THE BODY, R.I.O.T.S., HUMAN BEAST
9:30 p.m. White Water Tavern.
Indulge my sentimentality for just a sec: A while back — almost 15 years ago, now that I think about it (side note: Man! Gettin' old!) — a gaggle of slouchy, un- or under-employed nogoodniks piled into a deathtrap of a van and drove from Little Rock to Detroit in late winter.
The van had a name: MegaLon, or just The 'Lon. Her heat wasn't real hot and her windshield wipers didn't wipe and there was a hole in her floorboard near the accelerator. The passengers included, among others, Mary Chamberlin, yours truly, Chip King and Everett Hagen. We were going up to attend some kind of music thing outside the city, in Romulus, Mich. It was a long drive, filled with goofin' and riffin' on silly jokes and lots of music talk. We took turns at the wheel.
It was a lot of fun, and the sort of thing that I haven't done in a really long time. But it makes me proud that I knew those folks back then and still do now, and that Mary's still running her underground literature distributor Tree of Knowledge, and that Chip's playing critically adored avant garde metal with The Body (alongside fellow Arkie Lee Buford) and that Everett's playing in R.I.O.T.S., a rad hardcore band that sounds good now and would've sounded good then. Awesome people still doing awesome stuff all these years later, warms my heart.