If Music be the food of love...
My proud, nerdy moment this weekend was being able to quote Shakespeare (albeit a lame, cliched line) in a suitable context. I may never recover.

Other than that minor deviance into literature, however, this weekend was all about music. Friday was the Flashing Lights playing to a packed and enthusiastic crowd at Lee's Palace. The Scottish girls with us were really impressed, thinking that they had just witnessed some major Canadian band. They went to get autographs after the show and were also impressed that he was loading his own gear into the van ("He's sooo down to earth", they said, not suspecting other reasons why someone would carry their own equipment.) They were good mind you, really good, and Matt Murphy is a total rock star, but I think that age and the bar scene is starting to get to Mr. Murphy. My own high point with Flashing Lights has got to be when I saw their very first show when they played King's frosh week in 1997. The Superfriends had just recently split up and the Flashing Lights were just a fun side project at the time. They played on the floor in the campus bar to a raucous, drunk, dancing, and happy crowd--the drummer was dressed in a gorilla suit and kept breaking his drumsticks. They were so new that they didn't have any of their own songs yet and played covers of stuff they liked...mostly mid-sixties era Kinks, Yardbirds, etc. They did play "The Flashing Lights" though (that's a cover too, in case you missed that one.) I remember standing around with the Matt Murphy and the band after the show...he bummed a cigarette off me...and I grabbed the set list in case they ever did become rock stars. Great show.