What Can't Be Erased (Again)

So, I walked up through downtown and kept going straight where I normally turn right to head up the hill and home. I had left in the morning without a jacket as it was warm, but it began raining as I broke into the streets filled with pricey boutiques, pricey restaurants and uberhip bars. It was still warm, so the rain felt like something out of a tropical climate, something blown in from New Orleans. The rain felt absolutely right. I was heading to a record store to see one of the handful of solo acoustic shows that Jason Lytle of Grandaddy was doing around the country.

Grandaddy, as I have stated before, is now no more.

He played, and it was sweet. He added the blooping keyboard sounds vocally to his rendition of Crystal Lake. I laughed and wiped rainwater off the back of my neck. He finished up with a song called Levitz (that I'm pretty sure I've heard at nearly every Grandaddy show I've been to) that he managed to make sound so sad.

Jason was going to hang around and sign stuff. I didn't particularly care about getting anything signed, but I wanted to take the opportunity to tell him thank you for the music, and that I would miss the band.

(Also, in reference to my kind Seattle record store clerk post: I picked up a new Mountain Goats EP and the girl ringing me up excitedly asked if I'd heard anything off of it. She told me they were coming to town soon and we talked about how great they are to see live... She was ridiculously nice and gave me a handful of Grandaddy buttons.)

They gave away posters for the signing, so I figured I could have Jason sign one of those. I told him hi, I told him that we'd seen the band a large number of times in San Francisco, I told him thanks and that we would miss the band. He seemed like such a nice, sort of shy guy. Biffy brought up seeing them at This Ain't No Picnic, a show down in SoCal from a number of years back. He surprised me by remembering something particular about the show. I always think that guys in the band don't remember stupid things that the folks watching the show do...

He asked if that was the show where the band before them continued playing past their allotted time and Grandaddy finally just started playing over them. He also told us that he had gotten really drunk the night before, had fallen asleep in some ditch and woke up covered with ants.

He seemed like a very sweet guy. I thanked him again and shook his hand goodbye, stepping into the vaguely tropical evening that was heavy with moisture. I was glad that I got to say goodbye, and still feel a little melancholy knowing that the band is done.

I also highly recommend the final G'daddy album, Just Like The Fambly Cat. It's good stuff...


Confidential to the CBGB group: Congrats on 7 years and going strong! I love all y'all.