spacematic.net

I’m trying to keep my word that I’d put up creative stuff here. Here’s my first delivery. A piece of music called “A Midnight Fever Dream of His Most High Honor the Disconsolate General: A Heartworming Dirge of Unimaginable Melancholy For the Sake of Making You Feel Worse About Something Than You Probably Should.” There’s definitely some groovy moping potential to this piece.

So why do I write stuff like this? Well, it’s not all like this. I like all sorts of music, and when I set out to do this one, I decided to arrange for instruments I’ve never worked with before, with guitar eventually taking the spotlight, of course. But this was a fun musical exercise and an opportunity for me to try something odd and interesting. As a disclaimer: The music on this site is not necessarily written and posted for commercial appeal. If I were really serious about it all, I’d have this stuff tracked, mixed, utterly dominated and signed off on by professionals. Instead of all that, what you’ll see here are my favorite musical noodlings.

The term “High End Audio Artifacts” refers to the strangeness that creeps in when one compresses digital music files. All musical postings here will have a “High-End Audio Artifacts” title. Take a listen:

Click Here to Listen or Download!

And here’s the legal stuff:

A Midnight Fever Dream of His Most High Honor the Disconsolate General by Mike Griffin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.spacematic.net.

What you see before you is a series of photographs of what has to be the single greatest car in the world (on Ponce De Leon Avenue in front of El Azteca, at least). The owner obviously had grand dreams of putting this vision of paradise on the larger canvas of a late-Seventies Chevy van. Times being what they are, you gotta make the most of what you have. And since this guy had an old Honda Prelude; well, he just let the creativity fly anyhow. If this Honda’s rockin’, WHATEVER YOU DO, don’t come a-knockin’.

The naked blonde lady with the mountain cat… yeah. She got it goin’ on. –mike

Jen Long, veteran resident of Bass Lofts and organizer of Summer Dog Park Cinema, has given me a challenge – she wants me to go on a L5P photo safari to document the state of the wall art and sundry installations of graffiti in our fair community. Little did she know, I’ve been doing just that over a period of several years. But it’s probably high time I took another pass at it, as the lifespan of these works is exceedingly brief.

For today’s entry, I decided to re-post a number of my favorites. Not all of them are masterpieces. Some are rudimentary, at best. Some are absurd. Some aren’t even what many people would call “art.” Then again, art of this type is not so much defined by “proper” critique as it is defined by those it affects. All of these pieces affected me in one way or another. And so, here they are.

All of the images in this gallery were present in previous incarnations of spacematic.net. God help me, I won’t suffer the loss of another database! Enjoy! –mike

Freedom Fest @ the Land Trust

Where have I been all this time? Under a rock? So it would seem. I’ve been hearing about the Lake Claire Community Land Trust for some time now, and even the Navajo has threatened to take me up there to witness some drum circle craziness. Alas, whenever the opportunity presented itself in the past, potential takers for some lighthearted adventure ended up either too drunk, too distracted or too unwilling to make the walk down McLendon to Arizona Avenue to investigate.

So when I found out that my friend Andy was playing with his band Wade in the Rhythm for Freedom Fest on May 22nd, I had to keep the date in reserve. As the event rolled to the fore in my calendar, I couldn’t find anyone else to join me, so I decided to venture out alone and just see what this place was really all about. I have to say, this event was a great introduction.

The Land Trust is an expansive complex. Still, it’s easy to see how one could live in the neighborhood for six years and still not know it’s there. The entrance is tucked between houses in a cul-de-sac at the end of Arizona Avenue. But once inside, you’re in another world, far away from the city neighborhoods. There’s a lot to explore here, and I was taken aback by how friendly everyone was. With the profusion of equally-friendly dogs, I wished I had known exactly what I was in store for, as I would have brought my own Allie along with me. But it’s probably just as well; she would have been far too interested in all the sights, sounds and smells – not to mention all the people who were more than willing to scratch heads and give belly rubs to any critter gregarious enough to to make their petting needs known.

As far as music festivals go, Freedom Fest was pretty chill. This isn’t a knock, believe me. I’ve been to more than a few festivals in the past several years, and my chief complaint has always been the crowds. At most “fests,” people get far too drunk far too soon. Things get crazy and out of control, and folks just seem to forget how to get along in a “Saturday Night’s All Right For Fighting” kinda way. Not such shenanigans at the Land Trust. The crowd here was respectably large, yet honestly respectful. The talent on the bill is something to be lauded, as well. In addition to Wade in the Rhythm, acts such as The Selmanaires, Carnivores, Charlie Wooton Project, The Nice Guise and Invisible Circus were all there for the crowd’s listening pleasure , which made for a great weekend, if you had the stamina to attend both the 21st and 22nd dates.

Something tells me that even though this introduction to the Lake Claire Community Land Trust was a great one, I didn’t get everything out of it that I could be. I’m thinking that now I need to coerce the Navajo to accompany me to the next available drum circle. It would be some fun to see the place in its “normal” mode of operation. That, and I really need to meet the resident emu. One reason I’m renewing my lease in this neighborhood is that I’m always pleasantly surprised by what’s hiding just around the corner. There’s a lot to love in Atlanta, and a lot of it isn’t glamorized or advertised. So be it… that’s just the way I like it.  –mike

Those who claim creativity as a passion are bound by only one commitment. That is, they must create. At least this is the case if they want to earn the right to talk about it, wake up the next day, look themselves in the mirror and experience a modicum of deserved good feeling about who they claim to be. “Shit or get off the pot,” as Randal Graves would say. For this to happen, a person cannot simply wait for inspiration to strike. I should know… I’ve been waiting for a while now, and poor spacematic.net has suffered in the waiting.

I thought I had it all together after my amazing trip to Los Angeles last September, and this being the very next entry in sequence after that glimmer of tentative inspiration and hopeful yet half-hearted effort, one can readily see the fruits of such thought and how quickly they withered on the vine without proper cultivation. A river of creative thought may flow constantly in one’s mind, but its mere presence or the occasional glimmer of insight is not enough. Such currents only feed the root of what may eventually become a bounty of creative output. If such rewards are to be realized,  hands must get dirty, soil must be tilled and a certain measure of blood, sweat, tears, and the sacrifice of one half of a good goddamn must be paid to the muse in a measure of time. Without devotion to the task, you’re merely daydreaming. And as with all dreams, if attempts aren’t made to relate, record and sometimes (if you’re lucky) understand them, they are put upon the fire of fleeting consciousness. Brilliant, but quickly forgotten.

That’s not to say I’ve been doing nothing all this time. Mind you, there was a period when that actually was the case. Namely, the years of 2006 through 2008 was a span I often refer to as the “horse latitudes” of my life. There was no wind in my sails. Unlike those dreaded dead seas that trapped the sailors of  antiquity, there was no discomfort, neither was there hunger. There was just the  frustrating passage of time, all the while tamping down my desire, keeping my creativity hostage from the people I cared most about. The better part of me hated this self-imposed captivity. I don’t mince words here. How I say it now was exactly how I felt then. But how does one get to the point where they simply lack the desire to be productive?

(continue reading…)

People have been giving me a particular and peculiarly consistent nugget of advice for a long time now. They say “Go out and see a thing or two! You’re all cooped-up in that damned schoolhouse, and the world’s pretty big. And no, it doesn’t really matter where you go, as long as you’ve never been there before. For Godsakes, get out there!”

So when a friend of mine called me about a month and a half ago with the unique proposition of seeing Porcupine Tree in Los Angeles, I quickly said yes. For those of you who don’t know, snappy acceptance of such an offer is of late, at least, uncharacteristic of me. I used to be far more adventurous than I am now. I don’t know exactly what triggered the shift, but somewhere around the thirty-year mark, I stopped seeking “newness.”

It’s not that I didn’t want to have any fun – quite the contrary. My decision to move to Little Five Points was one  based on the idea of having a base of operations for the entertainment of my closest friends. After all, L5P had been a favorite haunt of mine since the Mid-Nineties, when my band, The Well Drinkers, practiced in a warehouse called “The Black Box” off Krog Street. We used to pay a couple hundred dollars per month for the pleasure of having a stuffy little room to shatter our eardrums in. That very same warehouse now houses “Kevin Rathbun Steak,” and you’ll be lucky if you get out of there for the same couple hundred dollars in a single night. I must admit, however, that Rathbun serves up a damned spectacular steak. If you’re in the neighborhood and have the appropriate carnivorous cravings, it’s the place to go. I recommend that you dip your chosen cow in truffle butter. It’s like sin drenched in extravagance. Sure, the guilt’s there. But what delicious guilt it is.

In 2004, I moved back from Destin, Florida and set up my base of operations atop the hill across from Variety Playhouse – old Bass High School. Dad’s high school football team used to play these guys back in the day, and I was now living in their auditorium. Strange days, indeed! Stranger, still, that my friends who I so wished to entertain in this little party district were rapidly (not to mention, prematurely) slowing down. They just didn’t want to leave the house anymore. When I invited the old band and other friends down this way, they greeted the proposition with the same anxiety one would a visit to the dentist. This , of course, made me sad. Such friendships became remarkably one-sided, with me trekking always into the ‘burbs to visit the people I knew and loved. Whenever I did, all they wanted to do is drink until closing time and cab it back to the house, where it was recommended that I stay the night. This was the point at which I realized I had less and less in common with those who I once considered my best friends. Without the music to hold things together, old bonds wore thin and eventually broke.

I dedicated the next couple of years to making new friends in the neighborhood I now called Home. Item number one on the agenda was to procure a critter. I found Allie, a Cairn Terrier, and it was through her that I was introduced to a neighborhood of like-minded dog people and others who were either dog-tolerant or at least ambivalent. Regardless, the dog got me outside and on the street, and this was a boon to the recovery of my social life. But as time moved on, I found myself driving less, and I was content with the conveniences only city living could afford. The trouble with such contentment is that you risk drawing ever tighter boundary lines around your world, until you exist almost entirely within a ten block radius. God forbid you find gainful employment within the same damned building… if such a thing happens, as it happened with me, it’s nearly all over.

So when Steve called me, I quickly accepted. Yet,  I had to fight my instincts not to go. There were a million reasons to stay at home, including work. But hell, it had been two years since I had even been to the beach. Aside from that, I had only taken a couple sick days, and then another couple to attend my grandmother’s funeral. It was time I took some kind of vacation.

And what a vacation it turned out to be! Steve introduced me to some great friends, we got to hang out in recording studio houses and eat 7-11 breakfast sandwiches in Beverly Hills. His friend got us after-show passes at Porcupine Tree, where I caught glimpses of people I admired, and even got to wave and give sheepish hellos to a couple of honest-to-God legends. It all sounds silly, I know, but it was a blast. I got to walk down Hollywood Boulevard, eat at the In & Out Burger,  find myself up to no good in Tijuana, stick my toes in the Pacific in Malibu and take pictures of the wildlife on the Santa Monica Pier. All of this (and much, much more) happened in only four days.

It all made me hungry to… I don’t know… DO SOMETHING. I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I have a great life, I have even better friends, and I have an interesting tech job where I’m constantly challenged to develop creative solutions to complex problems. But something about this little trip woke me up, made me ambitious and got me working on this crazy web site again. Is it hubris? Perhaps megalomania? A little too much love of  watching myself tap-tap-tap on a keyboard? I’ll admit to at least some symptoms of all those maladies. But what’s wrong with wanting to express yourself? And what’s wrong with hoping that someone might actually want to read it? I’ve been down on myself for far too long.

For now, I find myself two Chimay Blues deep into a rambling blog entry at Corner Tavern, with less than ten minutes to go for September 28th, 2009. Is it time well spent? I’m not sure it even matters. What I do know is that I took some time to do something I enjoy. That’s what this site is for – all the stuff I like. So I might hint at putting up entries of music and short stories, as I used to do here, but something tells me that I might be a little more serious about such things going forward. Time to think a little more about that, and then do something about it. Good God, I salute you if you made it this far. Thanks for listening.  –mike

Oh! Will the gods show no mercy on me? I’ve had one hell of a week. As you may or may not know, the website has been undergoing some drastic code and cosmetic changes as of late. I mistakenly thought that I needed some kind of content management front end for features other than the Electro-Journal. I auditioned several PHP content management solutions, only to find them a little too demanding or a little too limiting for my taste.
After much deliberation, I decided that this, the spacematic Digital Electro-Journal should be the front page! Brilliant. Why wasn’t I happy with this solution in the first place? Probably because I got too big for my britches and thought that blogs aren’t really sites, but rather popular components of larger networks of essays, bulletin boards, movie features and on and on. Too big for my britches, indeed! SDEJ is the reason people come to this site in the first place. No need to get all complex and make people search out content in a complex manglement system. The platform I’m using, Movable Type, is plenty powerful enough to deliver the information I need. Not to mention, I’ve dolled up this template somethin’ sexy! So for once, my better judgment kicked in, only to be squished by my stupidity and impatience.
You see, I was in a big hurry to get this over with and remove the current installation from the former “spacematic.net/journal” directory and migrate it over to the domain name; no back-slashes, no “journal” to qualify its existence. All should have gone well. Eh. All didn’t. I ended up losing my entries. I had to go to Google to find cached versions of my pages just so I could copy and paste the text back into Movable Type. As you can see, some entries were saved and some weren’t. With all this woe going around, don’t allow me to mislead you. THIS WAS NOT MOVABLE TYPE’S FAULT. This was a user error issue. This was a dunce-cap moment on a grand scale. The whole class watched as Ms. Dontyaknowbetter grabbed me by the ear and twisted until I rose from out of my seat. They all laughed as I was crowned King of Duns Men and given a corner of the classroom to rule from a stool.
Which brings me to today. I finally got the saved entries back up. My profile page and the Monkeytronic Museum should be back again in short order. The only pain I now feel is a residual sting due to the loss of two very long essays of which I was very proud. I thought today wouldn’t be a day for writing. I thought I would give the Journal a rest. So I opted to brew some tea. After about ten minutes of watching tea brew, I realized that I was bored. So I took Miss Allison out for a walk. That’s her in the picture above.
Watching a small dog walk down a busy street is some real fun. Their responses to people, their apprehension of holes in the sidewalk… just what’s going on in that little head? I know one thing for sure. Pigeons are the enemy. Pigeons must be prevented from flying. Pigeons must die. And so should the four-wheeled pink and blue rolling beasts that capture babies, known to you and me as strollers.
The best thing about Allie is that she’s never met a stranger. She can reliably coax a smile from the face of a passing pedestrian. Those who do not smile obviously prevent the creeping grin consciously, and with great effort. They are the bastards; they live in a world so gray and callous that smiling at a little dog carries the penalty of castration. Brian Warner is watching you Goths, Townies, sundry Poseurs! Let’s just face it, a little dog smiles at you – you can’t help but smile back. It’s not a social faux-pas. It’s not a put-on. I think the reaction is caused somewhere in the amygdala, hard-wired. You can’t do much about it unless you choose to clench your ass cheeks until you’re in dire hemorrhoidal pain. Thankfully those who do this are few, otherwise I would start to feel like a jerk for unleashing the cause of ass-clenching epidemics on the streets of Atlanta. Vampire and Suicide Girl wannabe’s aside, walking with Allie is a hoot and a half. And so when I returned from our walk, I was in a much better mood.
And Viola! A new entry for today. That’s how I leave it for now, folks. More to report later. –mike

I write this post at the risk of sounding old, out-of-touch and a tad back-asswards. But things are moving fast, ladies and gentlemen. The times are a-changin’, and it took a new cellphone to wake me up out of the Stone Age of 2002 and come to the realization that in four years, I missed the tiny steps in-between. These tiny steps are like small towns on a road trip – if you nod off for a nap, you’ll miss the scenery and arrive at your destination with a start. Woah! Here already? Such a thing just recently happened to me, and it led to a benign but annoying case of technological and cultural alienation.
Last weekend, my cellular provider left a cryptic text message on my phone. It stated quite simply, “Your voicemail is changing. Please contact Cingular. “ I did not comply. This cellphone, a Nokia candy bar, has been reliable. It has put up with my abuse for four years and I’ve been very happy with it. I’ve dropped it, I’ve forgotten to charge it, I’ve cursed at it, I’ve carved into its face, I’ve drawn on it, painted it and I’ve thrown it at (okay, toward) a cat. It still works perfectly. Then the weekend came and went – and so did my voicemail.
I hopped in the car and went to the Cingular store to see what the problem was. It seems that the problem wasn’t my phone, it was my account. Even though I’ve been living in Atlanta since 2004, my phone still had a Florida (850) area code. The rep couldn’t help me with my problem. He suggested that I modify my account to reflect local customs and conventions. While I was at it, I decided to get a new phone. This time, I opted for the Motorola Razr V3c. It’s a nifty device. It takes pictures, it plays video, it supports mp3 ringtones… and if you want, you can use it as a phone!
I don’t consider myself technologically naive. In fact, I try to keep an eye on advancement simply out of interest. After all, I grew up with computers. I’ve been smitten with gadgets ever since I first got a TI-99/4A computer and learned to make it say nasty words. That was back in 1983. Since then, I’ve watched the advent of the hard drive, the 3.5″ floppy, optical media, wireless networking and the rapid spread of Dippin’Dots: Ice Cream of the Future. So I’m not naive, but I can’t help myself wanting to say “Scotty, how long until we have the warp engines back online?” when I flip my Razr open. This thing comes straight out of Star Trek. It’s a Star Trek phone, for Godsakes, and it came to us two centuries before its time! But this futuristic gadget even has a leg up on Kirk’s communicator. Kirk couldn’t snap a shot of the rubber-suited monster he was fighting in the California desert. Back in the Sixties, visions of the future were still a somewhat practical, even if unbelievable. Phones were phones, cameras were cameras and never the twain would meet. It seems that the future turned out even stranger than the wild and optimistic visions of our previous generations’ speculative mind-trips. In all their attempts to predict the advancement of technology, the writers of sci-fi never thought of combining devices into bizarre and improbable combinations. They must have thought that in the 23rd Century, man would had evolved beyond entertainment through novelty. Obviously, in the 21st Century, this trait is still hard-wired and going strong.
Not long after I got this new chunk of technological candy, my “harrumphs!” about having a phone that is also a camera were quieted. This little all-in-one device can be a lot of fun – hell, it can even be practical! How many times have I wanted to get even a low-res snapshot of a funny situation, only to remember that I left my camera at home?
I hopped on the Web and started looking for articles that detailed how to get images from the phone to my Mac. It was then that I stumbled upon a review that stated, “The RAZR V3c has a lot of features that please, although to save both battery life and space, this phone has no flash.” I read it again. “This phone has no flash.” I think I pulled a ligament in my brain. What the hell? This is the future? You have to take one star off an otherwise great review because the TELEPHONE you are reviewing doesn’t have an integrated FLASH BULB? I was confused. I was tickled. I started thinking.
What surprises are in store for us in the next four years? I imagined reviews of appliances from the year 2010.

“The Maytag QuietCycle 4400 is a superb front-loading washer, but to maintain its Energy Star rating, the manufacturer opted to produce this particular model in two-wheel drive only. Therefore, Road And Garment has to rate this otherwise spectacular washer a 3.5, a star and a half below the BMW Z-13 Terrain Tumbler.”

In 2010, will BMW also be the Ultimate Washing Machine? –mike

Not too long ago, I said that TiVo makes it possible to enjoy better programming in the same space of time one would normally be watching crap TV. That remains true, but if you haven’t gotten one of these things yet, let me warn you about an illness I’ve encountered: Two-Week TiVo Overdose.
Don’t get me wrong, you need a DVR. But making the adjustment to the new device’s many features and capabilities will turn you into a fool for about two weeks. When I got mine, I dove into the relatively trouble-free setup, spent an hour or two watching TV and promptly went about my business. The first few days, TiVo was just another component in my entertainment system. But then the silly little bugger started finding things for me to watch, and I was unprepared for such altruism. Each time I went to the TiVo Suggestions menu, I was intrigued by the offerings. Shows I never even knew existed were magically waiting for me! I had to watch.
Before I knew it, my normal viewing habits were out the window and I spiraled into an ungodly television binge over a two-week period. I couldn’t move, my eyes were bloodshot, I felt the need to snack almost constantly. Roughly thirty hours a week were spent in this state. TiVo – Damn You! You weaseled your way into my home and hijacked my spare time with countless episodes of “South Park,” “King Of The Hill,” “Flavor Of Love” and “Mail Call.” And those were just a few of the Season Passes I had set up.
What makes the little beast completely irresistible is its ability to seek out new things to record based on your interests. TiVo quickly learned that I like documentaries, so while I caught up on R. Lee Ermey’s hyper-enthusiastic demonstrations of military technology, TiVo simultaneously recorded nature shows, disaster scenarios and biographies. My favorite doc title by far was “When Beaches Attack!” Who could resist a show so fetchingly titled? I simply had to learn about beaches that lurk in the shadows, waiting axiously for the chance to strike out at unsuspecting tourists. In all of my years of visiting beaches, not once have I worried about turning my back on one. The last thing you expect is a beach sneaking up on you, deftly slicing through your achilles tendon, pummelling you into submission and taking your wallet. But wait a second – I have had a beach steal my sunglasses. And my money. But homicide? Not the beaches I know. They’ve always seemed so calm and quiet. Just kinda keep to themselves, ya know? Now I know better.
Toward the middle of my two-weeks of television mayhem, my dog started to whine whenever I picked up the remote control. She was my savior. If not for her constant attempts to pry me away from the idiot box, I probably would have remained there, basking in the warm, lobotomizing cathode-rays. I would have been overcome with the mysterious urge to lean on random watercoolers and recapitulate the latest happenings on “24.” As she helped me recover from my addiction, I realized that there really is a Dog… and she loves me very much.
Now things seem like they’re back to normal, and I’ve been able to temper my viewing habits. I’m back to my old schedule of three hours a day. When used judiciously, TiVo is a brilliant tool. But as is the case with all technology, it must be treated with respect, and maybe even a little suspicion. Dare I continue using the TiVo? Of course I should! The cute little thing would get lonely if I just left it there.
Truly, the marketing of a component as an anthropomorphized “TV friend” who is eager to please was a brilliant move.  As if television weren’t addictive enough already, TiVo has incorporated a Tamagochi-esque animated mascot who magically learns what you like to watch, seeking out programming tailored to your interests and input. Aww, simpwy puh-wesshious! But Allie’s got things under control. She’s ever vigilant, and she’ll be damned if a silver box replaces her as man’s new best friend. –mike

If you’re familiar with spacematic.net’s previous entries, you’ll notice that this is a holdover from the old site. I thought that I’d re-introduce the archives a little bit at a time, only adding the entries that I like best. All such entries will be filed under appropriate ‘current’ categories, but they will also be classified under “Pre-2006 Archives”so you’ll know they’re re-runs.

What happened to the great stadium acts of Rock & Roll? I can count on one hand the bands who still draw a crowd large enough to sell out a bona fide stadium, and do it two days in a row! Let’s see here- The Rolling Stones, Rush, Pink Floyd- I’m sure I’m missing a few somewhere in the woodwork. U2 has the power to fill a stadium-sized crowd, but for some reason or another they’ve opted for a limited arena tour this time around. That’s fine by me, since there’s a better chance of actually being able to see the band when you’re in an arena as opposed to a mammoth outdoor sports venue. The sound is usually a lot better, too.

Unfortunately, one of the bands on my list will probably never reunite for another tour. Pink Floyd was a great act who knew how to entertain the masses. Many fans argue that the light show was always the focus and not the players. I agree to the extent that mere human beings are much smaller than giant inflatable pigs, and they’re slightly less luminous than humongous flowering mirrorballs. The only way a puny mortal could approximate the grandeur of a Floyd show would be if they covered themselves in hyper-reflective ballon mylar, taped lasers to their body, added a gallon of gasoline and struck a match. Then they would have to shoot themselves out of a cannon while being tracked with those giant police searchlights. Still, for the effect to even come close, the whole thing would have to be viewed on the Times Square Jumbotron. That’s the only way one person could ever hope to measure up.
If you were up close to the Floyd and weren’t a musician, you’d probably be disappointed since you wouldn’t be able to see all the pretty pretty lights. Fans claim that the show is best appreciated from a considerable distance. But I was (and still am) a musician and David Gilmour has been one of my idols since childhood. So when my time came to see the Pink Floyd, I tried to get as close as possible. I cared much more about the players than the spectacle. That’s what concert videos are for.
I was lucky enough to attend the Atlanta performance at Bobby Dodd Stadium, The Division Bell tour, 1994. I succeeded in getting eight tickets in the fifth row. God bless Turtle’s Records and Tapes. Their people knew how to freak the Ticketmaster computers right. My girlfriend, six giddy high school seniors and myself were wedged between Georgia Tech students and aging hippies, and we were all having the time of our lives. Throughout the crowd, there was a general consensus that it was quite possibly the last time we would ever see this band perform. Little did anyone know that Gilmour, Waters, Wright and Mason would decide to do a one-time-only reunion for “Live” in 2005. The 2005 London show was pretty cool, but the show I attended in 1994 was everything I hoped it would be and more. They played two sets of both new and classic material, followed by three encores. The second encore, “Wish You Were Here”was probably the largest sing-along I have ever taken part in.
If you put on the right music and drop me in the right situation, I’ll cry like a baby. We all held our lighters aloft, swayed back and forth and sang at the top of our lungs like we were in the world’s biggest pub – a pub with lasers and fog and weed. My girlfriend turned to me and saw tears streaming down my face. Her glee turned to concern. I simply smiled back at her and said “It’s okay.”Still, she was weirded out to see me openly weeping, since I’m usually not a “Kleenex Moment”kinda guy. Just to point out how silly she thought I was, she yelled into my ear, “I’m sorry. Did I miss something? Did he just propose to you?”
I havent’ done anything like that since. At all other rock shows that followed, I simply rocked. I didn’t cry at the KISS show in 1997, nor did I shed a tear over the Smashing Pumpkins. I’ve come pretty close whenever U2 play songs like “Bad”or “Walk On.”
I’m waiting for the next wave of great stadium bands. I fear they’re going extinct. I still like club shows and I appreciate the intimacy of a small venue, but there’s something really special about a stadium crowd enjoying a really big show. It’s little wonder that people who see their favorite band playing to a sold-out crowd often compare the experience to religious ecstacy. We’re social animals, and in the brief span of two hours we get to live the otherwise unattainable social dream in which everyone is gathered in common purpose and agree on at least one thing- the band we’re watching totally rawks. –mike