Two salvos — 14 years apart

A couple blasts here, one from the recent past and the other more distant. I’ve had a good time in most instances — sometimes too good — but it hasn’t always been so easy. In Birmingham now a little over a week ago our “Extraordinary Rendition” of a reading went quite well, and for the first time I can prove at least a part of that statement with video, shot live at Greencup Books that fine Sept. 11. It’s my “Dreams of a Thriller” story, which you probably heard first in a blog post from weeks back, and the vid’s embedded below.

For the second vid, that blast from oh-so-long-ago past, click here for where former bandmate Greg Ellis posted the short of Facebook — warning: it’s a live rendition itself of a song whose name I can’t quite remember; I think myself or Greg one wrote it. We were a hardcore band called Salvo Rain. That’s him on the drums and screaming, that’s me far right of screen, on guitar, starting to get sweaty. I don’t remember the dates and many of the names, but I have a distinct recollection of how it felt to be 19 on that tiny stage in that tiny backroom of the Indigo Moon headshop in what I might have thought of my own little empathically screwed up corner of Rock Hill, S.C., my hometown. Which is to say, hot, loud, itchy, energizing, wonderful. Here’s that link again. Have I mellowed a bit in 14 years? — yeah, but just a bit, right? Evidence follows?…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BotaSiRJ6o&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_profilepage&fs=1]