My formal birthday celebration was planned for that Friday, February 24. This is something I've been actively dreading writing about on account of it's so mind-blowing and that I don't think I can do it much justice here. But, anyway, maybe a month before, maybe somewhat longer, I was having lunch with Tyson Meade, yes the Tyson Meade, in the East Village.

Some background: Tyson and I had been having lunch about once a month or so since he'd gotten back from Oklahoma in September. Over that time he'd hatched a plan to teach English abroad. At first I thought it was a good idea and then I changed my mind and tried to talk him out of it, and then I came around again. Anyway, so this particular time we were having lunch in the East Village and Tyson informed me of his intention to relocate to Shanghai, China and teach English and American Culture at a middle school there effective March first. Let me add here that despite the fact that I idolized Tyson for most of the 1990s and am generally obsessed with his music, I had never seen him play, his home state of Oklahoma not being particularly close to Pittsburgh.

In my usual selfish way, I got to thinking immediately that if Tyson moved to Shanghai, he might never come back to New York, and I would never get to see him play.

"Tyson," I said. "But you have to play a show before you leave!"

"Okay," he said. "Maybe."

And, over Thai food, we put together a rough plan. I thought I could ask Andy Levine if he could put something together. I'd turned him onto the Chainsaw Kittens, Tyson's band, in high school, and he'd had suggested something similar in the past -- a his band, Arbor Day, opening for Tyson. My birthday was right around the time that Tyson was leaving. If we could get Andy to put a show together, it could serve as a sort of split birthday party/going away party. And, Tyson suggested, maybe Arbor Day could back him up on a few songs.

I wrote Andy about it and didn't hear anything for a few weeks. Then as I was getting ready to meet Tyson for lunch at the same Thai restaurant as before, my phone rang: Andy.

"Tyson Meade and Arbor Day, February 24, Cakeshop," Andy said, talking as he sometimes does in concert-flyer speak.

"Holy shit, are you serious?" I said.

"Yes."

"Holy shit."

"And we're going to back him up on some songs."

"Shit, man."

The week of the show, Tyson practiced once with Arbor Day. I got a call from Andy:

"So we practiced with Tyson yesterday."

"Holy shit, man."

"It was fucking awesome."

"Oh man."

And so on.

The evening of the show I was so worked up that I got a headache. When I was a teenager I had a dream that I was at Chainsaw Kittens show and Tyson called me up on stage and asked me to sing a song I didn't know. Another time, when we were both still living in Pittsburgh, I was supposed to drive with Megan Landers to see the Kittens perform in Chicago, but the day of the show I had a "mandatory" conference for work (lame, lame, lame) and couldn't go. I'd been pestering Tyson to play a solo show in New York for more than a year but he just wasn't that into the idea.

I got to the venue early and had a beer with Andy. Just seeing "Tyson Meade" on the sign taped to the window was completely fucking awesome. I mean, this was my favorite singer, period, had been my favorite singer since I was sixteen, in awe of the man's voice, I had spent literally thousands of hours listening to his music, and I was going to see him sing for the first time. Completely fucking nuts. But the fact that he was going to be backed by my friend's band and it was also my birthday just put the whole thing over the edge. It was knee-bucklingly perfect.

First up was a singer-songwriter girl no one knew. People filtered in: friends and associates and the usual Arbor Day crew plus lot of people I had never seen before, who must have been there to see Tyson. Arbor Day was up next. They played about as well as I'd seen them play, and I've seen them play about thirty times by now. Now the room was fairly packed. I was on my third beer. I asked Tyson if it was alright if I introduced him. He said sure. He was just going to use Arbor Day's equipment so there wasn't a lot of setting up to do. I don't know what time he got on stage. He nodded and I got up there with him. It's trite to say this but it was like something out of a dream. I got up there and talked, basically, about what it was like to be standing on stage with your favorite singer, about to see him perform for the first time. Then I promptly got off the stage and let the man sing.

He played the first five songs solo, accompanying himself on guitar. "Watch the Hearts Break," his first band Defenestration's second album. The man's marmalade and razorblade voice filled the room and I swear even the bartender stopped momentarily and watched. I'm not sure of the order because I was kind of overcome by the moment, but we next heard, I think, "Feel Like a Drugstore" off the Kittens' first album, Violent Religion. I know this is probably boring to read but I'm putting this down for my self now. He played "Postcard from Heaven" off his second solo album, Kitchens and Bathrooms. He finished the solo set with the epic "Another Kitchen" wherein he croons "radiate" for about two minutes in the end.

Arbor Day took the stage and no one really knew how that was going to sound, exactly, because the thing was they had only rehearsed once with Tyson. But by now this update has built up a certain momentum so you know can probably work out how it went. They started out with "Loneliest China Place," a Chainsaw Kittens song with some extra meaning given the whole Shanghai angle. One song built into the next and the band got more confident, and so did Tyson. By the time they hit the end of the five-song set****, Tyson felt good enough to lead the band in a song they hadn't rehearsed, the closer on Violent Religion and Tyson's best known song, "She's Gone Mad." Andy came down off the stage and watched with me. We sang along as we had in my eighties Lincoln in western Pennsylvania ten years before, and I felt very much like I was sixteen as I watched the whole moment unfold, the whole sixteen-ness came gurgling up into me and I sang along and tried to absorb as much as I could. It's hard to write this down in such a way that adequately explains how I felt, or exactly how much it meant to me. Rarely have I felt so alive.

As for Tyson, I'm going to steal from Lester Bangs here and say that every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity. Eternity's kind of a big word because who the hell knows what's going to happen there, but you can write this down because it's fact: Tyson's records, which truly are great, and for that matter Tyson himself, for reasons elucidated in numerous other places on this Web page*****, are going to get their due someday. You wait and see.

The next night Andy and I went out for dinner and basically gushed. The following morning I met Tyson for breakfast on the Lower East Side. He was leaving for Shanghai in a couple of days and he wanted to pass on some clothes he couldn't bring, the two of us being about the same size. We talked about the show and China and my tentative plans to become a teacher in the summer. Then I went home and wrote an overtime case, and basked in the glow of the weekend.

Post-Tyson weekend came the two Belle & Sebastian shows I mentioned earlier, the first show being somewhat better than the second, and that Saturday Ben Hill's comedy group Lola Brigada, had a show in the West Village. Then another week with the usual mayhem and at the end Ben and I had one of our monthly (or so) classic nights. To wit: After some drinking and philosophizing we made our way over to a garage on the other side of the BQE, where we rendezvoused, actually kind of randomly, with Andy and watched the Karl Hendricks Trio, up from Pittsburgh, perform. It was a warm night so after the show we lingered on the street a while and Ben took to calling me John Fante, I think because of a speech I'd given earlier in the night about how I didn't want to do service writing anymore, but pure writing, whatever that was.

To bring you totally up to speed, last night was St. Patrick's Day. After work I met Beth and her brother and his girlfriend (Beth's boyfriend, Andy, was out of town) at the Full Shilling in the old part of the Financial District. We'd gone there last year with a slightly larger group and it had felt old and right, full as it was with Canadian firefighters in kilts. This year there were fewer firemen and more drunk Marines in dress blues. We sucked down Guinnesses and ate and watched two soldiers strike out with unattractive women with big hair. Then we came back to Brooklyn and had another round and called it a night. I went to bed at 12:30 and now it's 9:20 p.m. on Saturday, March 18th, and I've written a fair amount today and I feel pretty good overall, thank you very much. Over and out.

What it looked like (kind of):

tyson meade and arbor day.

karl hendricks trio in williamsburg.

with ben, from the "john fante" portion of the evening.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Ben sat me down and told me that I needed to make more of an effort as a writer. He wasn't talking about my writing in this particular forum, because there is still plenty of that, of dubious quality though it may be. Rather, he was talking about the record reviews I no longer write, the articles I no longer publish -- in short, the print I no longer get.

I interrupted Ben and asserted that those more useful forms of writing no longer appealed to me because I had "discovered" books. This was partly true: one of the absolutely major developments in my life since I relocated to Brooklyn is that I have become what the lamer among us might describe as an "avid reader." My momentum building, I informed Ben that my primary interest, these-a-days, is in producing real writing. This was also partly true: whereas previously I wanted more than anything else to do write a good, clever record review (and possibly a book about the Chainsaw Kittens), I now would like nothing more than to write a good, clever novel.

Ben squared his shoulders to me and replied, without blinking, Then why didn't I write one? Now that was a good question and one I was (and am) in no way prepared to answer. As I was on my heels, taking a long gulp of Makers, Ben added, again without blinking, that a desire to write a book didn't, or shouldn't, preclude me from doing other forms of writing and, to the contrary, those forms might actually serve as a bridge to something more substantial and/or satisfying like, for example, a paying writing gig that does not involve hedge fund managers.

What happened was I disagreed vehemently. We then smoked some pot and watched Ben's cats chase each other around. Later we walked under the BQE and watched a good Pittsburgh band, had a drink at a hipster bar, and called it a night. I walked home, brushed my teeth in my usual half-assed way, climbed into bed. And in the split second before I had my standard intro-to-sleep falling-off-a-ledge dream, I got around to thinking that maybe Ben had a point.

Now is not the time for me to put too much energy into getting articles and record reviews published because, quite frankly, it's past middle evening on a Tuesday night and I only have about an hour, at best, before I have the aforementioned falling-off-a-ledge dream. Moreover, this is how I feel more often than not on weeknights when I'm home. But! I do think it'd be a useful exercise for me to try to sit down and churn out a record review, if for no other reason than prove to myself that I can still do it. Thus, I present to you, friends:

Jane's Addiction -- Nothing's Shocking. Warner Bros., 1988.

Okay, I could've picked something more recent. But Michael Stipe one said something about "Begin at the Begin," and for me, anyway, this was the album that started it all. To give you some idea:

In 1991, I was a compulsive liar, but about stupid shit like whether or not I had certain Nintendo accessories. I still played sporadically with action figures. I wore chunky K-Swiss sneakers that I knew looked dumb to impress the girl I liked, but to whom I did not talk. I knew all the words to Do Me by Bel Biv Devoe. I asserted, in a conversation with my friend Robb, that Vanilla Ice's version of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" was superior to the original. I prayed to God to demand that the Pittsburgh Penguins defeat the Washington Capitals in the Prince of Wales Conference semi-finals. Also I prayed to God to demand that a copy of Playboy magazine enter my possession. I was desperate; at the time, my mother cut the Trojan adds out of the issues of Sport I received in the mail (I was banned from getting Sports Illustrated on account of the Swimsuit Issue). My wardrobe comprised Calgary Flames t-shirts (I also had an "In Living Color" Homey D. Clown one) and Bugle Boy pants, which had stopped being cool approximately three years before. My diet consisted primarily of chocolate chip cookies and potato chips. My idol was Mario Lemieux. Et cetera.

As it turned out, my hockey fandom proved key. In 1991 the Penguins got into the playoffs and I begged my parents to get cable so I could actually watch them play (heretofore I had to listen to them on the radio, 1940s style). My father kind of wanted to watch, too, and anyway, by then my mom was teaching and we had some extra money and almost everyone had cable, so he consented. And at the cost of my school work, I did, indeed, watch the shit out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, which the Penguins won (TYVM, God). Then, as summer arrived, I clicked down a few channels and proceeded to watch the shit out of MTV.

Now you're probably wondering what MTV has to do with Nothing's Shocking, and I'm going to tell you. But first I have to explain what MTV's effect on me was. It's kind of like how pornography shows you how to have sex: up until you actually see it happening, it's all dancing eggs and talking sperms cells. (I did at one point, prior to catching my first glimpse of porn, ask a friend how it was possible to have sex without getting an erection -- I didn't think that you weren't supposed to get one, see -- thereby revealing my utter lack of understanding of even the rudiments of how sex worked.) Similarly, unless you have some sort of guide, it's hard to have any idea, whatsoever, of how to act like a teenager. It's true that older siblings frequently unwittingly (and, indeed, unwillingly) take on the role of guide, and that I had two, but the fact is -- and they will back me on this -- my sisters, who were mostly concerned with musical theater, were not well-equipped to do me much good here.

And it wasn't just MTV. That summer, and remember we're talking about 1991 here, my loose group of childhood friends began to solidify into something more like a pack. There was strength, and confidence, in numbers. Maybe it had to do with the physical abuse we unleashed upon each other three or four times a week playing street hockey, or maybe it was something else. In any case: whereas previously we were content just to roam around the woods looking for waterfalls (seriously; I realize this recalls that TLC song) and non-existent stashes of Playboys, we now wanted to go farther and do more. Mostly what this meant was get into trouble, or our own watered-down form of it. For example: one friend, Robb, emerged as the obligatory pyromaniac; he also experimented with smoking and stealing completely worthless items like lip balm from convenience stores. Another guy, TC, would flick the heads off insects. A third guy, Tim, who with Robb and me formed core of the group, had two brothers who were a little older than us. We would tag along with them in awe.

The Forth of July rolled around and Tim's parents brought the whole group of us (except TC) to a trailer they had outside of the city. We played poker for pennies and floated (but didn't swim) in the pool and rollerbladed. We found a good spot on a hill near the edge of the campground where we would watch the semis blur past on the nearby Interstate. (Robb also passed the time trying to light twigs and grass and ants on fire.) Tim brought a whole bag full of his brothers' tapes, and we found a crappy Time/Life-premium radio you could plug into a Walkman and, as we played cars, we'd try out one tape or the other. Most of what he had was heavy metal, because that's what his brothers liked. It all sounded the same to me: not bad, but not compelling or interesting either; all screaming guitars and men singing in fake opera voices.

About halfway through the week Tim put in a tape he said he hadn't listened to that much. It was an afternoon and we'd already swum and dried ourselves off and by then we'd grown sick of playing for poker for pennies. "This one's kind of weird," he warned.

The first song was an instrumental and the second song started off quiet and then the singer counted off, three, four and the shit just absolutely fucking hit the fan, musically, and even though it was a slow song and not all that heavy. The singer dispensed with the fake opera thing entirely and screamed at the absolute top of his lungs, which by the sound of it must have been on fire, about how he wanted to be "as deep as the ocean," then swung into crooning in a vaguely girly voice and noted that it wasn't "easy living." Then he screamed again and the guitars cut in like razorblades.

The next song I remember hearing was about the summer and seas of grass like the ones all around us. The singer was singing in a voice like a girl and the music was languid like the air coming off the pool in the morning before the old people got in to do their pointless exercises. The music sounded like our lives felt because not a whole lot was going on, and everything was in slow motion. The words said something without actually saying it. When the singer sang that he and his girlfriend didn't wear no shoes, and her nose was painted pepper sunlight in the summertime, and it rolled, you could tell from the tone of his voice that was talking about love.

Tim was reading off the title of each new song, and the last one he said was called "Pigs in Zen." We just assumed in the way you do when you're thirteen it was something about barnyard garden variety type pigs. But you got the feeling, listening to the singer, whose voice now sounded kind of evil, really, or at least appealingly bad, that he was talking about something better and more sinister. In his half-girl voice, he kept repeating something about the piaaag, the pig, ooh, the puh-puh-puh-puh pig, yeah, the goddamn piaaag. Near the end of the song the singer made a speech in his devil voice about how roses are red and he made up the rest and if "you got some big fucking secret, then why don't you sing me something!" And there in the mid-summer heat, flanked by my best friends, with swearing and screaming and half-girl singing and guitars and words I didn't understand but wanted to, desperately now, crackling out of shitty speakers like an A.M. radio broadcast from hell, the citadel gates swung open, and fresh air rushed in, and I breathed and was changed.

Alright, look, on the one hand it didn't have much to do with the music; this was the cumulative effect of MTV and getting into trouble and that particular summer and my own maturation process. But in any transformation, it's possible to cut into the heart of the matter and draw a line, and looking back you always know exactly where the line goes. And for me the line belongs in Tim's parents trailer that day over the Fourth of July weekend, 1991, when I heard Nothing's Shocking by Jane's Addiction for the first time.

The next day Robb left to attend some sort of family function. Tim and I spent the rest of the weekend watching the cars passing on the Interstate, mapping out the people we wanted to be and the lives we wanted to have. Not as adults because that was inconceivably far off still, but in school the next year, and in high school. At that point just about anything seemed possible for us, and we could taste it in the air, and it was indescribably sweet like the summer is when you're young.

Listen: I started this essay a week ago in an effort to prove that I could still write record reviews. Instead what I've proven is that I can't write them, or at least that I'm not interested in trying anymore because I have bigger fish to fry. If that's the case then, to paraphrase what Ben said, I should stop talking about it and fry the fuckers!

The day after tomorrow I leave for England, where I'll rendezvous with the above-referenced Tim, who is studying Pop Music Culture in Liverpool. We will spend the next two weeks traveling and eating unhealthy food and drinking mass amounts of beer.

I have every reason to believe that, several beverages into one night or the other, Tim and I will get around to mapping out the people we want to be and the lives we want to have. It's never too late! Granted we're not working with the comparatively blank slates we once had; we're older now, twenty-eight, and like our bone-structures, the boundaries of ourselves and our circumstances have grown more rigid -- in some ways for better, in others not. In any case, each of us is more experienced now, not to mention battle-hardened, and thus (at least in theory) nominally better equipped to offer sound advice. Maybe, possibly, I'll learn something. You never know.