Wednesday? OK, Wednesday.

I figure it's always a good omen when you start a Blowout by accidentally wandering into a backstage area. I totally forgot the Majestic wasn't holding events (which, I might say, added crap-ton of energy to the shenanigans by condensing the action) and walked up to the usual box office door. Multi-insrumentalistabout-town Scott Michalski was kind enough to let me in, not realizing I was lost. Had a nice "hello" with Loretta Lucas, who had just wrapped up playing. Reintroduced myself to Nate from Bad Party (whom I swear I've met half a dozen times with both of us in considerably more inebriated circumstances) and went on my merry way. Proceeded to wait in the wrong wristband line, said "hello" to former Motorcityrocks.com mainmain Matt Carauna's doppelganger and headed upstairs, tripping along the way. This was going just fucking great. Recounting the doppelganger incident to Big Matt himself, complete with totally-lost-on-the-audience Harpo Marx/Lucille Ball references and with Gorilla corroborating said doppelganger's existence, I invented a new Blowout game I'm going to play this year: Table-bottle bowling. Here's the deal: 1) Drink a bunch of coffee. 2) Make sure you have your coat on. 3) Stand about a foot away from a bar table. IV) Gesticulate wildly while talking to people. 5) Wait for the gesticulating to knock over the accumulated beer bottles on said table. Next) Count the number of beer bottles you clobbered. D) Write down your score and submit at the end of Blowout and compare notes with friends! It's fun for all ages! Music? What music?! With all the gathered MT writers, bloggers, former bloggers and recovering bloggers hustling back and forth between rooms scribbling notes and wittily-rejoindering (Witkowski, I'm looking at you on the former) I got a sense of what it must be like to actually live inside Pitchfork. Or something. Still, there was music amidst all the hobnobbery. What of it? Well, Computer Perfection ratcheted up the energy on their recorded jams and they seem to have super-gelled as a live unit. And that newspaper Christmas tree dancing gnome was making the rounds, too! The Sugarcoats tried but failed to hold my attention. I wonder if that second stage at the Stick isn't something best left to pure necessity like during Sounds & Spirits. Cuz Cannon seemed to suffer from a muddled sonic mix that made their jams fall short of my (admittedly hyper-elevated) expectations. Doop & co. were kinda sorta irresistible. It was all Michael Corleone up there: Every time I tried to get out, they kept pulling me back in. And, yeah, Bill, Diamond was on his A-game, fo sho. Bad Party? They popped all the damn balloons! They dedicated the set to a guy who knocked off a liquor store near them. They committed to simple riff jams in a way lesser half-ass party bands don't. They made me smile an awful lot. Whoops. Sorry. It was supposed to be a bad party. F*ke Blood proved once and for all that Silverghost is a F*cking great rhythm section and Dion Fischer is still the epitome of timeStereo deadpan humor. Also, my friend said the singer reminded him of a young, gay Bobcat Goldthwait recently released from a mental institution. Or something like that. Cripes. This is a novel. I promise to be more soundbyte-y as the weekend unravels.