Two shows in two nights, ahhhh, that takes me back.

Last night after work Brian and I met up with my friend Whitney for dinner. She had just driven up from LA that morning, arriving in the mid-afternoon, greeted of course by yet more rain. Whitney is only in LA temporarily, on assignment for her job. Her real home is in New York City, but now that she is “in the world,” as she describes living on the west coast, she is pondering a move to Seattle of all places. Though compared to NYC, Seattle does have the finest summers imaginable. I love love love a Pacific Northwest summer, and I enjoyed twenty-one of them.

(Summer in San Francisco means cold and foggy mornings, a couple hours of windy sunshine, and then a cold and foggy dusk.)

We had dinner at Luna Park in the Mission. I had a beer, a salad, and squash soup. It was a very good time. Joining us were two of Whit’s close friends, Sarah and Lou. I love those group dinners where everyone’s just talking a mile a minute and laughing and telling stories the whole time. Whee!!

So then it was time to drive to Bimbo’s. The rain was light and spitty. Brian and I somehow scored a parking space just a couple blocks from the club, which in North Beach at 8pm is somewhat of a miracle. We met up with our pals in the lobby and then headed over to the bar. I just got a ginger ale because I wasn’t keen on being drunk on a school night.

Whitney knows the guys in Rogue Wave because she recently spent a week riding around the midwest & Texas with them in their van, as she is doing a story on them for the magazine she writes for. One of them met us at this doorway near the stage and took us upstairs to the dressing room area.

I realized that yes indeed, I had been backstage at Bimbo’s before. It was one of those things where it happened so goddamn long ago that it almost seemed like a fragment of a dream or something, but apparently Unwound must have played there in the mid-nineties and a friend and I went to see them and ended up hanging out upstairs. It is very, very hazy. Anyway. Dressing rooms at rock clubs are in my experience, uniformly unglamorous.

Rogue Wave, with whom I am entirely unfamiliar, were giving an interview when we showed up. I tried not to snicker openly at the lameness of the questions being asked. (“What is indie rock?” “What is the indie rock ‘look’?” “What is the difference between SXSW & Noisepop?” Yeah. What?)

Once that was over, we sat around for awhile as Aqueduct got started downstairs. Everyone smoked cigarettes and we looked at Whitney’s pictures from the tour van. They had stayed in some horrendous broken-down punk house in St Louis, slept on a mattress together in a room that was easily as cold as the outdoors, that is, twenty-five degrees. I love tour pictures.

Went back downstairs to watch Aqueduct, with whom I am also unfamiliar, but they do have a song that I have heard many times on xm radio (“Hardcore Days And Softcore Nights”), so when it started up I was chuffed, and danced around. I thought they were really great, and this pleasant wave of nostalgia washed over me.

I used to go to sooo many shows, and every once in awhile I would be formally introduced to a band for the first time by their live show and be immediately enchanted. I guess the best example of that was the first time I saw Unwound, in January of 1992, having no idea what I was getting myself into. They played with Heavens to Betsy, the Spinanes, and Crackerbash. It literally changed my life in an instant.

So, Aqueduct didn’t change my life or anything, but I was won over.

Rogue Wave played next, all dressed in white. I declared that this would later become known as that legendary show where they all wore white pants and shirts. I thought they were great, and that’s not easy to say for a group that I had never heard in my life. So now I need to find some of their recorded material.

I should go to more shows. This guy I met on Wednesday was telling me that the best way to see the best new bands before they end up at the Fillmore is to just get to those small shows as often as you can and hope you get lucky. I know this of course. God it was easier when I worked part-time. But yeah, I guess that’s how I got to see Death Cab For Cutie play at Bottom of the Hill in 1999.

Brian and I had to leave a little early though — he had to do some more work last night, and then get up early to go to the office, plus he had already been up since 5:30am. So we drove home on clear shiny black streets, listening to my iPod. I played “You’ve Got To Feel It” for him, singing all the words because I fucking love that song. It’s just so simple and straightforward and quick.

If any of you care, I am going to hopefully get a quicktime up soon with my “footage” from the other night of Britt Daniel being coaxed into reluctantly performing a solo version of “The Fitted Shirt,” after asking those of us in the audience to provide the harmony parts. Oh and I think he also sang part of the guitar solo. I love that freak.