turn it up it's too far down as if we can relate...

I realize I'm getting older when I go out to see some live music and end up sitting in a table by a corner behind a wall with Jim and Christine because it's just too damn loud up front. And then I'm wondering when the headliner is going to come on and if I can stay up that late. But darn it, I've paid my eight dollars and I've had a rough couple weeks, the venue is chill, and it's not every day that Grant Hart of the late great Husker Du is playing at the bar around the corner and I don't have to be at work until the early afternoon.

I listened to a lot of 80's punk and hardcore in my Kent State days and all of my Husker albums have been collecting dust since I no longer have a functioning turntable, having thrown out my old one when I moved out and when I realized it was playing all my records too fast.

I haven't listened to any of his solo stuff, but he was responsible for my favorite songs and while he didn't play 'The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill,' he played some of my other favorites and asked us about things that happened in Cleveland before most of us were born and exhibited a shy and somewhat snarky sense of humor.


He plugged in an old electric guitar and taped a row of picks onto it with masking tape, ignoring requests for certain songs that Bob Mould wrote and seemed to disappear into his own world. I always wonder how people can get that sense of melody and intensity with just a few chords and words but I got the shivers up my spine in the best way even with the songs I didn't know.



Now that there has been at least some return to relative normalcy, it felt good and cathartic to be around loud guitars and aching souls. It brought me back to all I've been through and how that's helped me get to where I'm at now...