I last toured through Gainesville in 2002 or 2003. I am not sure of the date because I have done all I can to block it from my memory. The last time I was in Gainesville, my very un-hardcore band played a terrible hardcore show after five hardcore bands in a tiny dilapidated room. After five hardcore bands finished their sets, they and their bevy of friends immediately left. Thus, my band played to an audience consisting of one gentleman wearing a bike helmet. In case the bike helmet did not appropriately convey his leisure sport of choice, the gentleman was carrying a bike as well.

This gentleman biker was very friendly to me. I suspect he sought something that transcended casual friendship. This did not make me uncomfortable because he was a man, for I find the romantic attentions of either sex flattering and energizing. However, the gentleman’s whole viciously bike-oriented identity doomed his attempts to woo me. I am not interested in biking.

Fortunately, my show in Gainesville here last night featured a slightly larger and more enthusiastic audience that did not seek romance. An opening band graciously agreed to fill the opening slot on short notice after another popular local band cancelled due to a family emergency. There was some speculation that this “emergency” was related to a better show this band was playing elsewhere, but such rumors went unconfirmed.

I recorded this opening band’s set with a ridiculously expensive Microtrack mini-recorder I purchased before tour for no good reason. After the show, I learned that the band lived nearby. I walked to their house with one of the members and, through a miracle of modern technology, we downloaded the set I had just recorded on to his MacIntosh.

“Sounds good,” the band member said, listening to his set.

“What do you do when you aren’t doing playing music?” I asked.

“I work in a very large studio down here where Zappa guys do a lot of recording,” he replied.

I know little about the music of Frank Zappa and was not aware that his sidemen came to Gainesville so frequenly to record at one particular Floridian studio. Thus, I sat in silence and thought about Guy DeBord and postmodernity as the music I had just heard live and loud in a large room played back to me through tiny studio monitors.