edwin

Last night I went to a rock n roll show featuring 3 Buffalo bands: The Trailer Park Tornados, Knife Crazy and the return of my favorite Buffalo band, Mockba. Mockba had been on hiatus while awaiting a new drummer for almost a year I think.

The show was held at Mohawk Place where you can get $2 cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon or Old Vienna beer. This venue is probably the best small venue in Buffalo, good for shows of 100-150 people. It's a dirty old place that usually features indie, rockabilly, punk, twangy and alt-country type bands.

The first 2 bands were kinda so-so. During their sets I spent a great deal of time sitting in front of the place on the curb deep in thought, soaking in the atmosphere or chatting with some of the people at the show.

When you sit on the curb in front of the venue out here, it's not a big deal or so I thought. In New York State smoking is not allowed in restaurants and bars, so many times there are more people in front of a place than inside, especially when the bands aren't playing.

Most of the time I was outside I on the outskirts of a few dozen people at the very least, but there I sat too close to be alone and too far to be involved. I've always been a fringe player. I like small groups. I am a Leo so I always want to be in the middle and get attention, but I'm also unusual so if the group is larger than I can count on one hand, I tend to fade into the back or side view to play an unassuming role and to observe everything and nothing.

I stared into the night sky, admired what seemed to be a full moon and thought about things too deep to bring up in bar chit chat. It's funny how appearances can be deceiving. Two separate women came over to "check" on me. You know, see if I was okay. Perhaps they wanted to hit on a drunk guy, I dunno, but I am both meticulous in who I flirt with and usually quite sober, so it seemed they were surprised after 2 minutes of conversation. The funny thing was that I was pretty friendly to both, but I guess they could tell I wasn't "interested". I'm not a piece of meat ladies!

That was my night; small reunions with people I hadn't seen in a long while or honest discussions with people I didn't know. That was it until Mockba came on stage.

I would tell you that Mockba is a commie rock band, but that wouldn't do them justice. They are 4 guys who pretend to push a communist agenda and play surfabilly punk and garage rock n roll that you can dance to. They have good energy, they're funny on stage, unpredictible, and above all else they are good. Actually here is a link to their myspace page which has 2 of their older songs you can listen to:

Mockba on myspace

I got out of the house, I had a few drinks, I tapped my toes, I heard some good rock n roll, took a few blurry pictures and then decided to walk home at 3am on a cool windy night. The walk home took about an hour. I really enjoyed it. I walked briskly, used mostly quiet streets and soaked in the night while marinating on thoughts and dreams. It was the moon and me, same as it's always been, same as it will always be.