I’d like to reassure you that this post isn’t about you. You’re a cool person, and I like you tremendously.

You’re one of those people that everybody instinctively likes and wants to be around, as soon as they’ve had a mere few minutes to get to know you. You’re almost as smart as me, and you certainly ‘get’ my off-trail sense of humor. You make me laugh often, in a good way. I learn things when I’m around you that I wouldn’t learn on my own, because you have areas of expertise and insights that are both valid and different from mine.

When we talk, it’s a give-and-take, back-and-forth process, not just one of us monologging at the other. Because we’re both complex people with strong personalities, we sometimes have conflicts, but we work through them, because we care, and because we have the intellectual and emotional depth to do so.

The party becomes more fun for everybody when you show up. We all feel wittier and more affectionate around you. It’s entirely possible that your name is John or Becca, for instance, but you could have quite a few other names. One might be Rachael, but I can be accused of being biased on that particular subject.

This isn’t just my personal evaluation. It’s the reaction that you get from damn near everybody you encounter, individually and in groups.

Neat, huh?

But what about those poor bastards who have severe Obnoxious Personality Disorder?

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Sunday, October 7, 2001. The BB King Blues Festival. All day outdoors at Auditorium Shores on Town Lake in Austin. Gorgeous weather. Mostly mediocre sound engineering. Besides BB, we heard John Hiatt, Buddy Guy, Double Trouble, Doyle Bramhall, Jimmie Vaughan, and some other local stars.

It was Rachael’s first real concert. She was 13 years old. Me and her, Brad and Barb, Caroline and the Dude. I had to get help from Barb and Brad to remember a few details for me. Like who was there. And what year it was.

I have some snapshot memories that I think are genuine.

1. Standing in line at the edge of the field that evening with Rachael to buy some food. We started talking with a nice lady a decade or so younger than me. She revealed that she wasn’t able to get her daughter, who was about Rachael’s age, to come to the concert, because her daughter only listened to current teen-pop music. None of this old-people rock and blues. I felt sad for her, and sad for her daughter, who was an idiot. Selfishly proud of myself for my great parenting skillz. Proud of Rach for being a LOT smarter and more tasteful than our mass culture would like her to be.

2. Bumped up against the edge of the fence with Rachael, getting as close to the stage as we could when BB King’s set came up. BB let his band play about half of the set, had a young guitar-slinger along. BB sat down throughout. Getting old. But when he fired up Lucille, it was still him playing. I’d first seen BB play at the Music Hall in Houston, sometime in the Seventies. We were both a lot younger and more energetic then. I was glad that I was getting to see him now, probably for the last time in my life. Doubly glad that Rach got to see him, too. He had lost none of his supernatural powers.

3. Caroline sitting quietly knitting though much of the afternoon. Whatever she was knitting began to take on a mysterious and disturbing shape.

Rachael asked, “What is that thing you’re knitting?”

Caroline answered, “It’s a merkin, dear. For the Dude.”

“What’s a merkin?”

You can use your imagination to fill in the rest of that conversation.

4. John Hiatt came on and rocked the place. Sonny Landreth was fairly new then as his lead guitarist. Hiatt should be a hell of a lot more famous than he is. He’s one of the best songwriters alive. His web site is here, with good info and a bunch of streaming music.)

Click the pic to catch him performing ‘Something Wild’ live, on Austin City Limits:

Two Headed Baby plays this song. You can argue back and forth about whether we do it better than Hiatt. But we’ve been doing it at rehearsals lately a lot. I finally learned the intro riff. We don’t suck at it any more, is my opinion.

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Here’s the video for ‘Perfectly Good Guitar’, which is some wonderful kick-your-head-open rock.

And here’s the ‘Making of Perfectly Good Guitar’ video. This is an amazing album, chock-full of classics.

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Grateful props to Barb for finding the concert poster, incidentally.