Thursday evenings are one of our semi-obligatory nights at the pub (I say semi because we aren't officially obligated, and we also enjoy it) with my in-laws. Like many elderly, they are creatures of habit, so they arrive precisely at 5pm, and leave at 8pm. This Thursday, when we got home I realized that I'd received a text message that I'd won a contest I'd entered earlier in the day for free admission to the Damo Suzuki show at Crawdaddy from the very cool and aptly named online magazine Le Cool. My stupidly leaving my phone at home nearly cost us the tickets, but we managed to get the all clear and practically ran out the door so we wouldn't miss the show.

When we walked into the place, which is the Chocolate Bar on the outskirts (Crawdaddy is through an inside door), I remarked that despite it being an open space with high ceilings, here was another bar that smelled strongly of farts. We arrived during the opening band's last song, and then Damo Suzuki's band started to set up. He has a "Damo Suzuki network", which basically seems to mean that he arranges for local musicians to be his backing band in each city he plays. So the show was made up of six backing musicians -- two keyboards, drums, bass, guitar, trumpet, and other percussion instruments like tambourine and cow bell. My camera (as regular readers will know) is total crap, so I don't know why I bothered, but here is a snap I took:

It was funny, though. As the show started, I noticed a guy standing at the very front with a camera -- he was a balding guy with very close cropped hair. He didn't seem to be paying attention to anything but how he would get his next shot. Then a couple minutes later, I noticed another guy of nearly the exact same description (balding, close cropped hair, t-shirt, fancy camera). They hovered like gigantic flies over the front of the stage. But then, a third guy of the same description appeared, only shorter and with glasses, and a much bigger camera than the other two. He was more of a swarmer, and passed back and forth from stage left to stage right. I couldn't help but get distracted by them. But more or less, I found the show to be entrancing. I used the time to daydream about my life and its possibilities, and to zone out watching Damo Suzuki do what he does and sweat a profuse amount while doing it. But it was rather stuffy up at the front. We quietly slipped out during the encore, feeling satisfied at ourselves for having a nice night out that cost us zero dollars.