My own private culture crawl

Following the parade on Saturday, i tagged along with some Duke Parkers to Piedmont for drinks and snacks, then got handed off to some folks i only now casually for an after-parade party at Bull McCabe's. Those folks then handed me off again to a second set of revelers, most of whom i'd never met before. (i'm being deliberately vague here about just who these people are. Something about privacy? i don't really know.) After a few more drinks and nibbles, i made my way to Broad Street Cafe where i hooked up with some other friends (including BCR blogger Kevin, who shared some juicy downtown gossip that's too hot to print) to take in another of Jeff Hart's multiple band shows. See, Jeff plays in like, i don't know, two hundred different bands. And every month or so he manages to string several of them together for a show in town. I missed the last time one of the bands covered Television's Marquee Moon album, but i hear there'll be an encore performance in January.

Let me digress a bit from the pattern building i'm working on (i'll finish that up shortly) to comment a bit on the music. i'm not a musician or a critic, but, as the saying goes, i know what i like. The only band on the bill Saturday night that wasn't a Jeff Hart band was an outfit with the ungainly name A Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire, of a Child in London. Tim Sommer's band was already on when i walked in. They're an instrumental group, four guitarists arrayed across the stage. The sound was kind of chimey. I ordered a beer, found a friend, sat down, and started a conversaton. But i couldn't really hold my end of it up. I kept getting distracted by the music. It was wandering, pastoral, and grounded, all at the same time. I remembered airports at 5 am, long nights driving through fog in upstate New York or mountain passes in California. I haven't been in a room with anyone making music like that in a very long time. I hope to be in another one again soon.

I ended up sticking around the BSC longer than any of my friends, and for the third time that evening found myself in a long conversation with someone who i had pretty much never met before, about music, children, growth, mutual friends. That this happens in Durham, often, is one of the things that keeps me here, doing whatever little bit i can to pass that on.