Unified Macon Theory: What stays in Macon, dies in Macon

This won't make sense to some of you, at least the part where I'm authoring it. It'll seem contradictory and maybe even contrary to my previously stated beliefs. Hopefully the rest of you will get it.

There are three reasons why I believe so strongly that some of the players in our current music scene will make a significant impact on the music world-at-large (and thusly, the world-at-large). No, reason number one isn't that I believe in magic, or that it's because there's something in the water (though I do believe in magic and think there's something in the water... something magic in the water).

In fact, these three reasons are the same three reasons why I think historic Macon musicians have had such an impact on the world of music, thusly the world.

#1) To be a remotely serious musician in Macon, Ga, means you have dedicated yourself to your music because you know no one is listening, which, in turn, means you're going to be more concerned with your craft than whether or not the people here like it. You probably have more than a little confidence in yourself, which doesn't hurt.

#2) Having relegated yourself to the outskirts of the local population, your friends are likely going to be other remotely serious musicians from whom your learn and take some motivation. Your clique is probably pretty tight and most of your conversations are, at some point or another, about music. Your passion is becoming your life fully.

#3) Being a remotely serious musician in Macon soon leads you to one inevitable question--"How serious am I?"--and depending on your answer--if it is "very serious"--you're then led to another question: "How do I get the fuck out of here?"

The same thing that seems like a problem in Macon is probably what has given Macon its place in history, its advantage over other places like Atlanta, LA or New York. You THINK you're serious about music when you uproot and head to LA, but trying to get someone to pay attention in Macon, you've got to be serious then, right?

More than that, there's the issue of your competency. Just because you're serious (or you think you're serious) doesn't mean that you're any good. In most cases, good just means you've been working on it. Talent or talentless, nothing good comes without practice. In other words, it doesn't matter if there's something in the water here because all the water in the world won't make you worth listening to. So you can go to LA or New York because you're serious (or think you're serious) but if you're in Macon for a little while, you'll find yourself consumed by your music.

Consider Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-Hour theory. He says to be an expert means you've put in 10,000 hours into a subject. For Bill Gates it was computers. For the Beatles it was music. Before they broke big, they spent 10,000 hours at their chosen field.

Think about Little Richard on the Chitlin Circuit, in the bawdy houses and nightclubs performing with drag queens and piano players. Just to eat, he was putting in days and days of shows every week, and the hours started racking up. Same for Otis Redding. Think about how many church services, how many of those talent shows, how many Hamp's Hops... the hours piled up.

You might not know this but Otis Redding didn't sound like the Otis Redding we know today back when he was sweeping those talent shows. He was doing Little Richard knock-offs and Sam Cooke covers. That's why he won them--he did a good job impersonating artists the crowd knew. It wasn't until he started hanging out with Johnny Jenkins (or so Jenkins says) that he tried to break away from that because Jenkins told him to find his own voice, and supposedly, with the help of Johnny's guitar-playing,
Otis did just that.

That's that community of outsiders. It's how the Allman Brothers were formed. Go ye forth and make a jam band out of what you find. Boom! Those outsiders came together with their different influences and made some music stew.

And I don't know if I really need to explain reason number three, but I will elaborate. It seems simple enough to get out of Macon, to pick up and leave town, but it isn't. (Both Little Richard and Otis Redding both recorded on the West Coast before going broke and having to return to Macon.) If you're smart that drive to leave will motivate you to do whatever it takes to be successful because that is your best chance at leaving.

Look at Emmett Miller. I know he's not a popular example because he's most widely known as a blackface minstrel singer, but he is considered an important figure in American music and he is from Macon. And he does illustrate my point.

He so wanted to leave town, to join the minstrelsy circuit, that he dropped out of school and started hanging out with black people so he could be more "authentic". Yes, his caricature of them is absolutely deplorable, but at the turn of the century, when the predominant form of popular music (i.e. - pop music in the early 1900s, which prevailed for nearly 100 years of this country's 233 year existence) was blackface minstrelsy, and white folks weren't supposed to mingle with black folks, he had to be dedicated to what he was doing if he was going to go that far. (By the way, the first all-black blackface minstrelsy group was also formed in Macon, a few decades before Emmett Miller got famous.)

For Otis Redding, it meant serving as Johnny Jenkins roadie on a trip to Memphis because Jenkins and the Pinetoppers--not Redding--had the recording contract with Stax Records. He loaded and unloaded the band's gear and begged (or pestered) the Stax crew until they let him record his song with the 30 minutes left on the session.

I see these parallels now with the folks making music in Macon, GA. I see a handful of passionate and dedicated musicians doing nothing but making music and hanging out with other people who make music. You should already know their names because they're playing here so much. And I see most of them eyeballing the bright lights of the big city. That is as it should be because the only way they'll ever realize their dreams will be to try it out somewhere else.

Every show I go to now, I'm thinking about whether or not it's the last time I get to see them here, in the grungy little dive bars, in the ill-suited night clubs, in the basement of an "event center". I don't see them stopping here, not because they're greedy and want lots and lots of money, but because they just want lots and lots of people to be able to hear what they've done.

There is no doubt in my mind that one of these people (and probably more)--Floco Torres, Oh Dorian, Al K!NG, Rolybots, Nomenclature, City Council, Citizen Insane, Abby Owens, etc., etc.,--will make a big splash when they jump into that big pond. No doubt in my mind at all.

The weird part is that this is sort of an argument against supporting the music here. Or maybe, if you squint your eyes and tilt your head, it's just another way to tell you all that it's happening whether or not you like it, support it or even know it exists. In another 20 or 30 years, it'll just be another wonderful facet of our city's cultural contribution that isn't utilized to make the city better, which means in another 20 or 30 years, another crop of musicians will emerge.

And so on and so forth, ad nauseum. Amen.

Mouthin off...

(This is the long overdue posting of my long ass response that I wrote {and sent to the appropriate people} to an editorial in the Mercer Cluster, which stated we have no music scene and then blamed it on the lack of bands and venues. While I agree we have some work to do, my belief is that what we lack is fans. Wow. That's probably all I had to write... whoops. If you feel like reading three pages of my ranting, get down on it.)

Mr. Brown, Editors, et. al,

Loved the April Fools Day stories. Good satire. It is unfortunate that Eric Brown's piece about the Macon music scene wasn’t conceived in a similar vein. It would’ve been closer to the truth if it had been.

It’s disingenuous for Brown to name Nomenclature and then say they moved away and think that’s an accurate or even adequate description of what’s happening here, as if the only good band left town. The problem here is folks here don’t look for local music so they don’t know that there is anything good.

So what Brown accidentally illustrates is one of the major and generally unaddressed causes of our chronically sick music scene: uninformed opinions have become the prevailing wisdom, having spread like a fungus that colors public perception so that it becomes a "reality".

In other words, one of the reasons our “music scene sucks” is because so many people think our “music scene sucks”.

Just as it is hard for a “dirt-poor college student” to “create an award-winning venue”, it’s hard for a dirt-poor musician to bust his and/or her butt when no one’s showing up because they’ve already decided that there isn’t a music scene worth supporting. (The musicians, however, continue to.)

To avoid making this a totally subjective argument about taste, just look at one of this year’s Bearstock posters. The bulk of the opening acts are local, spanning a variety of styles and sounds, and there were many more from which to choose. The bands that made the cut (and most of those that didn’t) all play frequently, so the real question is why didn’t Eric Brown know that they existed?

Until recently there haven’t been enough fans to support local bands to make it a financially reasonable prospect for venue owners to showcase more local talent, which means the scene wasn’t very visible. But that’s changed. All the good venues—limited as they may be—book a healthy dose of local bands.

Even though local bands sometimes suck at promoting their shows—whether humility or laziness—they do play often enough that, if you’re looking for live local music, by now, there are no good excuses not to have seen Floco Torres, Citizen Insane, Trendlenberg, Rolybots, Al K!NG, Oh Dorian, Abby Owens, Magnificent Bastard, City Council or the dozen others I could name.

UNLESS… A#1) you’re scared to frequent the venues where they play, or B#2) you don’t actually like music enough to go see someone that doesn’t already have an album on a major label.

So now the question is: Do you REALLY want more “interesting and experimental” bands? If so, forget about learning an instrument and starting a band, as Brown suggests, just be “interesting and experimental” yourself. Be adventurous enough to see what already exists.

Folks like to compare Macon to cities with a thriving scene, but they forget one of the most crucial elements: FANS! In places like Athens and Atlanta, people will go see music for the sake of seeing music. And then… then the bands have to work to steal attention away from other bands. Our bands compete against prime time TV and the hordes that only go out to get drunk and get some booty.

Brown asks: “So how to fix this problem?” My response is stop being a part of the problem. If you look for good local music, you’ll find it. You’ll become a patron of the Hummingbird and the Capitol where regional and national acts play. You’ll know that the biggest strides in the local music scene haven’t been made by The Refuge (though I love JJ Weeks and his crew) or at Jittery Joes (where I sit typing this). It’s in the cracks and crevices downtown, like the Golden Bough, the Macon Venue Project, Envy and the 567 Cafe, or even uptown at Rivalry’s, the Shamrock and CJs.

Honestly, I don’t even like all the music here, but I don’t have to. I support what I like and try to be nice to everybody else. There is enough going on here that that’s all you have to do. It isn’t a charity. It’s like anything else, you might suffer through some crap to get to the good stuff, but regardless of how well it matches what you like, there is plenty to choose from—far more than most think.

I’m not trying to invalidate everything Brown wrote or even to take jabs at him, but I believe there are some serious issues to address before the blame is aimed at a supposed dearth of musicians or venues. Remember, we’re all still driven by very simple market realities: supply and demand. There is a dearth of demand. That’s what must change next.

Or maybe we just need to admit we’re not really THAT interested in local music, that we just want bands like The Flaming Lips and Death Cab for Cutie to play Macon so we don’t have to drive to Atlanta. If that’s all this is about then we’re just displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of music business, and the problem remains the same. Those bands don’t play here—not because there aren’t local bands to open up (see who’s opening for Gym School Heroes and Chester French) or because there are no venues (we have spaces so small they only fit 30 to those big enough to hold thousands)—but because they cost tens and tens of thousands of dollars for a performance.

And really, that’s only a problem because “no one” pays to see live music here. Ludacris didn’t sell out the Coliseum and Dwight Yoakum couldn’t even fill the much smaller City Auditorium. Our problem is the absence of real music fans, and the money they generate, which funds it all.

I used to think like Eric Brown (and scores of others)—it’s Macon, not me. Then I became the nightlife writer and later the editor of The 11th Hour, and watched what happens here. I'm now the publisher of Georgia Music Magazine, which is housed by the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, a tourist destination that should be treated like a blessing to this city but is, instead, ignored by locals and the officials they’ve elected.

But it isn’t all bleak. For the past three years, I've been on the board for Bragg Jam, a music festival which is hitting its stride. I’ve been a part of the Bearstock selection committee for the past two years and think it’s about to cement its place in the community. More people are warming up to live music here.

To push it more, I helped start The Local 478, which tries to facilitate growth in local music scene with showcases and concerts. With the help of local musicians, I'm putting together Monkeywrench Music Club, a multifunctional space where bands who can't get booked elsewhere can play, where bands who have nowhere to rehearse can rehearse, where they can get their mail, copy flyers, burn CDs and meet other musicians. This summer, we're going to release the first wave of albums on Random Family Records, a record label whose roster is entirely made of local talent.

You can see why I might be a little sensitive about this, but beyond my obvious bias, I hope you see the much deeper lesson: if you’re looking for good local music, you can find it. I have. And with that, I’ve found a lot of great people, crazy stories and the kind of fun I never thought possible here. All I had to do was look.

I agree with Brown when he writes, “By creating a closer community of bands in the Macon area, you can guarantee a better music scene…” I agree because I’ve been watching it happen for the past couple of years, and I hope that now that you all know it exists, you’ll support it. That’s the piece we’re really missing now.

To that end, I would be honored to introduce Eric Brown and the Cluster editorial staff (and anyone else who is interested) to a wide spate of the talented musicians ranging from indie rock to hip-hop and all sorts of stuff I can’t begin to classify. We’d love to see you be a part of building this music scene because I truly believe that history is about to repeat itself in Macon, that there are some names in the lineups around town that will eventually join the list of celebrated Maconites.

See it for yourself. Come out to Rivalry’s this Friday night to check out three of the best bands in Macon, swing by the show at Monkeywrench on Saturday, April 11, or wait until Bearstock and see even more in action. If you still feel like the scene is “far away” then it’s just a matter of your taste being bad. (Just kidding… no I’m not.)

Mesmerized by the Dressy Weiner

Mesmerized by the Dressy Weiner
(or, The Heart of Rock n Soul is Still Beating)

Today, after a homemade dinner of beef curry and rice, my Mammaw said, "You look like you feel like dog squeeze." I mention it because my answer was affirmative, and because I'm now trying to better incorporate "dog squeeze" into my vocabulary. I'd appreciate it if you did the same.

Despite a history of late nights and binge drinking, I'm actually just a little sick right now. Coughing, fever, achy muscles and such. Perhaps shouting for six hours in a smoky bar wasn't the best way to get over my cold. But it was the most fun way to ignore it.

The second gathering of the Associated Creatives and Eclectic Malcontents for Productive Deviance, Local 478 (sponsored and supported by The 11th Hour) was fan-damn-tastic.

I'll just start at the end and work my way back. Perry Valentyne and Jubee—collectively called City Council—got together with some of the members of Citizen Insane—namely Jesse, my new favorite guitarist, and Shawn, my new favorite funky drummer—as well as special guest bassist, Travis Something Shirt-n-Tie, and Matt (bka – One Bad Catholic) on the ones (no twos), and they made beautiful party music together. In a week's time, they learned four songs together. It was, as Stephanie "Freakshow" Furst (of Under the Gazebo) awkwardly said, "Off the chain." On the last song—the already awesome "Thru the Blinds"—Willie D of Nomenclature hopped on stage. It was live. I don't think I was alone in hoping it'd keep going.

And maybe they're psychic because after I said thanks and y'all be safe getting home, I noticed Shawn, Travis, Jesse and Matt were still going. They hadn't stopped. And if Vic hadn't kicked us out, they might still be playing now. Jubee and Perry took turns freestyling. Then Floco Torres and Al King took their shot. Then Jubee again.

That was just the end of the night, like from 12:45am until close. The whole night had been crazy, a constant crowd that easily doubled the turnout for the first Local 478. Word's getting out, and the early reviews are all positive.

I'll be honest. I thought I'd over-reached with this one. I thought I was pushing it because I had the Freedom Jazz Trio starting things off, and nothing about jazz seems like the Hummingbirdon a Saturday night. But that big 9 o'clock crowd didn't flee. They dug it. The reincarnation of the cool, y'all.

But then panic struck when Freedom Jazz was almost done and I couldn't find 9fh Gutta. In a pinch, I turned to Floco and Al who agreed to rock out without any rehearsal. Despite being on the spot, they didn't disappoint. They never do. In fact, I had some folks asking why I didn't let them go longer. They're each stars in the making. No joke.

One of their new fans is Interscope/Myspace recording artist Meiko, a Roberta-native and former Macon resident who has been making waves all over the country, touring with Katy Perry, Sara Barelles, Mat Kearney, and several others. She's had her music popping up on TV shows like Grey's Anatomy, was an iTunes featured performer, a former 1 download on iTunes, and her self-titled album just cracked the Billboard Hot 200, a pretty impressive feat considering she peddled it herself for about a year when she was just an indie. Anyway… I'm a fan, yes.

(The Local 478 is doing a very special Christmas show with Meiko at the Cox Capitol Theatre on Tuesday, December 23. She's hooking up with Sonia Leigh, and we're working on a surprise local act to put in the mix, so stay tuned. {It'll be a good way to get worked up for the next Local 478 show on Saturday, December 27—the perfect way to blow off steam after Christmas.})

So, with Guttz still nowhere in sight, Floco and Al introduced Roxy Love for her Hummingbird debut. She only did one song, but she's already building a fan base. Her voice is hard to describe. You really have to hear it yourself.

One of my favorite things about last night was that we had some hardcore punk rockers in attendance, mixing easily with our hipsters and hip-hoppers, the oddballs and the squares alike. I've known some of the guys (and fans) of The Intoxicated for a while, and I loved having them side-by-side with folks like Gutta, who finally showed the fuck up. (He says he had car trouble so I'll give him a pass.)

With some help from Synister Sounds and Hymajesty Ace, Gutta brought his enlightened Dirty South sound to the stage. As hard and heavy as he was, it was the perfect set-up for The Intoxicated, who came screaming straight out of the slums of Crap Country. Wouldn't mind seeing them work on something together...

As this thing goes forward, I want to hear more from folks about what they like and don't like, about what they want to see and what they've seen enough of. It's always going to be a work in progress and I've learned some lessons already. But I'm always open to new suggestions (that doesn't mean I'll use them all, or immediately). So far, the consensus is that Macon has done this homegrown music thing before and we're close to seeing it jump off again. Regardless of the outcome, we're having fun trying.

Thanks to everyone who was a part of it. See you real soon.

(When you get the chance, peep this soul-affirming blog by the one and only Lady A-1 Sauce!)

Let the public apologies begin

I woke up naked, but wrapped in a blanket, awkwardly positioned on the couch and racked with guilt from the moment my eyes opened. I was still drunk and would remain that way until nearly 3pm. If I could bottle that feeling and slap a picture of that moment on the label, I wouldn't have to try to answer "How was your birthday?"

My favorite woman on the planet made it apparent pretty quickly that she was thinking of quitting my fan club. As she described the last hour or two of my night, I realized two things: 1) I don't remember the last hour or two of my night, and 2) I may have alienated everyone I like, or at least those were still there when I blacked out.

Here's what I don't remember but have been told. At some point late, I left my own party. I was called on the phone, which I answered, to return and said I was only to show up at 550 Blues instead. When Doc Brown found me, apparently I yelled at her and then ran down Riverside Drive in an attempt to avoid getting in the car.

Does anyone really miss The Power of Chris Compels You? I don't. All day Sunday, I didn't miss him. I'd sobered up just before Moms showed up with my grandparents for dinner. I nearly fell down three times, but otherwise managed to keep my hangover out of the way.

More than that, I just feel like an asshole. A lot of great musicians and friends came out, and though I know I had a good time with everyone for a while, I feel like I took a giant metaphorical piss on some of them. I never meant to and right now, I'm not sure how to fix that.

Then again, I always felt guilty after a binge like that, which used to be a weekly event. The problem, I think, is that I'd forgotten that people buy you drinks on your birthday. One extremely kind and generous gentlemen bought me five drinks in a row. I'd actually brought my own flask bottle of SoCo because I didn't have the cash to drink all night on my dime. I wasn't expecting anyone to buy me things. But they did and so I got hammered, hard.

Highlights that I recall:
A1) Heather Kemp (aka Oh Dorian) sang a song she wrote for me. It was sweet and referenced some tough times that we wiggled through together, which is why I say Heather sang it. She's good people and I miss her.

B2) Trendlenberg (aka Justin Cutway) sang a very Trendlenberg version of Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory" at my request. It may have been the very best that Bon Jovi ever sounded... and that's saying a lot since "Slippery When Wet" was the first tape I owned (given simultaneously with Whitesnake by my uncle Danny).

Everything else--the blackout excluded--was one big highlight. All I'd wanted was to be surrounded by my favorite people, and as the date got closer, I got worried. I know I'd burned some bridges with a couple of years' worth of bad behavior and wondered if anyone still liked me enough to drink with me. And I knew that some of the folks who did would be out of town for the Labor Day weekend. To my utter surprise, the place filled up pretty good with friendly faces and new friends.

The cherry on top was the music. I wish I could've put 300 people in that room just so 300 people would have to witness a little sampling of what we've got going on here in Macon. There was such a selection and such variety. And it was all so damn good. I just shake my head when I think about how much we've all grown up in the last five years. It's amazing that it's coming together like this, that we're coming together like this.

One of the dudes dressed like he stepped out of Breakin' (I can't remember his name now) came to the Center for Revolutionary Studies way back when Roger, Clark, Camo, myself, and perhaps a couple others were really trying to put together a big concert down at Luther Williams Field where all the talent was supplied by local bands. We had just enough music to do it for a few hours and were desperately trying to figure out how to put something like that together.

It never happened, but the fact that we're all still kicking around like this means something to me. Roger--with Tagg and Dirty--finally has built a nightlife scene that responds. What Clark is doing with Nomenclature and recording is nothing short of awesome. While I don't remember what dude's name is, he and his buddy are about to debut themselves as The City Council.

Now I'm rambling. Sorry.

The point is thank you. Thank you for the birthday wishes. Thank you for coming to the party. Thank you for playing at the party. Thank you for being in this city. Thank you for being yourself in this city and making it safer for other weirdos to do what they love in this city. Thanks for helping me grow up a little so there's still a chance I can really contribute to what's going on here.

I hope this is the last public apology I ever have to me.

Only as old (school) as you feel

The reason I didn't do much of anything last Friday is because I had an incredible time on Thursday. That night at the Cox Capitol Theatre, with Doski Wo and The Revival and Al King and Robot Folk Junkies and Y'all Street and the unfortunately named 2 of a Kind, was a flash forward to where I'd like the Macon social scene to be, and a flash back to time when I drank for fun, not self-destruction.

Having been out of the drinking thing for so long, I over did it, and so, Friday was a day of suffering. I felt fine until after I'd showered. Then I vomited for the next several hours, sometimes screaming through the process, a half-yell, half-yack thing that was truly disgusting and disturbing. Every hackneyed cliché about hugging toilets and praying to porcelain gods rang true with each trip from my bed to the bathroom.

I'd do it all over again if it meant having that Thursday night again.

Hopefully, there is no direct correlation between my alcoholic overindulgence and having the variety of entertainment and people that was at the Capitol that night. But if there is, I will lay down my liver for it.

If you were there, you know why. (And thank you for being there.) If you weren't, you should get your second chances soon. In fact, the following Saturday was a more reserved (for me at least) version at the Tic Toc Room with Riddle and Dirt Dog throwing their second Black Card Party.

From what I gather, it is becoming a monthly event. Right now, it is invite only but it looks like that list is growing so maybe they'll open up for the general (but appropriate) public. The idea is to have people who actually like to listen to music show up. In the paper, I made the comparison to having a wine expert pick out their favorite bottle and giving it to you for free. That's the gig. Riddle and Dirt Dog play what they really want to play. You get the best.

That brings out an interesting crowd. It was as diverse and progressive as anything I've ever seen in Macon. While both those adjectives are absolutely correct, they're also disgustingly liberal sounding terms that mean something good but have an unfortunate pallor of political death about them. What I mean by that is that this isn't a political event. Neither was Thursday at the Capitol. It was just folks getting together without pretense or fear (or at least, getting together despite their pretense and fear). It was getting together because the function was too good to ignore. THAT is what we need more of.

In between both, Angelic and Riddle took me out to Twiggs County—WAY the hell out in Twiggs County... so far into Twiggs County I wasn't sure we were ever getting back to any place that wasn't in Twiggs County. Anyway, we went because someone put together an Old School All-Star concert. Doug E. Fresh, Slick Rick, Chubb Rock, Big Daddy Kane, Whodini, Sugar Hill Gang, Rob Base and several more including Fab Five Freddy.

So yeah, it was worth being out in the middle of nowhere.

What struck me at this concert is that hip-hop will be, for me, what "oldies" are for my mom and dad. They may have been young adults when Woodstock broke rock music into a thousand tie-dyed, psychedelic little pieces, but what they remember most fondly is shit from their idyllic childhood. Idyllic, I say, not because it was perfect but because they were innocent in the world. That's what that music reminds them of. That's what they hear when Leslie Gore sings, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to." They hear "Back when I didn't have to worry about anything because I was a kid."

So when Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh finally unleashed "La Di Da Di" on us, I was all tingly inside because that was the stuff I liked when all I had to do on a Saturday was cut the grass and play wiffle ball in the front yard with my friends.

And that reminded me of what I thought about the black kids I played with growing up. I knew—based on the way I saw adults act, based on what I heard some of them say—that there was supposed to be a problem between us white folks and them black folks. I knew that there was supposed to be a difference, that we weren't supposed to get along for some reason. By and large, we got along anyway. We were kids. We did what kids do. We played. We did that without much of a problem until we got older and adopted everyone else's prejudice.

I remember clearly the day I got too old to be innocent anymore, the day I became tainted by this shit. My bike got stolen, and one of my white friends said it was probably one of the black kids who did it. We walked around the neighborhood, off Shurling Drive, down Alandale and Clinton and Walnut Creek, back to Kensington. Never found the bike but that idea that someone would steal my bike because of their color stuck.

What I only sensed as a kid started becoming, in that moment, a part of how I thought, which was cemented by a friend who got it from the adults around him. In bits and pieces for a long time after that, the idea grew, the prejudice and bigotry grew. White people did good things and black people were shady. That isn't to say I was an ardent racist at any point in my life, but I certainly had a particular set of lenses on. After a while, my friends came in colors: black and white.

My black friends changed too. It was obvious that something had gotten into them. They came around less, started calling each other "Nigga". In one of my least enlightened moments, I asked why they could call each other that and I couldn't. Didn't get an answer but I did get punched. From then on, it was the default worst thing to call a person. Once, I got into another fight and called the guy a "Nigger." Angry and hateful, that word transcended race. It was the just the meanest thing I could say.

Thankfully, eventually, it just made no sense to me to think or feel that way, and ever since then, I've been trying to unravel that ball of knots. But being in a city that willingly (and often just ridiculously) segregates itself socially, makes it hard. It’s hard to just see a person—not when you’re one-on-one or in a small group. That’s fine. That’s easy. It’s when you see a big group. Boom: there’s the black club; there’s the white club, which is tantamount to "Stay away" if you're not of that race. And that's tantamount to stupidity. It's one thing to not dig what someone else digs, but it's another to pretend you don't because you're not the right color for it.

The feeling I had at the Capitol last Thursday, the feeling in Twiggs that Saturday afternoon and in the Tic Toc that night, was a lot like when I was just a small kid. I knew there was supposed to be—based on the way folks here act—a big difference between us white folks and black folks, but I wanted to have fun anyway so I disregarded it. Just like being a kid. That's what made it so great.

There was a while at the Capitol when the room divided itself pretty clearly. No one was dancing or mingling much. I asked Riddle why and he said, “There’s too many black people in here,” meaning that’s what the white folks were thinking. And I said, “But the black folks seem uptight too.” He said, “That’s because there’s too many white folks in here.” Fortunately, as Riddle predicted, that broke down when Doski took the stage.

I get the sense that the kids coming up now are dealing with this less, and I hope that’s true. Thing is, as much as I think they’ll keep straightening this shit out, I don’t want to wait on them to do it. From what I’ve seen, the folks my age want to be done with this BS, and I think with the way things went Thursday, and again on Saturday, we’re getting damn close.