I like it when you (boom boom)

Ryan Allen, guitarist from Thunderbirds are Now! is a married homeowner. We used to play with TAN a bunch, but it's been about 3 years. We played together last night in Pontiac, MI (with the always-excellent Enon) and it was fun to play catch up. Nothing seems to have changed in our department in 3 years. Meanwhile, they're off getting married and buying real estate.

We're starting to settle into the tour on today, day 5. We started with two college shows in the Minneapolis area, the kind where you play on campus somewhere bands probably shouldn't be playing. Made our way over to DeKalb, IL to play a decent show at the House Cafe and catch up with our friend Bojan and 75% of the band formerly known as Troubled Hubble. Today we drive south to Columbus, OH to play with Ra Ra Riot and Little Ones. So stoked.

Last night, the bar below the venue had a very metal-looking dude serving drinks. He was about six-foot-four and probably 250 pounds, with the Scott Ian from Anthrax braided beard thing. He was blasting his music really loudly and he had that intense metalhead face on as he would headbang and look over to his friend at the bar as they mouthed the lyrics together, as metalheads seem to do. The strange part was that the music they were actually rocking out to was all modern emo: Paramore, Brand New, My Chemical Romance, etc. I'm not dogging those bands or the bartender, it just really weirded me out at 1 am last night that the visual wasn't matching the audio.

ALSO, we're currently being haunted by new-ish Metallica songs on alternative rock radio. Not the totally new, undeniably bad St. Anger stuff, but the Load and Re-Load stuff from before people could actually admit that Metallica was starting to suck. Give me fuel, give me fire. Give me that which I desire. Ooooph.