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April 03, 2005
InDefinitely
At the Hot Buttered Rum show I ran into one of the guys involved in last summer’s Jaegermeister Incident, which of course reminds me of being yelled at by the Sideman, who had apparently been expecting to come home from work that night to something prettier than me propped up over his toilet. He’s been on the mind lately because I’ve been listening exclusively to the Old 97’s, a band he introduced me to. I can’t get this one line from Indefinitely out of my head (nor the image of frontman Rhett Miller shaking his stuff when they played it at the Fillmore last October). I sing a slightly adjusted version to myself because, as I tried to explain the other night, I’m In, Definitely.
I made the mistake of checking out the band’s website before crawling into bed, only to discover that Rhett was playing solo, just down the street, in 15 minutes. Aaaaaaa, so much for going to bed early! After a brief moment of frustration at the door because the guy didn’t want to sell any more tickets (sold out my ass; he let a whole bunch of talkers in after me, grr), I was listening to the brilliant boy tell stories about being young(er) and falling in and out of love and jealousy and all those things that most of us feel and none of us can write or sing about so eloquently. He played Indefinitely and Adelaide (the other song stuck on repeat) right in a row, and a whole bunch of songs from an upcoming album in addition to old favorites, can’t complain at all, except maybe about the fact that it’s impossible to dance properly when the venue’s full of inanimate people in chairs.
Rhett’s occasional forearm-only Pete Townsend guitar technique reminds me of my high school math teacher Helen Rogers, though she never made me swoon, and when her elbow disjointed it was because she was drawing perfect circles on the chalkboard…
Posted by Elizabeth at April 3, 2005 01:48 AM