Showtime #7 - Merchandise

Somewhere around 1986 i started chasing the Johnhughesian dream, a dream that entailed girls with asymmetrical haircuts and clubs that were dark and smoky and played the music that i didn't hear on the radio, places filled with kids wearing thrift store clothes and me in my black, buckled leather shoes, of course remember now this was all a dream cuz i was only like 15 at the time and couldn't get into clubs and though i would soon be sporting a haircut very similar to one Bernard Sumner i was still just a fledgling 15 yr. old who wanted to get laid, funny thing is i did that year and the girl oddly enough had a haircut much like Bernard Sumner's but i digress...

A week or so back in the i got to go see this band in my favorite dive bar on a Monday night, me and roughly 40 other people or so and as i stood there listening to them play i was grinning as i watched the kids all bob their heads and groove along, see it had dawned on me that this was much like what i had envisioned when i was a fifteen year old except now i was 42 and didn't care if i got laid or not, i just wanted to listen to the music and daydream my way through the last 25 or so years, drink my beer and bum cigarettes and enjoy myself and damn if these guys weren't good, young kids all living the dream, driving around in a van and playing music and maybe eking out an existence, making all their music available for free on-line and only selling vinyl, what i admired was their almost disdain for the music business, a middle finger to the system, a beautiful statement if ever there was one...

And of course the singer was a cocky and self absorbed bastard, all 25 years old and calling out the crowd, invincible and confident in his ability, watching him i couldn't help but thing of another 25 yr. old i once knew who was much the same, albeit not a singer but the kind of guy who would walk into a bar and boss the place, a bit cocky and self absorbed and invincible, confident in his ability to get laid or drunk or in a fight but now that guy just wanted to listen to the music, bum cigarettes and daydream...

and at the end of the set when the crowd was filing out and i was standing around and finishing my beer i struck up a conversation with the guitar player, another 25 yr. old and a right killer guitarist, a cross between Barney Summer and Jim Reid and we shot the shit and i told him what i thought and we talked music and began talking about the New Order album Brotherhood and he stated that it came out the year he was born and i got a good laugh out of that and told him about some of the bands in had seen back when he was toddling around in diapers and bought him a beer and headed to my car to drive back through a sleepy city... still living and chasing that Johnhughesian dream...