town, there weren't many other places one would be likely to come up with a flag that size), and then announced that he was going to search our van for contraband.

Well, we were ready for that, just about. As designated shotgun-rider, and therefore the one with quickest access to the glove box, it had fallen to me to begin devouring our entire drug supply the minute the red lights had come on behind us. I still had a mouthful of gelatin caps when he knocked on our window, but through subtle but assiduous chewing I was able to get them all down before he asked me to say anything for myself.

How many pills? My guess is about 25, maybe 30. I wasn't that bothered, figuring that I'd just be extra high when we arrived at Woodstock later that day. The cop, having found nothing to arrest us for, then advised us that all roads leading to the festival were backed up "at least 20 miles," that no further traffic was being allowed into the area, and that we'd be best advised to turn around and go back to Michigan.

You can imagine how likely we were to take that advice, and in case you can't, not very. We plowed on, the journey becoming increasingly colorful for me, probably less so for the others, as we hit the mountains and the van's top speed fell precipitously, to the vicinity of 25 mph, which didn't make us too popular on whatever expressway we were traversing. It was already dark, and I think we'd been on the road 19 or 20 hours ("But as near as I can tell, we're no more than 50 or 100 miles away," Jim cheerily declared), when the van's engine gave up the ghost and we drifted over to the shoulder where we sat marooned for the night.

We tried sleeping on the side of the road, but unfortunately it was a little steep for that and I'd no sooner get relaxed than I'd start rolling downhill. Not that there was any way, considering the chemicals coursing through my system, that I was going to sleep anyway. Around midnight it started raining, which meant the four of us, five, counting the German Shepherd, who was nearly as big as I was, spent the rest of the night in the van.

Morning dawned bright and sunny, and we started hitchhiking. I reiterate: four full-grown hippies and an outsized dog. What were our chances? A VW bug pulled over, driven by two college boys. Despite the gravity of our predicament, we laughed. Yeah, sure, that was gonna happen. I recalled that once in high school we'd managed to cram sixteen (maybe it was 13, a lot, anyway) kids into my friend Mike's VW for a stunt that wound up on the front page of the school paper, and the college boys said, "Well, then six people and a dog shouldn't be any problem at all!"

I still have a hard time believing this actually happened, but I don't have any other explanation for how it happened, and by that I'm referring not only to how we all crammed into the car, but also how we managed to thread our way through the epic traffic backups and highway closures that had many attendees abandoning their cars and walking the last 10 or 20 miles (performers had to be brought in by helicopter).

But here's how it seems to have worked: arriving at a little crossroads village, we went into the general store to ask directions. Ever since I've pondered whether the proprietor, fed up with a seemingly unending procession of hippies all wanting the same thing, provided us a with a completely nonsensical route to follow in hopes that we'd drive off a cliff somewhere, or whether he for some reason took pity on us and clued us in on a genuine shortcut.

In any event, after a couple hours of attempting to follow his rather complex and confusing directions, we found ourselves on the side of a mountain, in a field, following two tire tracks that might have qualified as a cowpath but probably not as a road, unable to go any way but forward, since to attempt to turn around would have almost certainly sent us plunging to our doom several hundred feet below.

"Haven't we already driven all the way around this stupid mountain?" someone said, just as we rounded one more bend and saw, splayed across the hills and valleys just below, the festival in all its sodden glory. The "road" widened and turned downhill, and ten minutes later we pulled into the main parking lot immediately adjacent to the stage.

So, we were there, we walked around being awestruck for a bit, discovered there was no food - I was able to buy an orange for what then seemed like the outrageous price of 25 cents; apparently that same fruit stand was later wrecked in a mini-riot provoked by what festival-goers saw as price-gouging - and settled down on a hillside to watch the show.

The ground was muddy from the previous night's rain, but not unmanageably so, and the weather a bit chilly for August, especially once the sun went down. The falling temperature made sitting in mud a lot less pleasant, especially when our blankets began to disappear into it. Somewhere in the middle of the night, I had an unpleasant vision of myself and my erstwhile girlfriend as two pigs rolling in slop, a vision made more vivid by her having one of those unfortunate pug noses that do tend to make one look, well, a little porcine.

I jumped up, mumbled something about going for a walk, and disappeared into the night. I spent the rest of my Woodstock experience on my own, wandering through the crowds, stopping to marvel at the Who's show-stopping hymn to dawn (that one about "Looking at you, I see the glory, etc."), not to mention the rather picturesque sight of Abbie Hoffman getting knocked cold by Pete Townshend's viciously swung guitar, which elicited wild cheering from the peace-and-love hippie crowd.

It was full daylight, maybe 8 or 9 on Sunday morning, by the time the Jefferson Airplane, then one of my favorite bands, took the stage, and after watching them for about 20 minutes, I realized I was completely exhausted, and, like the kid who's just eaten an entire chocolate cake and a gallon of ice cream, just couldn't take anymore. I started walking, in no particular direction at first, but gradually I realized I was wandering further and further away from the music, until I could barely hear it anymore, past dozens, then hundreds of hippie encampments, little and large. Many people slept, others sat glassy-eyed, like displaced persons after a great war, watching their fellow refugees stream past with great resolve but little visible purpose.

Eventually - it must have been midday - I found myself on the side of a four-lane highway and stuck out my thumb. That's the last thing I have any clear memory of. I woke up in my bed back in Ann Arbor sometime Monday afternoon, with no recollection of how I'd got there, though by going through my pockets I was able to piece together some fragmentary idea. I had a receipt for a youth fare ticket from New York to Detroit, a New York City subway token, and a couple other bits of paper that made it pretty evident I'd managed to hitchhike into New York and find my way onto a plane back to Michigan. I even had a very vague, but fairly certain memory, of standing in front of the building on E. 2nd Street near Avenue B where I'd briefly lived the year before which had now been taken over by a new band of squatters.

My brother showed up at the end of the week; although I hadn't even known he'd been there, he'd stuck around not only till the end of the festival, but for a few days more to help clean up. Like many others who'd stuck it out to the end, he was raving about Jimi Hendrix, who'd wound things up on Monday morning, and for a number of years I felt regretful, even resentful, that I'd missed out on the whole third day (not to mention the first day). But while I'd have liked to see Hendrix (as things would turn out, I never would), a quick look at the aforementioned schedule assures me that I didn't miss much else. Okay, maybe Crosby, Stills and Nash would have been interesting, but I couldn't stand their records, so I don't know why I would have liked seeing them live. And a couple others, but oh, what the heck. I'm sure I also needed my sleep.

And what about now? What do I think, forty years on? Woodstock falls neatly under the heading of things that I'm glad I've done but would never want to do again, sort of like my trip through Poland shortly after the fall of Communism. I think there are much better bands around these days, I'm glad that I don't have to take drugs to enjoy them (or to take drugs at all, which just by itself makes our present time greatly superior to the 1960s), and frankly, despite some moments of great excitement that I'll always treasure (as much because they happened to me in my apocalyptic and hyperdramatic youth as because of it being "the 60s"), that whole period, both culturally and musically, strikes me as being a bit boring and overrated.

Every generation has festivals, social movements, wild and wacky fashions; the 60s generation seems to have got a disproportionate amount of attention because a) there were, thanks to the postwar baby boom, so many of us; and b) because its own self-important commentaries have so completely dominated the culture and media for so long that they seem to have taken on the aura of self-evident truth.

So yeah, it was interesting to be there, interesting to be part of, but hey, kids of today: don't let the parents or grandparents fool you into thinking that your own lives can never possibly be imbued with such Importance and Meaning as theirs were. Ultimately it was half a million mostly middle class kids gathering together in a field to take drugs, have sex, and listen to music. Happens dozens of times every summer, all over the world, every year, and probably always will as long as there are kids, fields, drugs, sex and music.

Does Bret Michaels Wear Hair Extensions?

I finally figured out that I shouldn't go to the gym at night. Not only is it way more crowded, but that's when the TV is always showing the Bret Michaels Rock Of Love show that I complained about a few days ago.

It's not so much that I find the show THAT offensive, apart from the frequent close-ups of fat-ass old Bret slobbering over every woman that comes near him, and come to think of it, is it part of their contract that all the contestants have to kiss him whenever he or the script require it? Because unless they're all doing it voluntarily, wouldn't that be creeping (appropriate word, no?) into the realm of prostitution?

To be honest, I just don't know the answer to that one, and therein lies the crux of my problem with Rock Of Love. Despite JoeIII aka Futon Revolution's enlightening explanation appended to my original post on this subject, I still have far too many questions about just what the hell is going on, why these women are so willing to debase themselves, and why a multi-millionaire like Bret Michaels would allow them in his house in the first place when it would presumably be far more efficient and far less time-consuming to phone an escort service.

As I noted earlier, I've only ever seen the show at the gym, with the sound turned off, so little mysteries keep presenting themselves, like, for example, Bret Michaels' hair. It's unusual but not unheard of for a man his age to have a thick luxuriant head of hair, but assuming this is the case, why is he always pictured wearing some sort of swami-ass do rag that covers the top of his head? I note that some of his henchmen or members of his posse wear similar head coverings, presumably so Bret won't look so weird, but where, I ask you, apart from prison, do you see so many grown heterosexual men with rags on their heads?

Tonight there was one brief shot of Bret in a cowboy hat, but once again we never see the top of his head, and middle-aged guy always wearing hat usually = balding. But then we see those (no doubt completely natural) blond tresses cascading down the sides and back of his head and the mystery deepens? Are they the genuine article, or were they attached to his do-rag/cowboy hat by the upscale Hollywood version of the Hair Club For Men?

This way lies madness, I know, which is why I have resolved to stay out of the gym from now on when Rock Of Love is showing. Oh, and one more thing about that swami do-rag that has an approximation of a third eye just over the top of his forehead (well, we don't actually know where the top of his forehead is for sure, but where it would be if everything is on the up-and-up). Tonight, just when I was thinking, "Is he actually trying to portray himself as some sort of sage or mystic?" an actual Indian swami came sidling into the room and squatted down at the table with Bret and his latest victim for some sort of seance. Or so it appeared from the cheesy hippie prints and 10,000 candles adorning the room.

I left the gym completely befuddled and moseyed on over to Greenpoint in vain hopes of seeing Tin Armor, who I'd meant to see the night before until Mr. Cometbus showed up at my house and we spent the evening looking at old pictures of Gilman and Spy Rock and Detroit (and why, pray tell, does everything and everybody look more fun and beautiful in the past when I can remember perfectly clearly that it and they were not nearly so fun and beautiful when they were actually happening and there?).

But of course I wasn't going to see them tonight either, and things were, as per usual, operating on drunken hipster Brooklyn bar time, meaning that Tin Armor are probably taking the "stage" right about now, whereas I've been safely tucked up at home for a couple hours now because I'm going away in the morning and have to be up early to catch my flight.

And what really outrages me is that JoeIII was there and I totally forgot to put my newest Rock Of Love questions to him. Instead I tried to get him to join me in my ire at what the opening act, a young lady calling herself Hopalong, had done to Del Shannon's "Runaway," one of the greatest songs of all time and perhaps the single most defining anthem of my pubescence.

It's not that I begrudge artists the right to rework the melodies and intonations of the classics, though certain songs - "Runaway" very likely being one of them - are so absolutely perfect that any attempt to alter them is like the proverbial mustache on the Mona Lisa. But if you're going to do it anyway, at least LEARN THE FUCKING WORDS. I mean, it's not like there are so many of them or that they are so deep and profound that a mere mortal couldn't be expected to encompass them in a normal human brain. Jim "Jersey Beat" Testa didn't help matters any by referring to "Runaway" as being by "Dion DiMuci." Hell's bells, Dion didn't even start using his surname until 1964 or something, years after "Runaway," and although Dion is also one of the greats (with a lot more hits than Del Shannon), to confuse the two singers is like mistaking Minor Threat for Fugazi. Well, no, more like the Methadones for the Copyrights, but I told Testa he was too young to have an opinion on the matter, considering that he was no more than eight years old when it was topping the charts in April of 1961.

What a great song, though. If I weren't such a considerate neighbor, I'd slip into the other room right now, 2 am or no 2 am, and bust out a version of it on the piano. It was a good year for music, 1961, almost as though the radio were providing a personalized soundtrack for my budding teenage life. "Runaway" was playing the day I wandered off and hooked up with my first gang, and we'd just changed our name from the Vandals to the Rebels when the Crystals' "He's A Rebel" hit the airwaves.

I take that back. I just did a quick check and discovered that "He's A Rebel" didn't come out till 1962 (and speaking of defiling the classics, check out this cheesy synth version of it, which try as it might still can't obscure the soul-stirring greatness of that melodic line). But the point is, I have vivid memories of trying to shuffle down the street like the hero described in the song, and in my mind they will always be fixed firmly in June of 1961. There's a whole year gone missing, and ain't it funny, as Willie Nelson might be wont to say... And with that I'm off to bed, and in the morning, off to Florida to moulder away with my fellow old folks. If they've got wi-fi on the beach, I'll be in touch.

Losers Of The Year

I don't often miss California or Berkeley, but last week saw a very special event that I wish I'd been there for. Pinhead Gunpowder, the long-lived but very occasional band featuring peripatetic wordsmith Aaron Cometbus and Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong played a series of secret and not-so-secret shows capped off by a triumphant return to their spiritual home at Gilman Street.

Actually, I could have been there, but having just been in California for what seemed like a very long week at Christmastime and also having foreseen (fortunately I was wrong) a dire outcome for the Gilman show, I elected to stay put in New York. I had feared that too many people knew about the Gilman show and that the club's capacity and infrastructure would be completely overrun by hysterical Green Day fans, but such was not the case; while there were long lines to get in, everybody eventually did get in, and the total crowd was not even as large as some I've seen for memorable gigs in the past like the last Operation Ivy show or the Green Day-Neurosis-MTX-Samiam record release party.

Oh well; everyone I know who was there says it was simply amazing and wonderful, etc., etc., but then they always say that about any event I miss out on. Apparently the band members were similarly stoked, and I've been hoping that this warm afterglow might result in them agreeing to play the Fest this summer in Baltimore, but so far Aaron is steadfastly dragging his feet on that one. Well, actually, he's doing more than dragging his feet; he's saying just plain NO, and has done so a number of times. I'm actually even starting to believe him. Which is probably wise, since in the 22 years I've known him, I should have learned by now that butting heads with A Cometbus over anything is unlikely to produce anything other than a sore head. Still, a guy can hope, and I may ask him just one more time on the grounds that the Fest is today's closest equivalent to the glory years of Gilman Street, underlined by the totally unexpected appearance this year - their first time on stage together in about 16 or more years - of Gilman's original pop punk heroes, Sweet Baby (for whom, as you old-timers will know, Aaron once drummed).

Anyway, don't buy a Fest ticket hoping to see Pinhead Gunpowder, because you almost certainly won't, but even without them, you'd be nuts to pass up a trip to Baltimore this June. And bear in mind that tickets usually sell out almost literally before they go on sale, so keep your eyes peeled. You might get a heads-up by reading this blog, but don't count on it.

Bike Gang

Way back on Wednesday, no, actually Tuesday B.F. (Before the Flood), Aaron Cometbus showed up in my neighborhood. We met at the corner cafe and sat there drinking coffee for a while, but then he invited me along to pick up his bike from the repair shop. Aaron has a habit of inviting me on exciting errands. Last time I saw him, practically the first words out of his mouth were, "Dude, come with me to the UPS store!"

I suspected Aaron of having an agenda, which is generally a safe assumption, and in this case, it turned out that he had decided it was time I bought a bike. The thought has crossed my mind numerous times this summer, especially when waiting in vain for recalcitrant trains or wishing I could whip silently and swiftly through the late night streets to Greenpoint instead of slogging along on foot for the better part of half an hour.

But I kept putting off on the grounds that a) bikes are too expensive in NYC; b) I already have a perfectly good bike in California which one of these days I'll theoretically manage to get shipped out here. But Aaron was keen on this bike repairman/dealer who operates out of his garage on Lorimer. "I think he's the real deal," he says, which is about as full-on an endorsement as you're ever going to get from Aaron.

And sure enough, before I'd been there five minutes, I was being sold a not particularly lovely but perfectly functional bicycle for $50, which included a quick clean-up and spruce-up, a new (well, only slightly used) back tire, new handle grips) and a heavy duty (albeit slightly rusty) chain for locking it to lampposts thrown in. No, it's not quite as nice as my OG bike, purchased in Willits, California for $75 in 1993, but it's coming in a lot more handy.

Like tonight, for example, when I was tied up on the phone for quite a while, making me rather later for the Gravy Train show over on the North Side. No problem: onto the bike I went, and was there in maybe five minutes, ten minutes max. True, in my bike riding clothes consisting of baggy shorts and muscle T, I was a bit out of place in the finely kempt and coiffed crowd of rather glossy hipsters who half filled Studio B (the rest of the audience consisted of, if you believe Jackie O. gay boys and their fag hags, or if you trust my impession, lots of little lesbians and a sprinkling of young men of indeterminate orientation).

For there allegedly being no lesbians there, Jackie O. sure got chatted up a lot, which was more than you could say for myself or Unlovable Frank, who stood morosely around the edge of the stage and greeted me on my arrival with, "Great drummer, eh?" He was referring to the woman playing drums for the first band, Love Or Perish, who turned out to be one Molly Neuman, late of Lookout Records, Pee Chees, Bratmobile, riot grrrl, etc. etc.

She is a very good drummer indeed, and seems to have gotten even better since the last time I saw her. The rest of the band? They were very good, too, or rather they played very well and looked good. The songs were a bit forgettable, though, and the last one went on for an unforgivable five or six minutes.

That crime paled, however, compared with what was at least an hour's wait for the next band. This being Williamsburg, of course, nobody in the crowd had to go to work the next morning (except Jackie O. and Unlovable Frank, and yes, I'm being sarcastic about the rest of the audience, too). Jackie explained that the reason we'd been subjected to this seemingly interminable barrage of cheesy dance music (which actually started out good but plummeted rather precipitously downhill for a very long time before it finally stopped) was that we were being graced with a "celebrity" DJ, namely J.D. Samson from the band Le Tigre. Why someone supposedly knows how to be a DJ because they play in a band has always baffled me, but I'm giving J.D. the benefit of the doubt and assuming that she was responsible for the good dance music in the first half of the hour rather than the reprehensible codswallop in the latter.

I also discovered, lurking in the front row, the long-presumed-vanished Rop, also formerly of Rice, the Pee Chees, Lookout Records Mail Order, and a host of other activities. The last time I saw him, in Park Slope in the year 2000, he was leaving for New Mexico, and most people I knew assumed he was still there. "Actually, I never left Brooklyn," he breezily informed me. "I just didn't come out much for a while." Unlovable Frank introduced me to the writer/illustrator Cristy Road, who I'd been hearing and seeing so much about, and we had a nice chat about Florida and books and all sorts, and STILL there was no sign of another band playing.

Okay, they finally did come on, "they" being something called VIP, which turned out to be three manic gay white rappers, two of them sounding as though they'd swallowed helium balloons in the vein of MC Chris. The gay disco Beastie Boys, I opined, whereupon Unlovable Frank responded with, "A high school talent show in Chelsea." I found them a lot more amusing than Frank did, and he eventually sulked off to the bar to wait them out.

He waited in vain, however, as they were back to share the stage with Gravy Train in the night's big production number, and also appeared in a music video/short film which aired in between bands and during the entire time Gravy Train were playing. At least Gravy Train didn't make us wait for hours; they came clattering on to the stage rather quickly, in fact, led by a rubber-limbed and gurning Brontez, who as usual was the life of the party. Seth (Hunx) and the ladies lurked behind the keyboard at the back of the stage while Brontez hectored and harangued the crowd into a frenzy, and both boys were down to not much more than their underwear (well, Brontez was down to his tighty-whities and nothing more) well before the set was finished.

Although Jackie O., Unlovable Frank and I had all arrived separately, we left together and simultaneously discovered that we'd all come on our bikes. Off we went, through the back streets of Williamsburg, like an incredibly diverse (in terms of ages, genders and orientations) bike gang with a total membership of three. It was a relatively short journey before Frank had to peel off for the bridge and Manhattan, and Jackie left me in her dust and headed off to Bushwick.

But for about ten minutes it was one of those timeless rides, mostly in silence, where we seemed to fly in formation and the streets and sidewalks belonged to no one but us, a few moments when biking through the back streets on a warm summer night seems like the best - hell, like the only - thing in the world to do. Earlier in the evening I'd been talking to a different kind of biker - his Harley was parked out in front of my house - and he told me how he and two buddies had, on the spur of the moment, ridden off to Philadelphia to get cheese steaks one Sunday night. And that's how it felt on my bike tonight: I just wanted to keep riding and riding until nothing short of the ocean or the Continental Divide put a stop to my meanderings.

But instead I came home and wrote about it just for you.