the sun is still up in rogers park right now.

so this band JEFF the brotherhood is playing in brooklyn on tuesday and i really want to go but to go to a show is about a $30 round trip ($13 round trip to get to the city + $4.50 round trip to get to the show space + $10-13 to get in = $27.50-30.50) so that's kind of out of the question (so bummed).

but i just laugh when i see these video and pictures of this band. look at all those people!

let's see, it must have been summer 2006, i was 15 and my friend wanted to go to this club in rogers park - the no exit cafe. i don't know if this was before or after his own band played at the no exit for the first time, i'll guess before. JEFF (no "the brotherhood" back then) was playing that night. my friend had burned me castle storm a few weeks earlier. i dug it. actually, i don't know if i listened to it more than a handful of times, because at that time i pretty much had the woods on repeat, the woods and nothing else (i was implanting every note into my brain in preparation for watching sleater-kinney at lollapalooza later that summer, okay?).

JEFF at no exit. i forget who opened for them. maybe the smith westerns? no that would be way too early. (would it? they were getting popular the summer i got my wisdom teeth out...summer 2008?) fuck, maybe it was my friend's band. i should call him. (the kid's phone was off, i'll maybe get back to you on this.) (oh man, update: it was the smith westerns who opened. back when my friend's friend (a kid i had gone through elementary school with) was the drummer.)

anyway. there were like twenty people there. maybe twenty. between fifteen and thirty for sure. they didn't play on the stage. they just stood in a corner and asked us to get close. no, come closer, you guys.

and now they're filling the bowery ballroom or some fucking club.

i almost feel like i was on the cutting edge, but i'm not that naive.

it was a good show. the one three.5 years ago, i mean. i haven't thought about that in a long time. i do remember the show being like really docile, like, we, the crowd, didn't know what to do so close to the band. should we dance? should we sit cross-legged like we're some fucking hippies listening to acoustic music? well maybe that's not how it was, but that's how i remember it.

(here: listen to the smith westerns, back when they were garage punks, before the t.rex pop. there was this awesome music video for "irukandji" on youtube, but they've since taken it down 'cause the singer is kind of a prick.)