Mr. Dithers 30 July 1998

I'm not entirely sure, but I think that if I were to ever make a firm decision about something and actually follow through on it, my head would explode. I hope so, anyway, at least then I'd have some excuse.

I sat here last night dinking around - do I want to go to this show? do I not? What you should understand, maybe, is that the last time I tried to go see a show at Bottom of the Hill (a nightclub in SF in case that wasn't clear), I broke my collarbone, bicycle accident. So although when I saw that Anna Waronker would be playing there, I didn't think beyond "Oh, cool, I should go see that," when it came time to actually go, I started to get a little paranoid. Stupid, but. Plus all the usual wimpy reasons to not go out on a Wednesday night. Oh, it's late. Oh, it's far. Oh, it won't be that good.

You might be able to guess the results. Of course, I called a cab and went to the show.

I got there about halfway through her set, thanks to prior thumb-twiddling, but saw enough. I don't know who the band with her was, but they were good. Besides having a name that is very difficult to say after two beers ("Waronker" - try it at home!), she's got a very strong, distinctive voice. Plus she's quite cute in this ordinary-human way, which I appreciated. That was how I had pictured her from the sound of the songs; it's crucial to the credibility of that kind of romantic semi-true semi-personal lyric.

OK, red flag on me here. "Quite cute," hah. At the actual time I thought she was Very Cute. Let us perhaps even say, Sexy. She was wearing this rather, er, comfortable red spaghetti-strap top and your standard little black skirt, blonde hair with nicely obvious roots, the whole kaboodle. If I had just met her at a party, the magnetic field would have been noticeable; with all the rock-star context, it was a Tokamak. Not that this made any difference - I thought for about 5 seconds about trying to tell her that we had mutual friends, which we do in a very vague sense, but decided not to do that because a) it would be real dumb and b) the "mutual friend" would hate me for even thinking about it. But that's the true thing that happened and if that's not what I want to write down here, then what, I ask you, is the point? Hmmm?

Anyway.

The other reason I missed part of her set was that she went on earlier than I expected. The actual headline band was Imperial Teen, an indie - or indie-ish (west indie?) - band that I've vaguely heard of but hadn't heard. That's who most people were there to see, too, from what I could tell. It was some kind of Miller Genuine Draft night at the club, they were taking signups for some giveaway or other. Don't know if that was an influence on who was there or not as well - what I imagine as a Miller kind of crowd is pretty much what I think an Imperial Teen crowd is like anyway.

And what that is, is wholesome, attractive, employed people. They all seemed nice enough, but... I don't know. Like a class barrier. As much as someone else might put me right smack in the same class. These are just not my people, somehow. Too many years hanging out with speed freaks in the lower Haight, I guess.

Imperial Teen did eventually play music, in case you've lost the thread here. (I did, but fortunately I have notes.) They were OK. It's two guys and two girls. The drummer had very interesting facial expressions. She looked like either she was in pain, or really enjoying herself, or maybe out of breath. She came up to sing and play bass on a couple of songs, and I think she might be Swedish or German or something. It's just that kind of face, I don't think artifice was involved.

Some of the songs were interesting, and the girls' voices had a bit of punch to them, but mostly it was the two guys singing, and I'm sorry but they were sonic oatmeal. Plop. Maybe it was just the acoustics. I don't know what they were saying, but it all came out like "wahwahwahwahwah". Imagine Simon & Garfunkel, but only the lower register quiet parts. But really loud, and over somewhat repetitious music.

But it was all very exciting to everyone else there, and that's fine, because people should be able to have something they can enjoy. I noticed that songs which turned out to be among their most dull were keenly anticipated, people applauding and Yeah!ing and Whooo!ing at the beginning notes. Strange, interesting in that alien-envoy way. (Want to know how I have looked at life for most of mine? Read this. I love this set of pages but this one in particular - scary. True.)

I got home fine, and my collarbone is not broken.

In other news: I got jello with lunch today!

Willfully blind self-indulgent nebbish or amusingly quirky old coot? And how bout that local sports team? Discuss among yourselves.

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