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So last night, instead of my planned evening of sit­ting on my ass and watch­ing “Man With The Scream­ing Brain” I ended up drag­ging an unen­thused Kim­berly to go see some old friends play­ing their third gig at Rosy’s II on Bayview.

First of all, it has been years since I have been in a joint like Rosy’s voloun­tar­ily. If I had not already known half of the peo­ple there I would have been just as ner­vous as Kim, who was the only non-caucasian in the estab­lish­ment. The half I didn’t know was made up of rau­cous, rebel-flag waiv­ing, workin’ class white folks. Those guys scare the hell out of me. Nev­er­the­less, I was forced to remem­ber my OV roots, which was sort of fun, and kind of embarass­ing all at once.

Bob, Larry, and Ryan’s band was pleas­antly sur­pris­ing. I hadn’t heard Larry play drums yet. He had told me he was start­ing a while back, when I was home from break, and I was really impressed with how he’s come along on his own. He’s not had any lessons. Bob has only been play­ing bass for a year and I think he has a lot of poten­tial. I really am look­ing for­ward to help­ing him speed up the process.

The thing is, these dudes were like my broth­ers back in the day. When I started play­ing bass in the 6th grade, music became a totally sep­a­rate aspect of my life. I did music away from my friends, and most of the time I was prac­tic­ing was spent at the cost of not hang­ing out with them.

Music was a big part of all our lives, though. Despite the fact that they didn’t play instru­ments at the time, I was turned onto tons of great music by those guys and the crowd that would hang out at their house. Being one of the few “musi­cians” in our cir­cle kind of defined me in the group, but I wasn’t in any bands at the time, so, like I said, music was some­thing I did on my own or with other acquain­t­ences from school.

Watch­ing them play last night kind of bummed me out because I wished we had decided to start play­ing music together. Then we could have started a band as kids. I guess I could have, and may have, pro­posed the idea, but I wouldn’t have been able to con­vince them. I was the youngest of the group and they almost never lis­tened to me. I was a com­pletely dif­fer­ent per­son then, as well.

Any­way, I am happy to have recon­nected with my old friends. I’m look­ing for­ward to hav­ing some­thing in com­mon with them again.