Last night after I finished frosting the vegan cupcakes, I went to a substance-free, family friendly, dance party benefit for Haiti, because one of the organizers is one of my dining club regulars. She’s one of the nicest people you could ever meet, and she has a cute toddler daughter, Charlie. I think Charlie has her Dad’s ears, and because she doesn’t have a lot of hair yet, her ears stick out and are one of her most notable features.
Anyways, I went to the benefit, and there were lots of happy barefoot people dancing in the smoke-free environment. There was a guy giving chair massages in the corner, water to drink – with a sign asking you not to waste it, and you should mark your paper cup, too, so as to conserve the cups – mandala art on auction, and even a disco ball. The most violent thing that happened was one of the coat racks collapsed. I lasted just over 30 minutes, and then decided I needed to go to a real bar, so I could feel like I had actually gone out on a Saturday night.
I went to a bar that I did not think was having live music. I figured I’d just sit at the bar and get a beer, and then head home. There were a few people there that I knew, including one guy who worked with my ex-husband when he owned a record store on state street, and is still active in the club music scene here in Madison. They had Huber Bock on draft for $2 pint, so I got one and had a few sips, and then noticed that there were a bunch of people from Willy Street at a table behind me. I went to say hello and they were just clearing out because they said the band was moving its equipment in. As they said that, a bass player and guitar player of my acquaintance walked in. Turns out the bass player wasn’t going to be playing in the evening’s band, but his brother was. We took over the vacated table, and the bass player asked me how come I wasn’t at the Residents show in Milwaukee last week. He said there was a whole Madison section, and listed the folks from Madison who were there. As he listed, two people off the list walked in; the cartoonist & his wife. The guitar player’s wife joined us, we had a nice tableful of old fogies to watch the show.
Eventually the band played and it was a mixture of blues with a psychedelic twist (the specialty of the guitar player), Hendrix, and 80s punk – the bass player & his brother were in a band called the Appliances-SFB, back in the day, and last night the assorted guys did a bunch of their songs, with the bass player muttering next to me that they were murdering them. It was a lot more fun than the dance. They even played the Suburbs.
