I know that the next time I see Steve at Mojo's, he'll ask me "where have you been? I haven't seen you for a while."

The fact is, there's been some decent live music recently. Friday I went to see Aaron's band Active Radio perform for their CD release. Despite the existence of a few sound problems, the show went off really well. They played at the Back Room, a decent venue, and the cover of $1 attracted a huge crowd. It probably didn't hurt that the show was promoted by local "rock alternative" radio station 101X, and that the cover included a free copy of the CD. I was a bit surprised by the largely teenage crowd. Maybe it's just me getting older, but I felt a bit out of place when surrounded by kids whose biggest concerns are whether or not they are going to pass history this year. Apparently due to the fact of these ephebes, the BR decided that this show would be nonsmoking. Now, perhaps to someone in New York or California, this would not be a surprise, but here in Austin, it is quite upsetting to arrive at a live show and be told that smoking is not allowed. When I went to shows in high school, I had to deal with people smoking, so why should the little punks that came to the Back Room be "granted" a nonsmoking venue? The fact that I could not pollute my lungs as is my usual custom at a live show was the biggest problem I had with the show, followed distantly by the fact that beer cost $3 a pint. Overall I was impressed with the show, and it is always nice to see a friend's band do well. I was a little ashamed too, as I used to work for the "record label" that was going to produce the CD I now have a copy of; unfortunately the owner of the label was such an inept CEO/CFO that the company folded before the CD could be made, and Active Radio was forced to produce and publish independently.

Tonight Our Black Love Song performed again, and they once again rocked the motherfucking house. If any readers live in Austin, you owe it to yourself to see this band before they're playing stadiums and charging $40 for cheap seats. The whole performance was gorgeous, from the lights that they set up themselves to the onstage presence of the band. I was chatting with Mason, the keyboard player, before the show, and he commented that outside of the stage personalities, all the band membersare big nerds. It was quite comforting to hear this level of honesty, as it sometimes seems like band members are getting inflated heads over the perception of their stage personas, something Nick Hornby commented on in the New York Times recently. It's nice to know that there are still people out there who are creating music for fun and not to "get the message out to the people." It's been a long time since I've seen a band that was just about having fun and helping other people have fun, and now I've seen two bands doing just that in two nights.

After the OBLS performance, I went to a party for several graduating college students. I was invited by one of the regulars at work. I've been serving people coffee for nearly nine months now, and finally I'm getting invited to parties. I thought it would never happen. The party was a good time, there were two kegs (although one had been floated by the time I got there) of fairly decent beer (Shiner Bock, for those of you who know what that is.) Many of the people at the party were already wasted, and so I got to have the keg largely to myself, so before long I was wasted, too. By a happy coincidence, the party was less than a block from my place, so I stumbled home and collapsed.