2009-01-10 - 4:21 p.m.

You�d be closer to the stage, elbows on amps, but twenty or thirty kids got here even before the opening band and are packed tight up there near the stage, all of them wide-eyed, most of them mouthing the words. The girls� hair is swaying like horses� tails, the boys� glasses glinting purple stage lights. They�ve got great spots and they�re not leaving. Maybe that�s why they don�t seem to be drinking much�the ones up front never do�because they don�t want to have to go to the bathroom. You can admire that. This band makes you want to get closer. But you�ve got a good spot too, because fact is, you�re here at the Ottobar on Howard Street and not anywhere else. If you were somewhere else you wouldn�t be feeling the bass and kick drum through your feet or see, to your left, your girlfriend, who is smiling as big as her face will let her. To your right are three or four friends, a couple of them raising Yuenglings to their lips, arms moving like out-of-sync pistons, their heads going back to drink before they start in again on the head-bobbing. Just about everybody loves this band, this band from down South that moved here to Baltimore a couple of years ago. Everybody loves them except the hardcore cynical guys you kind of know who don�t like to have fun, who think that every band in the world has to be difficult, or something. They�re here tonight, too, but in the back, where no one can see that they�re singing along. They don�t like to admit they know the words, but they do. Everybody�s here, it seems. Friends, half-friends, slightly weird kids up front who never have to take a piss, people you don�t know but who like to come to the Ottobar on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, just like you. You feel warm. You drink from your beer. But it is a Wednesday night, isn�t it. Tomorrow, you�ve got to get up, put on the khakis you don�t want to wear, and drive out to the suburbs, far away from this dark place with the smiling bartenders and your smiling girlfriend. And what you thought was gone from this club for a while but it turns out was there the whole time is the fact that just this morning, you were late for work again and aren�t you a little old for that? What�s also kind of here is the fact that once at the job, you didn�t do any real work, any of the glowing, vital stuff, the work that probably helps make you who you are. You could have, you had the time and no one was looking over your shoulder, but you didn�t do it. One more thing you thought wasn�t here but was: that feeling you get when you wonder if you�re going to turn out to be the guy you thought you were going to be back when you were twenty years old, in love for the first time, and completely full in the belly with the brightest, fuzziest stuff to ever bubble up and out of the earth. You suspect you are on some kind of path. It won�t get you there as fast as you once thought, but probably you�ll get there. You�ve got a bit of that feeling in your stomach, but, for now, fuck it. Your girlfriend�s back and she�s got you another beer. Take a look around. This club, what�s inside it, is worth something. Tomorrow, maybe you�ll write about this show. You�ll get at the essential truth that�s in this dark club, the band, the people, the disco ball overhead, the girl way up close who looks like she�d rub the singer�s feet, if she could. Tomorrow you�ll do all the real work you can handle, enough to knock your three cubicle walls flat to the ground. Shit. No one else in that office will have any idea. Boom. Beautiful truth. Yes. There�s something here. And oh, man. Here comes the song they wrote about their new home town, this town that you love, the one with the guns and the drugs but also the purple sky and the cheap beer and the heart that�s everywhere, too. You�ve all got fresh Yuenglings, a beer that people from Philly are always trying to call their own but you�ve been to the brewery and it�s up in the hills and nowhere near Philly. And when this band you love plays that song about your town, about this club, when they get to the big climactic chorus, when the piano player screams Baltimore you look to the left and to the right and everyone�s screaming Baltimore with him, that�s worth something. And then you think right about now would be a good time for another beer but you don�t move toward the bar at all, or you can�t, because you�re screaming Baltimore too, with everyone in the place, even the guys at the back, and, unlikely as it seems, perhaps with the whole world, too.

previous - next