Hark, listen to the raucous sounds of the after-party just picking up a head of steam downstairs. I'm too tired and too old to be even remotely interested in the goings-on down there. I'm content to write about the shows.

The first was at Hooters, and the opening band had to cancel (a drummer's injured hand) so we were required to begin earlier than we thought we'd have to. As a result, I broke the speed laws consistently on the trip. I made it to OKC just in time.

We had a great first set, with good crowd reaction, took a break, then delivered a great second set, all the while looking forward to playing many of the songs at VZDs later tonight.

VZDs is legendary as one of Oklahoma's best places for local music and regional acts. I've only played there once before, in 1993, but the situation with the band I was playing with at the time turned out so dismal that I'd just as soon forget everything I ever did with them. So I had been looking forward to this show with great expectations ever since I found out we were going to play there.

And I don't mean to brag, but we were loose in the way it's good to be loose and tight in the way it's good to be tight. The Hooters gig had been a warm-up for the big show of the evening. We were in the pocket from start to finish.

The sound man said he thought I was a perfect addition to the band, that my contribution to the overall look and sound placed us, as he put it, "in the velvet pocket"...whatever that means. I think he was saying that the band sounded like it had a chance to really go places. One of the Fellowship Students guitarists, Matt Brown was there, and he gave his seal of approval to the new incarnation of the Mad Laugh.

I was hoping to get some photographs to post here, but I simply cannot get my piece of crap digital camera to work when I need it to. So maybe I'll get some shots on regular film and have my brother scan them for me. I could do that at next Saturday night's double bill with the Fellowship Students at the Hi-Lo. Probably be a few weeks till you'll see 'em. They'll be worth the wait, I think.

Honestly, this band has the most potential of probably any band I've ever been in (maybe a couple of exceptions). I'm too old to hook up with another band if anything happens to this one. This will be the last band I will ever play in, so I'm going to try to give 200% and have as much fun with it as I can.

The last month rehearsing and playing a few live shows with these guys has been one of the most richly rewarding musical experiences I have ever been lucky enough to have come my way. And the culmination of this great month with the band was tonight's shows.

The clock hands are creeping up just back of 4:00 AM and the after-party continues to rage on downstairs. I am not looking forward to sleeping on the under-sized couch. But that's where I'll wind up...I'm much too worn out to make the trip back home tonight, and a few hours sleep will find me better prepared for the sojourn on the morrow.

This place is called the Listening Room, so I guess I oughta tell you what I've been listening to lately (besides the loud proclamation of "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY" by a newcomer to the after-party)...On the way home from work. scooting down Route 66 at high speed, I played TOOL's Lateralus. I hadn't heard it in a long time, and it sounded fresh. Then I listened to a CD I have with Sugar's Copper Blue and Beaster burned onto it together. I had it in random mode, hoping it would select "Judas Cradle", but it never did. That's really all I've listened to today, other than a CD I have of Mad Laugh's demos that I'm studying, and a few tracks from a friends copy of the Baptist Generals new CD that Rojo played for me in the van on the way to the shows.

The ebb and flow of the rackety after-party will likely stretch into the morning hours and end after sunrise. That's how these things generally operate. They never get too wild. But they get very, very loud, and there's always one or two really obnoxious types that like to start trouble.

The wildest party I ever went to came to a climax when a couple were discovered in the act of coitus in the back of my friend's van. Very unattractive, very overweight girl laying like so much dead-weight underneath her very unattractive, under-bathed partner, whose sexual technique is best described as a cross between a jackhammer and a macaque monkey. When it was all over he discovered that the condom he was using had broken and he began cursing. At that same event I remember vividly watching a grown man chase a horse through the pasture, hollering about the illicit things he was going to do when he caught it (I have no idea how serious he was about it...).