Sometimes fate knows exactly what song to push in your face over a seven day period. I heard "Things Have Changed" once on Monday, twice on Tuesday, once on a random playlist on my iPod Friday and then late Saturday morning when I was going to bed. It's pretty amazing that an eight year old song could turn up that much, yet at the same time very appropriate. Things have indeed changed. Now I'm reading food labels to see how much sodium is in each package and cooking with olive oil and muching on raw almonds instead of chips. It's definitely a big change, but one I'll have to get used to for the rest of my life if I want to have one that lasts another 38 years.
Yet I think the biggest change is that Magnetic Field is no longer in my life. It's a place that had perhaps biggest impact of any music venue/bar on my entire life. On that tiny stage with Bunnie England and the New Originals I first got to live out my rock star fantasies and then rediscovered my love of entertaining people with a microphone in front of me. I've been trying to think of an appropriate epitaph for the Field, some words that will adequately describe all the fun and all the great people I met and became friends with and all growing up I did in the four years I went there. But they're not coming yet. Perhaps the creative side of my brain hasn't accepted the reality that I won't be able to sing "Surrender," spin Soul Asylum's "Sometime to Return" for a totally psyched crowd, make funny comments about someone stumbling over some lyrics, edit both of my fanzines at the bar, help friends talk through their problems, make bizarre 70s references with April and Scott, sing sad songs with Joe or act silly in the photo booth there ever again. I can honestly say that except for the one night when some idiots from Brooklyn Law came in at the end of Live Band Karaoke and when that Aussie dude got naked at 4:30 a.m., all of my memories of 97 Atlantic Avenue are good.
My life would be much worse off if I had never met these people at the Field: Lee, William, Stephen, Michelle, Charlene, Devon, Jonah, Boyd, Winnick, Quinn, Aggie, Abigail, Katharine, Ted, Jay, Naeemah, and my bandmates Paul, Paul, Scott and Troy. I love you all.
Here is my favorite picture from our last night of LBK at the Field (notice the water bottle, a sign of things to come for me):
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