Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 24

Musical Taster Plate

You’ll have to come to the Cat Club on Saturday night to get the full meal, but I’ll be dj’ing some of my favorite ’80s dance songs from 10 pm – 11 pm and wanted to share a couple of musical morsels from my ever-evolving playlist. The first one goes out to the Obama Administration, the second one is because no one says you can’t laugh on the dance floor, and the third one got rejected from the playlist because so far it doesn’t fit in but I’m going to keep rearranging until it does. See you there?!

I mean it, Obama family. Don’t change your address. Stay there.

How ’bout a little of that go-go swing?

Hopefully I can still find a way to cram this into the evening

Midlife Mixtape Dance Party to benefit Planned Parenthood and Beyond Emancipation

Facebook invite here

Saturday Jan 14 9 pm –$5 till 9:30pm and $10 after


1190 Folsom near the corner of 8th

21+ Make sure to bring your ID!

Everyone is welcome!

 

                  Related Stories’80s Song Lyrics Reinterpreted for 2016Concert Review: SqueezeShe’s Gone (To Diablo Valley, with Hall & Oates) 

Concert Review: Lord Huron

The Band: Lord Huron, January 7 2017. I finally found a description of this band that makes sense to me: Fleet Foxes meets Vampire Weekend. Kinda dreamy, but kinda bouncy, and really its own specific sound. With this show, LH becomes the band I have seen play live most, behind (and never to catch up with) Neil Finn. They’ve started making a December/January San Francisco show an annual event, so they’re soon going to leave the #3 contender, Bruce Springsteen, in the dust. What bands have you guys seen play the most? I’m curious.

The Venue: The Independent. So nondescript and yet so perfect. There are no fancy light fixtures or filigreed balconies or Art Nouveau flourishes; the Independent is just a 400-person black box with a bar, a couple of long benches, and a red-lit coat check which we were cautioned not to pee in during the before-show announcement. (It’s close to the bathroom so they probably make the announcement out of hard-earned experience.) Minimalism that keeps maximum focus on the band.

The Company: After years of experimentation, I may have found the perfect concert-going trio. Ted can parallel park on a dime, which is critical in San Francisco. Maureen reverts to her New Jersey roots when she gets inside a concert and her elbows scream “thou shalt not pass!!” to anyone who tries to crowd us. (Note: she and Ted have interchangeable parking/sharp elbow skills, in case one of them comes up lame.) And Maria and I have a combined concert history of approximately 4,978 shows so we can cross reference anything we’re seeing to anything else we’ve already seen.The Crowd: I think I finally found my strategy for not grinding my teeth to dust at a concert while people film the whole thing and obscure my view: get to the front row. It was our reward for standing in line waiting for the doors to open during the current Atmospheric River rain event – when they finally did, we sauntered up to the stage under bass player Miguel Briseno’s mic stand, and stood there for the whole night. If the crowd was filming, it was of the back of my head.

Special shout out to the nice young couple standing next to us. The young man yelled, “Yeah brother! Yeah brother!” throughout the show, switching a few times to the more inclusive “Yeah brothers!” until I heard his girlfriend finally hiss, “That’s enough with the brothers!” and he piped down. Those two have a future.

Opening Band: Dick Stusso

Dick Stusso is a performer from Oakland who wore a sombrero onstage and Maria said, “I think he got that at Chevy’s,” the chain Mexican joint in the East Bay. Two songs later Dick Stusso said, “I got this hat at Chevy’s.” Dick Stusso plays concerts with a banana in his pocket, truly, there was a banana sticking out of his shirt pocket. When Dick Stusso decides to get down, he really gets down. Like, climbing off the stage where we were standing (we spotted him on his descent) and then laying on the floor of the Independent. Not playing his guitar or singing or anything, just laying there, before returning to the stage. The banana fell out en route and we returned it to him, via his bass player, between songs.

Here’s an actual line from Dick Stusso’s bio, on his booking agent’s website: “Imagine a drunk, unsuccessful Elvis, recording himself entirely alone and at home.”

Dick Stusso may have been a little over his head last Saturday.

Worth Hiring the Sitter? It may be your only hope.

When it comes to concerts I’m usually scheduled out at least three months and hella dollars in advance. But I ended last year on unusual footing: the only concert tickets I had were the Lord Huron show on January 7. I was thinking that maybe I actually am getting old. Maybe I don’t want to go to shows as frequently. Maybe it’s just easier to stay home. Really, I think it is Trump. I just feel so demoralized about everything.

And then we had a magical Lord Huron night. It was pouring buckets of rain – but Ted offered to drive, and he has four wheel drive. I worried LH has gotten so popular we wouldn’t get a good spot – and then we were close enough that I had to deliberately look  away from Briseno occasionally because it felt like I was staring at him rudely, when really it was just that he was right in my sightline four feet away. With our unbeatable position, we prepared ourselves to be jostled and pushed all night – and it never happened. We had defensible space both in front and behind us and aside from a young woman who glommed onto Maureen as a mother figure, Mo never had cause to throw ‘bows. I thought Lord Huron could not be better than the last time I saw them – and they were better, debuting new material that has me salivating for whenever they release their next album. I am far too old to flirt my way to a setlist– and the roadie gave me one anyway.

Could it be that everything I fear will happen in 2017 will actually turn out ok? Probably not. But no matter how bad things get this year, I can always comfort myself with memories of that perfect rainy night in January when Obama was still my president, and Lord Huron was only arm’s distance away.

P.S Did you happen to see this NYTimes “Vows” piece featuring a mixtape and Lord Huron?

I got back on the horse and bought more tickets so the next show on the calendar: Jens Lekman, March 1

                   
Comments(A) I don't know Lord Huron at all. Must check it out. (B) ... by SusannaYou know I love every bit of this so I'll just say this: ... by Liz @ ewmcguireI had not seen that NY Times piece. Wow. And sigh. I always ... by EllenRelated StoriesThe Head and the Heart, As Reviewed By a MillennialConcert Review: Squeeze#Roc4Tim with Grandma D 

Good Girls Don’t (But The Cloud Thinks I Do)

I have always put waaay too much stock in being considered a Good Girl. When I was a kid and my older siblings got in trouble with my parents, I was famous for swooping in from wherever I happened to be to say, “But I’m a good girl, right? I’m a good girl?” which was exactly what nobody needed at the time. That my brother and sister will still allow me in the same zip code is them is a testament to their forgiving natures.

You’d think that with my encroaching Wise Tribal Elder status, I’ve outgrown the need for everyone’s good opinion. It’s just not so, as proven by my recent foray into an online health survey.

Our health insurer dangled the survey as an incentive – answer these questions before December 31, get some money into your health spending account. My husband reminded me to take the survey for months, but I kept finding better things to do, like clean the gasket of the washing machine and check to see if the winter rains brought any activity to the rat traps in the crawl space. I just didn’t feel like taking the damn thing, okay?

But the promise of some extra money to spend on new eyeglasses finally won out and I logged in a couple weeks ago. Page after page of questions: activity levels? Stress levels? Number of hours sleeping at night? Tobacco use? I stopped there for a minute to ponder. I do not think that bumming the occasional cigarette on Saturday nights when I lived in Germany in the ‘80s counts as tobacco use; it was just cultural assimilation. I checked a box and moved on. I lost focus a couple of times, I will admit it, and looked at Facebook. I may have balanced my checkbook mid-survey, and done some online Christmas shopping.

Finally, though, I was presented with a summary of all my answers, which I skimmed in 0.92 seconds, and hit “Submit.” Immediately a screen popped up with helpful suggestions of things I should do to improve my health right away: “Stop using tobacco products!”

What the hell?

I tabbed a page back to find that I had evidently checked a box that said I was a user of Smokeless Tobacco products. That’s right, our health insurer now thinks I keep a little pinch between my cheek and gums.

Look, I admitted right here on the blog once that I have indeed tried chaw, and was surprisingly adept at the spitting. But that was in 1984 and it was, like, once.

It is not ideal for your health insurer to think you’re a user of tobacco products. But if I’m honest, the real driver of my distress was the thought of someone, somewhere, reviewing my file in the gigantic Data Cloud where all privacy is lost, and thinking, Oh, Nancy chews tobacco. Gross.

No! No! I don’t! I’m a good girl! I’m a good girl?

So far I’ve made three phone calls and sent two emails to the health insurance company, to no avail. The promised health spending money has landed in my account, but it gives me little comfort. All I will use those new glasses for is peering at customer service phone numbers so I can continue to press my case as a non-chaw user.

On the other hand, “Give up the dip” may be the easiest New Year’s resolution I’ve ever made.

                  Related StoriesTime To Write Your Thank You NotesWith Grateful Thanks to Midlife Mixtape ReadersNext Cat Club Dance Party: Sat January 14 

Time To Write Your Thank You Notes

Yes, for any gifts you received last month. But I’m talking about something else entirely.

Back at the end of 2015, in thinking about how I wanted to commemorate my then-approaching, now receding fiftieth birthday, I decided I needed to thank the people who have made my life long on joy and short on sorrow. It seemed like a good time to take stock and express gratitude.

So I decided that once a week, for fifty weeks of 2016, I’d write a thank you note to someone who has made a difference in my life – and that could be positive or negative, since we learn lessons in lots of ways. The letters would start with my parents and end with my daughters and husband, and in between there would be 45 other people to whom I’d send a letter to document my appreciation.

I whipped up a preliminary list of 40, leaving myself some room to expand. I had some rules: One page only (to force me to edit.) I didn’t have to actually send the letters if that was unfeasible or weird (ex-boyfriends and favorite bands, represent.) And “People” could also be places because there have been seminal cities that have shaped me (see also “didn’t have to actually send the letters.”)

I opened up a Word doc and saved it as ThankYouLetters.doc, and wrote the first two letters exactly a year ago, to my mom and dad. (I wrote them a week apart but mailed them together, because #favoritism.)  Dad was completely tickled. “I framed it and put it over my desk, honey,” he said. The letter is still there.

That I didn’t have to worry about telling Dad how much I appreciated him, as he lay dying back in July, was only one of the unexpected gifts that has come from dutifully writing my weekly thank you note.

Another? Simply seeing a list of 50 names of people who have helped me during my life: that’s powerful. Just skimming that list reminds me I am so not alone in the world.

Another? The week that I was going to write about someone, I had an excuse to wallow in prized memories and feelings around that person. Remember that time we hiked across that ice bridge in Switzerland, sobbing in fear the whole way, and then a blind lady passed us both, and we were ashamed but at least we were ashamed together? Remember that time you baked me a 19,000 calorie noodle kugel when I was sad? Remember when that other CIT got flypaper stuck in her hair and we laughed so hard we were convulsing a little? It was enough to paste a half smile on my face all day, every day.

But I didn’t want to make the letters a checklist of “ha ha remember when’s,” either. I forced myself to think deeply about what specifically I was grateful for in each person. What opportunities did they give me, what mistakes did they help me avoid, what decisions did they support when I found myself wavering? I realized that I’ve done an excellent job of surrounding myself with people who model characteristics that I am forever trying to attain: patience, considerateness, focus, activism, goal-setting, flexibility. I have a clearer sense of who my go-to people should be for specific questions and counsel than I did before starting the letters.

Here’s another big benefit: scientific research shows that the act of showing gratitude makes the person who expresses it happier. I wrote a story about a psychology professor at CSU East Bay and her research into the science of happiness last June, and she lit up during our interview when I told her about my letter-writing project. “Exactly! Exactly!” she said.

For all those reasons, I can’t recommend this letter-writing practice enough. And here’s one more: since November 9th, I’ve been working hard to keep anxiety at bay every day. One coping mechanism? Opening my thank you letter file to reread a few of the letters I’ve already sent. Better than drugstore blood pressure medication.

Of course, as with any plan, I had to leave room for improvisation. When Dad died in July, I couldn’t write thank you notes to anyone for a while, so I’m a few months behind on my list. And once I finally felt that I could restart, I quickly rejiggered the ordering of my list to make sure that the next three people receiving letters were my daughters and husband. Why would you ever wait to tell the people you love the most that you love them the most?

I’ve also realized that I don’t want to stop when I get to number 50. There are still so many people to thank.

So, now that my jubilee year has drawn to a close, I have a new goal: when I someday reach the end of the line, I want the ThankYouLetters.doc to be the biggest file on my computer.

Yes, Lord Huron is on my list, with their letter still to come. Seeing them play this Saturday night in SF!

                  Related StoriesKhos Don’t CampWith Grateful Thanks to Midlife Mixtape ReadersNext Cat Club Dance Party: Sat January 14 

With Grateful Thanks to Midlife Mixtape Readers

To everyone who has read Midlife Mixtape this year;

To everyone who has liked a post, shared a post, left a comment;

To everyone who has supported the authors whose books I’ve reviewed, and the authors who have shared their playlists here;

To everyone who sent me music suggestions, concert suggestions, music book suggestions;

To everyone who was kind to me and to other people, during a year pockmarked by loss and disappointment;

To everyone who believes that laughter, good books, and great music have magical powers;

To everyone who remains hopeful for the future:

Thank you. Thanks for spending time with my writing in 2016. Thank you for inspiring me.

I wish you and all the people you love a happy holiday. I really couldn’t give two figs what holiday you celebrate; I just want it to be joyful, safe, and full of delicious food. I can’t roll into next year all by myself.

Wishing you all the best for 2017. Onward and upward!

                  Related StoriesMusic-Themed Holiday Shopping RecommendationsNext Cat Club Dance Party: Sat January 14Laughing in the Face of Loss 

The Day After

In 1983, I was in eleventh grade when ABC aired The Day After. It was the thick of the Cold War and the movie’s premise, about a nuclear war between members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, seemed less sci-fi and more “this could totally happen.” We talked about it in school, and my sister and I had vivid discussions about what we would do if/when a nuclear bomb fell (run right into its path, because you wouldn’t want to be one of the post-apocalyptic survivors during the nuclear winter.) Everybody, but everybody, watched that movie and talked about it, and it was all over the news.

And for a little while I was a super stressed teenager full of fear and foreboding who believed that the future was out of my control. I was convinced my generation was more screwed than any that came before me.

Until my mother figured out what was going on, and said something simple but profound. “Oh, Nancy. When I was a kid, we were actually FIGHTING World War 2. I grew up doing bomb drills at school. I promise you: Every generation has something to worry about, and it always turns out ok.”

Whether or not she feared thought The Day After could happen, Mom’s absolute unwillingness to be unsettled by it, her matter-of-fact belief that this was just a temporary cross for my generation to bear and nothing worse, took all the teeth out of my fear. Five years later, I found myself at the Berlin Wall, literally hammering away the last vestiges of Cold War policy, and on the cusp of a couple of decades of unprecedented cooperation between the two protagonists of The Day After.

I bring up this story because our children are super stressed in the aftermath of the presidential election and I’m not sure we’re doing a very good job reminding them to have hope. We need to do better.

And  when I say “we,” I mean “I.” On the night of the election I was in bed in the fetal position by 9 pm, too traumatized to reach up and turn the lights off. When our younger daughter opened the bedroom door to check on me, I could only sputter, “I’m ok, honey, just tired,” and then I proceeded to not sleep for, what’s it been, five weeks now? I groan audibly as I scroll my Facebook feed or read the paper. I pass along stories to both girls of family friends who are considering moving from the high-priced Bay Area because their government jobs or their Obamacare is threatened. I’m doing a pretty terrible job of assuring my daughters that everything will be ok.

But we have to believe our kids have a future, because how can they believe in it if we don’t?

Maybe that’s why I’m finding that right now, the moments when I feel like I’m doing the best parenting are when I model some sort of helpfulness, when I take action in spite of the overwhelm. It’s been raining a lot in the Bay Area lately so I keep our car’s glovebox stocked with clean, dry socks. When we roll up to an intersection where someone is panhandling, we open the window and hand out a pair or two to someone for whom dry socks mean a lot. The girls are usually the ones to spot the opportunity first, popping open the glove box and holding the socks at the ready.

Only in those moments do I feel like I’m showing them a path of how to we make it out of this particular nuclear winter. Only in those moments am I showing them that despite feeling disappointed and worried about the election, there are small actions that I myself can take every day to restore normalcy, and to model decency and kindness.

More than the protesting policies we find repugnant and presidential appointments we find abhorrent, more than the donating of funds to organizations we know will be threatened, maybe we adults have one job even more important: keeping hope alive in our kids.

And reassuring them that there will, in fact, be many days after today.

Fun fact: this was the Number One song on the Billboard charts the week before and after The Day After. I believe Lionel Richie’s pants were part of the nuclear deterrent strategy.

L I O N E L R I C H I E – a l l n i g h t l o n g from don avetta on Vimeo.

                  Related StoriesHitting The Books On ChristmasThe Other Significance of November 8Easy Halloween Costumes for Parents of College Kids 

Next Cat Club Dance Party: Sat January 14

It’s time for another Midlife Mixtape ‘80s Dance Party at San Francisco’s Cat Club, on Saturday January 14th! And this time we’re raising money for two important causes: Planned Parenthood, and Oakland’s own Beyond Emancipation, which provides support to current and former youth in Alameda County.

On January 14th from 9:00 til ? , Cat Club will be donating 30% of the door receipts to these two fine organizations. You’ll have a chance to donate more at the door and/or the bar when you are hydrating between songs from our two featured acts for the night, The Cure and Blondie. That’s right, dance to “Atomic” and “Cut Here,” stick a finger in the eye of the patriarchy.

Hier ist Robert Schmidt und Der Kur. Herr Robert not even pretending he’s playing live.

And here’s something kind of crazy: by now the Cat Club has developed enough misplaced trust in me to allow me to DJ from 10 pm – 11 pm. When they asked, my first response was, “If by ‘DJ’ you mean I hand you my written playlist and you play it in order, then YES!’” Then I realized how wimpy that was and now I am all in and ready to master the wheels of steel. Thinking of getting a Skrillex haircut in advance.

via GIPHY

In case you’re wondering what kind of therapy has enabled me to withstand the presidential election results thus far, it’s that I’ve been working on my playlist on my phone since November 9th.  “Wait, ‘Mandinka’ BEFORE ‘Add It Up,’ or after? And should I do ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ or ‘Kiss’?” I am even leaving a little space (very little) for requests, so be ready to tell me what you want to hear.

Very preliminary. Will be edited until and throughout Jan 14.

Not in the Bay Area? There is such a thing as planes and cars – get here! My 30-something nephew is coming in from North Carolina, not that you should feel pressured or anything.

Failing that, feel free to DJ your own ‘80s Dance Party on Jan 14 and make sure send in a donation to a cause that makes your heart beat faster – like ours will on the dance floor that night. Watch the Midlife Mixtape Facebook page for the official invite for you to share with your friends but no need to RSVP, just show up. And all are welcome.

FAQ to the one Q I get Asked F: are husbands invited?

ABSOLUTELY. In fact, nothing makes me happier than seeing the husbands of my friends standing at the Cat Club bar nursing a beer and talking about sports, and then their ‘80s jam comes on (sometimes, it’s actually The Jam) and for the rest of the night that guy is cutting it up on the dance floor with the Cat Club’s delightfully quirky and diverse regular crowd. That guy needs a night out, ladies. Bring him along.

Midlife Mixtape Dance Party to benefit Planned Parenthood and Beyond Emancipation

Saturday Jan 14 9 pm –$5 till 9:30pm and $10 after


1190 Folsom near the corner of 8th

21+ Make sure to bring your ID!

                  Related StoriesWe’re Having a PartySpring 2016 Events and AppearancesNext Midlife Mixtape ’80s Dance Party: October 8 

Hitting The Books On Christmas

When we got married in 1992, we got a couple of oddball gifts. One was a Waterford crystal clock, which wasn’t weird, but the note I found underneath the tissue paper surely was – “Congratulations on your 40 years of service to the company!” We got a football and a basketball; the only thing odd there was that we’d registered for them, obviously believing our future was Kennedy-esque. And someone whom we’d invited because our parents told us to gave us a red leather blank book that said “Christmas Memories.” Perfect gift for a young couple about whom the only thing you know is they’re getting married in a church.

But 25 years later, the Christmas Memories book has proven to be the most cherished gift we got that day. Rereading it is my favorite thing about getting ready for the holidays.

It’s a pretty simple design: each year, there are four pages with the same writing prompts like Holiday Visits and Visitors and Christmas Eve, plus room to paste in a photo or two. That first year, 1992, the photo was taken by a camera timer in our brand new apartment in Washington DC, overlooking the Russian embassy. Our tree is three feet tall with about seven ornaments, and I am seated on the floor but trying to show off the cowboy boots I got that year, so I look like I’m caught in a painful game Christmas Twister. My husband looks like he’s just popped in from high school recess. According to my fastidious notes, we threw a party on December 17th, opened presents on Christmas Eve, and went to church at the National Cathedral, where it was “standing room only and we had obstructed view seats.”

The book traces the arc of our lives: buying our first house a couple years later just before Christmas and throwing a housewarming party where we asked people to bring ornaments for a tree we didn’t have money left over to buy. The year my husband flew to Indonesia with his sister to visit their dad’s homeland, flying across the dateline so that he never even had a December 25 that year. The year we moved to Cali and I spent Christmas much like the Virgin Mary, pregnant and cranky and great with our first child. The year I upped the parallels to the Blessed Mother by giving birth to our second kid ON Christmas Day.

At some point the handwriting shifts from mine to our daughters, as does the POV. I might write about enjoying the Singalong Handel’s Messiah at the SF Symphony or the office holiday party, but the girls wrote about what the dog did on Christmas morning and recorded detailed lists of what American Girls accessories Santa brought. Ever since the Nutcracker became central to our lives, there’s at least half a page devoted to who danced what role.

Since moving to California two decades ago, our tradition has been to share Christmas Eve dinner with close friends who are also East Coast transplants, and then have them come to our house for Christmas Day brunch twelve hours later. Every year I think, “I’ll switch up the brunch menu!” Then I open the red Christmas Memories book where I’ve recorded the menu from all the years prior, and think, “nah, I’ll just do this again.” As a result of the giant brunch, here is what is written under the “Christmas Dinner …” writing prompt, year after year after year: “Leftovers.”

(Always washed down liberally with my variation on the Poinsettia:

3 oz cranberry juice

1 oz golden rum

½ oz Cointreau

Top with prosecco and wait for the Herald Angels to start singing)

It was some sort of milestone when we came to the last year in that book, back in 2012: twenty Christmases under our belts. Take that, people at our wedding who said it would never last! No one actually said that, but 2016 has put me in such an aggro mood.

Of course, I couldn’t stop there.

So thanks to the internet, which was just a glint in someone’s eye when we got married, I tracked down a new copy and bought it. The current one only gets us to 2022, but I’m banking on sixty years of marital bliss at least (she says as her husband runs down the street screaming.) When the time comes to order Volume 3, I presume technology will have evolved to a point where I just need to point my VR headset at the old books and make a “cha-ching” noise, and a drone will drop a new one off on the front porch.

Then, under “Christmas Dinner 2023…” I’ll just use my retinal display pen to write in: “Leftovers.”

                  Related StoriesThe Other Significance of November 8A Lot of A LotAce Driver’s Ed with Aceable 

#Roc4Tim with Grandma D

In my concert-going life, I’ve been lucky to have some pretty special access to shows. From working backstage during my college years at Irvine Auditorium in Philly and watching performances of Jimmy Cliff and 10,000 Maniacs from the orchestra pit, to living room concerts by Luka Bloom and Jeffrey Foucault, to the 2014 Grammys complete with a backstage tour, I thought I knew what it felt like to get VIP treatment.

And then I took my octogenarian mom to a thrash metal concert last weekend and let me tell you: I’ve been slumming until now. You want special treatment? Take someone who was born during The Great Depression to a show.

I was in my hometown visiting Mom for her birthday last weekend. When I arrived, I picked up the “Going Out” listings in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, looking for Anthology. It’s a new-ish music club owned the kid who lived next door to us growing up, who is probably as pleased as any fifty-something would be when referred to as a “kid” at this stage of our lives. It turned out that Anthology was hosting a day-long concert to benefit Tim Avery, a member of the local music scene who was diagnosed with cancer and needs help paying for treatment. A ton of bands who had donated their time were playing from 2 pm Saturday through the wee hours of Sunday morning, including Rochester’s own Joywave and KOPP as headliners.  All the proceeds of the show and a big art raffle were going to help Tim. #Roc4Tim pretty much sounded like it would rule.

So I said to Mom, with a laugh, “Hey, want to go day-clubbing with me to PK’s place?” (He is probably is as pleased as anyone who now goes by “Phil” would be when I inform you that his childhood nickname was PK.) My mom not only said “Yes!” but she continued to remind me about it for the next two days so I wouldn’t forget. She told every one of her grandkids whom she encountered that she was going day-clubbing, whatever that was. I emailed Phil/K that we were coming and he said, “Awesome, you and your mom are on the guest list!”

On Saturday we rolled up to da club at 1:55 pm and parked; when we got around the corner to Anthology there was already a line of people bundled up against the raw Upstate New York weather, waiting patiently for Security to open the door. Not us, though: Security opened the door and swept Mom and I right in out of the Rochester cold. High five.

About thirty seconds later, Phil, who was clearly using the organizational cunning that made him the neighborhood Ten Sticks champ back in ’77, spied us and yelled “MRS. DAVIS!!!” and enveloped my mom in a hug. After Mom showed him a picture she carries in her purse of her with his niece, who came to Family Camp last year (so complicated, don’t worry about it) Phil showed us to a table. When I went to buy our drinks, the bartenders had already been told not to let us pay for anything. It took real effort to persuade anyone to allow us to make a donation to Tim’s medical fund. I’m surprised no one handed Mom a tambourine and pulled her onstage.

If Rochester had had music venues like Anthology when I was growing up there, and if bands like Joywave had been sprouting up then instead of waiting thirty years, maybe I wouldn’t have moved away in search of better concert halls. It’s fantastic – great acoustics, lots of different seating options plus a standing room area, bars for both coffee and booze. The acoustics were so good, in fact, that I was relieved I’d brought Mom some ear plugs. I got her all plugged in as the first band, DRUSE, warmed up. We were enjoying the music and chatting together, and all of a sudden, the singer opened his mouth and I realized I’d taken Mom to her first thrash metal show.

This message is for the members of DRUSE: I thought you sounded great, but Mom’s last concert was a John Denver impersonator, and this was a titch outside her comfort zone. Not that you could have possibly heard it, but she did yell, “Oh shut up! Shut up!” at you a couple times, as well as “WHY ARE YOU SO ANGRY?”  while rolling her eyes.

By this time, Security had opened the doors and people were flocking in to #Roc4Tim – the energy reminded me of a frat party I went to every year in college that was basically a 36 hour indie rock concert with breaks for Philly cheese fries and Diet Coke so you could stay awake.  I read on Facebook later that #Roc4Tim had completely sold out and, if the pace at which tickets for the raffle (which included some art that riffed on the famous 1976 Bowie mug shot when he and Iggy Pop were arrested in Roch for weed possession) were selling was any indication, the Rochester music-loving community must have raised a lot of money for a very good cause.

Give Rochester credit for the foxiest mug shot ever

But after DRUSE finished up Mom decided that she wanted to do a Facebook check in, as grandmothers with no computer access define it: I had to drive her to Phil’s mom’s house in our old neighborhood, so Mom could tell Julie Fitz she’d just attended her son’s big event, #Roc4Tim.

When we got home later Saturday afternoon, I opened up my phone and read breaking news of the Ghost Ship Fire in Oakland. No one I know personally was there, but I have a lot of friends of friends who are still missing or confirmed dead. It’s awful, tragic, such a loss of potential, of so many young lives from all over Oakland and the East Bay. Our city is reeling right now.

I don’t have an elegant way to wrap this up. Just an observation that the juxtaposition of #Roc4Tim against the Ghost Ship Fire reminded me of how powerful and magical it can be when a community of musicians and music fans coming together, and what exactly we stand to lose when tragedy takes it away from us.

Go to shows. Be safe. Check for fire exits, always.

I’m pleased to tell you that Tim Avery’s medical fund has been fully funded on GoFundMe and is no longer accepting donations. Rock on, Tim.

Here’s how you can donate to help victims and families of victims of the Ghost Ship Fire.

                  Related Stories’80s Song Lyrics Reinterpreted for 2016The Head and the Heart, As Reviewed By a MillennialConcert Review: Squeeze 

Laughing in the Face of Loss

A big part of why I write is to remember. There are moments and feelings and circumstances that I want to be able to revisit, and since elementary school when I began to scrawl those stories into a white diary that closed with a tiny golden lock, I’ve learned that putting the words down somewhere helps me hold the stories of my life close.

So when I saw that TueNight.com was doing an issue on the theme of “Mourn,” I knew right away the story I wanted to tell. Not a story about the heartbreak and tears of mourning my dad’s death in July, but a different emotional response that surprised me and sustained me through his last six weeks. It is as much a tribute to my family as anything I’ve ever written.

The story, Even When Dad Was Dying, We Kept Laughing, is over at TueNight.com, and I hope you’ll check it out.

                  Related StoriesMusic-Themed Holiday Shopping RecommendationsLetters For Scarlet – The MixtapeUp and At ‘Em