Things Past

Johnny Rock'N and the rest of Rock'N, last Saturday at the Wise Hall.

I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place.
-- Marcel Proust

It was raining, nothing really, just a light late night rain. The grass was wet and I slipped on a little patch of grass that inclined towards the steps of the hall that I was reentering after a smoke outside. My knee hyperextended, rendering it useless, allowing a jarring sensation to travel up my back, finally atrophying at the base of my skull. Was that what caused it? In that little moment, looking at the woman leaning with her back up against the wall across from me, I felt about 20 years old. The past and the present colliding together in the darkness of her eyes and the ambivalence of her gaze. I shook it of, with a bit of the rain, and bounded up the steps, back into the hall, and the power of metal.

Inside Johnny Rock'N was leading his band, aptly named, Rock'N. They performed every arena rock cliche so convincingly that it was hard not to take seriously. Shaking his fist with one arm, and holding his beer with another, Johnny Rock'N never left the half crouched stance of the metal preacher the entire set, displaying his perfectly ripped in the knee jeans to the crowd which by this point had been whipped into a frenzy. There was a fog machine fumigating the hall making you think these guys had just materialized out of smoke, glory, and large stacking amps. The band moved through its brand of blistering power chords and pounding drums, chanting their mantra in every song, "We're Rock'N, and we like to Rock!," or "It's time to get a Rock'N," followed by another classic, "Never stop a Rock'N." The only cover they performed was Neil Young's, "Keep on Rock'N in the Free World." They finished their set with a guitar solo so long that it allowed Johnny Rock'N to grab a large black flag inscribed with, you guessed it, "Rock'N," and run around the hall, even outside onto the lawn. Was this a concert, or a political rally, or just one big joke? The whole thing was so ambiguous it was hard to tell, a fitting soundtrack no doubt.

Outside, after the show, the scene was one of rowdy chaos, girls were crying over lost love on the lawn, I was stumbling around in the rain again, drinking my last beer, trying to say something appropriate. Yelling for the rest of my friends to join me outside for a post party joint, I decided it was time to vacate the premises before I knocked around some little goof that was pissing me off. My cab pulled up and I threw down my bottle of Sleeman's. Getting into the minivan, I lamented the half beer that I would not be able to enjoy at home. My driver must have heard me, "would you like a beer sir?" As he handed me a cold can of Pacific Pilsner I thought I was in heaven. He promptly dimmed the lights and starting blasting the stereo and I enjoyed my ride home very much indeed.

The past week was a strange one. Memories, a fusion of past and present brought on by beer, heavy music, and tumbles in the grass. No tea though, or madeleine's, but extravagant, juvenile, ridiculous, and surreal all the same.

Keep on Rock'N!