I have landed firmly in the friend zone. Shit shit shit.

Yeah, So August 14th .. my birthday. I’m 26. Twenty-freaking six.

To celebrate, I went to the 9:30 Club to see Hey Mercedes, with Pierbald and Koufax. Ummm . . yeah.I don’t know which band was Piebald and which band was Koufax, but it really doesn’t matter, they were the same band — a generic emo band. It could have been The Get-up Kids and I wouldn’t have known the difference, therefore, I shall hence refer to them as Piefax.

It’s not that they were so bad, they weren’t. They were just so. . generic. It is as if they had read books about rocking out, seen other bands rock out, and decided they wanted to try this rocking out thing on for size. They could probably describe rocking out to a police sketch artist and rocking out would be immediately brought in and charged with a crime. . but they themselves could never quite get over the hump of playing guitar and nestle themselves in the valley of the rock. They played perfectly passable music, put on a good enough show — they did all the right things. Turned their guitars up to seven-and-a-half, jumped into the air at tbe appropriate moments, asked ohw the crowd was doing, pretended to wail on guitar solos. . the whole nine yards. . . I just wasn’t convinced that they were rocking out to the fullest extent of the law.

OK, this is it . .then I’ll shut up about Piefax. You know how Aerosmith used to really just play with total reckless abandon? Aerosmith wanted ot rock you until you fell over, they rocked themselves until they fell over, then everyone got up and rocked out more? But also there were bands like Extreme or Bad English, who you knew had been to Aerosmith shows, and wanted to do that thing but just couldn’t do it. Well, Piefax is just like Extreme. they have this air of studied cool, but are too worried about being hip to just let go and. . . lose it.

By the way, I really like using the phrase rock out.

Oh. Hey Mercedes played too. It was awesome as usual although the crowd was lame, like DC crowds always are. I just want to say, if you pay $12 to see a show, it’s ok to yell and scream and dance and go crazy. You don’t lose any cool points with your friends for smiling and enjoying yourself. My only advice to Hey Mercedes is. . . don’t play to the crowd. Don’t try ot pump us up. Just play your little midwest hearts out and if the crowd comes along. Remember what Gregg Ginn from Black Flag said, “you play with the same intensity to 10 people as you do to 1000 people”.

More on birthdays and rock and roll later. I gotta go to bed.