In the Clutches of Clutch

I went to a concert Wednesday night. It was my friend Dave's party. He's getting married on Saturday, so this was his last vestige of freedom. He chose to go see a band called Clutch. I didn't really know what I was getting into, but I figured it out quickly at the gate, where everyone I saw had extreme tattoos, body piercings, and hair styles out of the 80s punk scene.

There were four bands that played. The genre I can only classify as "loud" (kind of like Dave's band :). I had to roll my own earplugs using toilet paper. Aside from the noise, another fun thing about the venue was that there was no place to sit. I guess people don't mind standing for 3 hours after they've had enough to drink, but for a perpetually sober person it got pretty tedious. A few times I sat on the concrete floor.

The first band was pretty talented but loud. The second band my other friend Dave labeled as "zepplinesque". The third band was Irish, with a fiddle and a banjo. Very talented, but I thought it was funny that the band members all looked really angry while they were singing, even the violin girl looked disgruntled. They were good but they went on way too long. By the time Clutch got on stage it was close to 10:30. This is a school night people! Surprisingly, Clutch didn't seem to be any more talented than the opening acts. I think the key to their popularity was that they had a really big banner, while the other acts had small banners or none at all.

A little bit after Clutch started playing I was leaning against the barricades in the back of the room and some drunk guy came back there and started puking his guts out a few feet away from me. I was wearing flip flops and I felt a few drops splash on my feet. ECHHHH!! I went in the bathroom and washed my feet off. I didn't really feel like going back in after that so I went and sat on the dirty floor in the lobby and waited for my friends, who were busy injuring themselves in the mosh pit.

I'm not really sure what scene I was a part of, but it was fun to experience a different world for one night. But I think I'll wear shoes next time.

Good luck Dave, we'll miss you!