I forget what eight was for.

The other day I came across some Violent Femmes music on the pod. I ended up listening to the song Kiss Off several times over. Why? I'm not really sure. It just reminded me of times gone by--of college, when things were simpler. Or maybe it was just that different things were complicated. Whatever.

When I was in college, I was in this group called Star Course my senior year. All (and I do mean all) of my friends were in the group and by senior year, I figured I might as well join, since it would give me access to better parties. Star Course was the organization that put on the smaller University-sponsored concerts.

One of the problems that I encountered with Star Course was that, since we were putting on concerts of not-so-well-known bands, half the time nobody knew what the band members actually looked like. And sometimes that caused embarrassing confusion.

So, during my short Star Course experience, we put on a Violent Femmes concert. I helped with load-in/out and security that day. During load-in, I was putting some stuff on the stage and ended up in a conversation with another Star Course girl and the dude who was setting up the drum kit. Among other things, we talked about this leg of the Violent Femmes tour, and where they were headed next. Drum Dude kept saying things like, "I don't know what we're doing after this. I don't know where we're playing next." And I kept replying things like, "Oh, I heard they're playing in DeKalb next." Because, clearly the person I was talking to was a roadie, and clearly HE personally would not be playing in DeKalb next, right? Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that Guy Hoffman was setting up his own damn drums? I mean, isn't that what roadies DO? I don't think he was terribly offended, or maybe didn't even notice. I figured it out on my own much later in the day, and was retrospectively embarrassed.

After the concert that night, we had the post-party at our apartment. The band members and crew were usually invited to the post-parties, but were usually to cool to go to college parties (as you might imagine). Well, on this particular night, I do believe the Violent Femmes roadies were lookin' to get a little bit of co-ed ass. A few of them came to our apartment and proceeded to get rip-roaring drunk (or maybe they already were). One of them fell down the stairs leading up to our upstairs neighbors' apartments and cracked his head open on the brick planter box across the sidewalk from the stairs. My roommate Heidi had to drive him to the hospital for stitches. I don't remember exactly how the rest of the story goes, but it involves him escaping from the hospital and the rest of his roadie friends feeling bad for him because it was his turn to drive the bus the next day. And apparently they showed no mercy when it came to driving the bus.

So...that's kind of a fun story from my college days. Actually, thinking about that caused me to remember another embarrassing situation I had involving not knowing a rockstar from a hole in the ground. After college, I briefly interned at a radio station, in the promotions department. We put on a "Live From Studio X" concert with the band Cake. I was in charge of carding people at the door to make sure they were on our guest list (you can see where this is going). The thing was that not only did I try to card somebody who was with the band, but since he walked right by me into the room, I had to go chase him down, at which point he flashed me his backstage pass. Turned out he played bass with the band. Who knew? He was pretty hot too...too bad I ruined my chances with him. (ha.)

By the way, this post should be titled "Wherein I try to make myself sound WAY cooler than I actually am."