I HAVE THE INFO

Another Post in a Vaguely Modern Style…

   Wednesday the 28th.  10:30pm.  Me and Mrs. H are driving down to the TLA to see Ted Leo.  Yes, my wife is 38 weeks pregnant.  It was her idea.  She insisted.  Philebrity came thru with some guest list spots.

On Spruce street, right before 33rd street, at the light before Franklin Field and Penn’s Museum, there is a parking lot on the right.  We are stuck at the light.  Something is moving around in the corner of my eye.  I look over to see the biggest raccoon I have ever seen.  And definitely the wildest animal I’ve ever seen in West Philly…It tries to run out into the street but Mrs H rolls down the window and yells at it.  Sends it scurring back onto the sidewalk, then the flower bed behind it.

I spend the rest of the drive to the venue thinking ‘What the hell was that thing doing in the middle of University City?’ and ‘I hope its not dead now…’

Ted Leo does not disappoint.  Although, part of his set sounds a bit like the Cro-Mags.  And thenin one of his interludes between songs, he starts talking about ‘hawdcoor’(thats my spelling of the thick n. jersey accent he used.) how he’s been ripping all his vinyl to hard drive so he can put it his ipod.  And then he goes there and name drops Pagen Babies.  Whoah.

Flashback:  Summertime. late 80s.  skateboarding around Frankford, looking for something to jump off of or grind.

There is Tweet.  Tweet seemed impossibly old when he would show up at the ramps we’d set up on the basketball court at Simpson playground.  He was in his 20s, and I was not quite a teen yet.  He was rumored to have been flagged from the bar up the street for glassing someone in a fight.

There is Tweet, in an alley.  With some other guy, at a van, loading it up for a tour. Tweet was also the guitar tech for Pagen babies.

Back to present day:  So our baby was very active.  The show was very loud. Mrs H was not as comfortable as she would have liked.  After they did biomusicology, I leaned over and said ‘Well, its not going to get any better then that, we should probably go before it gets ruined…’    That song just gets better and better.

Perfect last show for what will likely be a fairly long time.