UNDERTOW 2.22

Going to be a quick one this week for a couple of reasons;

1. It is currently 604PM Wednesday evening and I have to be up for work 445AM Thursday morning. (No, this is not every day, just twice a week.)

2. I only had one note for this week’s column which was; GIGS!!!! So…

GIGS OF THE WEEK (ALL GIGS TERRY & JERRY UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED):

1. Thursday, 8/29, 8-11 at Owen’s Pub.

2. Friday, 8/30, 230-630 at The Surfing Pig. This is a new venue for us by the folks who run Jester’s in Rio Grande. Erstwhile drummer Al Olivero, a conniseur of fine bar foods and elixers (of which I no longer partake for the 535th day) highly recommends their firecracker shrimp tacos, brisket cheese steak and tuna poke nachos and I think I’ll just be getting all three of those.

3. Saturday, 8/31, 530-930 at Jersey Girl. What can be said? Jersey Girl has been very good us this summer.

4. Sunday, 9/1, 5-9 at Rusty Nail. The American classic.

BONUS GIGS!!!:

1. Thursday, 9/5, 530-930 at Jersey Girl. 9/5, 12 and 19 are our last gigs at this fantastic venue.

2. Saturday, 9/7, 1-5 at Sirens in AC, 9-12 at Rusty Nail *TRIO WITH SUGAR DAVE HUGHES*. That should be fun.

Man, September…

NEW JOB ACTUALLY STARTING OF THE WEEK:

It’s been a long and winding month, but the new Old Navy in Rio Grande is officially(ish) open! I say (ish) as the actual grand opening is Saturday morning, but we are soft-opened as of earlier this afternoon and all day tomorrow (Saturday, around 11AM). It’s been… different. Corporate retail is a new thing for me. None of it is terribly hard, but there’s a LOT of not terribly hard things to know. My title is “Senior Lead- Shipment.” So… there’s that. What does that mean? Good question. I’m not quite sure. So far it’s meant moving, lifting and opening about 2000 boxes, hanging about 3000 shelves and 40000 rails and shit. It was a huge, empty store. Now it is not. Everyone is nice, the pay is good, and I am one of three males on staff, one of two heterosexual males on staff, and the only heterosexual male on staff older than 16. What does this mean? I have no idea. But it should be an interesting mix.

OLD NAVY SONG OF THE WEEK:

I’ll try to make this a weekly thing, but I’m pretty bad at remembering stuff like this. Anyway, at Old Navy they send out Old Navy-approved music CDs to be played in the store. As discussed before, sometimes they have great songs (All Your Friends by LCD Soundsystem) and sometimes they have absolute trainwrecks like the heavily R&B influenced cover of John Lennon’s Imagine that assaulted my ears today. Brutal. Absolutely terrible. But still better than the original.

GREATEST SONG EVER? OF THE WEEK:

While doing my due diligence for the 80s band play list (Me Generation debuts at Anglesea Pub Columbus Day weekend) I came across this gem. For devout R.E.M. fans (I am not quite devout, though I am practicing) it’s been a classic since its 1983 release. For the unordained, it’s a glimpse into what made R.E.M. so… impossible to exist when it did. At the time, the top 40 was full of songs by Hall & Oates, Men At Work and Micheal Jackson. All fine artists. But none of them was R.E.M. Just listen to this. Then listen to it again. The guitar work is just beautiful, the melody is wonderful if the lyrics are just about indecipherable. It’s just… perfect.

I’ll see you paid subscribers on the other side. The rest of you, please consider the $5/ mo. option. I hope to be posting some new short fiction on there shortly, in addition to semi-regular Undertows.