Thank You, Soul Asylum

Last night I saw Soul Asylum, and by Soul Asylum I mean sole original member Dave Pirner and the current Soul Asylum guitar player playing acoustic together. Like anytime else I almost talked myself out of going about 1000 timers but since it's my birthday coming up I said fuck it, you KNOW you're going to regret not going, for once in your stupid life just get the hell up and go already.

I sat at a table (I am after all old af now) maybe 10 feet away from Dave Pirner. I was pleasantly surprised by two things: the setlist was thankfully made up of songs I knew (I can't say I've really listened to a new album of theirs since 1998), and his voice was still GREAT. Pirner's 58 years old now but still brings the ruckus with his pipes.

I found myself getting slightly, SLIGHTLY emotional about halfway through the show. Not crying or anything, but I just started think about how amazing it is that here's this guy who I've been listening to since I was 15. Somewhere in 1987/88 I heard this voice, these songs, from some guy all the way over in some place called Minneapolis. Then he went out and touched so many cultural things - they were first of course so close with The Replacements and Husker Du (in particular Bob Mould, who produced their first few albums), Bruce jumped up and played Tracks of My Tears with them, they played with Lou Reed at the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony, they played Clinton's inauguration, won a Grammy and on and on and on. I've been through so much in 35 years, he's been through so much in 35 years and so have we all, and now suddenly we're just sitting a few feet apart from each other. I felt like I could draw a straight line from sitting at that table last night to being a teenager in my friend Brian's car, being blown away by these great songs.

There's also something that's nice about a guy who's played for 40+ years and hit such heights playing a bit of a "dinner crowd" setting; it lets him thank his fans for helping to support him all those years and we can say thank you for bringing us so much joy with his music.

It all just really touched me, and it made me that much happier that I got off my ass and went.

SIDE NOTE: after all that, I came back to my hotel room, turned on the tv and an episode of The Office was on...and it just happened to be the episode Michael Scott sits on a train singing Runaway Train to himself!!

SIDE NOTE TO THE ALREADY CURIOUSLY IMPRESSIVE SIDE NOTE: after spending most of today being blown away about the whole The Office coincidence, I came back to my hotel room tonight, flipped on a DIFFERENT channel than the night before...and it just happened to be the episode Michael Scott sits on a train singing Runaway Train to himself!!

Yowsa.

Here's a clip from last night; I didn't wanna be "that guy" filming everything but Closer to the Stars is a superslice of superslcies and couldn't help myself YOU'RE WELCOME, EARTH!!