(i) If you're down the front and the band is on-particularly if they're acoustic- then shut your big flapping yap. You wanna talk? Go to the back, go to the fucking bar. Wander outside and get your head busted in by some over-zealous junkies. Stay at home and mouth off at the television. Still got excess energy? Then eat pizza, and grow as fat as the rest of your retarded country. Exceptions to this rule... Bernard Butler, Western State Hurricanes, anyone in the Liz Phair school of "sensitive" singer/songwriters, anyone British (especially The Verve), jazz heads, Sky Cries Mary... Then any interruption is justified.
(ii) People who listen to The End shouldn't be allowed to go to shows. Just because you hear someone on the radio doesn't mean you have to see them live. Hey, there's no digital sound in the Breakroom, you know. Is there some way of facilitating a screening process? Likewise MTV viewers, who all think there's only one way to behave in the moshpit: meathead-style.
(iii) If you're big, then try and remember that not everyone enjoys having their face stuck in your butt. Perhaps they didn't pay money just to watch the flecks of dandruff spiraling off your shoulder.
(iv) if you smoke... why not try holding the cigarette in front of your own fucking face for a change and see how you fucking like it. Assholes.
(v) DON'T SIT DOWN ON THE FLOOR! Unless you want a well-deserved boot aimed at the back of your head.

Five nights ago, I saw Nebula at the Crocodile. Whoa! Was the last eight years a dream? A fucking great one? It was like this town had never grown up. Sticky floor, flashing lights, Black Sabbath drum rolls, sketchy attendance, Mark Arm standing by the door, some Sub Pop employee dancing like he'd just discovered vertigo, guys shouting out for re-runs of Lynryd Skynryd songs, girls thrusting their heads into PA bins, beer all over my shirt...

This life is scary sometimes. Maybe I should pass on the absinthe next time. Around me stood tall men, almost all of whom I'd tongue-kissed in that very spot. Joan Jett plays here next Tuesday. She dresses in black and intimidates the fuck out of me-like Kathleen Hanna, only not so imaginative. One day in the not-so distant future, I would like my life back, if it's not too much trouble.

Excuse me one moment...

©Everett True 1998.