I've come unstuck a few times in the last week or two when I've found myself lacking a camera. This has always been a conscious choice, the idea being to relax and enjoy myself, to show greater respect to the event and the people involved by not photographing them non-stop. To actually take part in what's going on around me, rather than just read about it later ("hey, that inauguration looked really fun!")
Unfortunately it has tended to have the opposite effect. Dana and Amir were most upset not to be greeted back from their holiday by flashbulbs at the airport. "So you don't consider my birthday party blogworthy?!" an outraged Amanda asked me on Tuesday. And, once again, I found myself last night without my trusty Canon and with lots going on.
The location was Ashkenaz, a sort of dance hall nightclub place just down from us on San Pablo Avenue. They host salsa classes during the day and have an endless stream of live bands in the evening. Last night was the turn of The Rubber Souldiers, a Beatles tribute band with a twist: they believe that three-minutes is far too short for the perfect pop songs of Lennon/McCartney, and make it their mission to extend them. For a long time. A looooooooong time.
Sometimes this works. Who doesn't want to twist and shout for a little while longer? That song is over just as you're warming up. A rocked-out I Saw Her Standing There had me shaking my booty with the best of them.
However, after 18 minutes of Glass Onion even the most rabid Beatles fan would be losing the will to live. Or so I thought...
The invitation to see "an extended psychedlic Beatles tribute band" had not driven my fellow Albany residents into much of a frenzy, and so it was only Dana and I who braved the trip out. Things were a little strange when, on walking into the place, we found ourselves to be the youngest people there by some margin. Most of our fellow partygoers had seen the 60s, and plenty of them were still there.
Then the dancing started.
The main attraction was a man the wrong side of 65 who whipped off his shoes, socks and T-shirt and danced bare-chested all night. "Wow, he can dance to anything!" Dana exclaimed, and she wasn't wrong. Whether it was a George Harrison Indian-infused oddessey, an early Lennon rocker or, indeed, the five minute break when the band left the stage and there was no music playing he girated, shook and strutted his stuff. At one point he attempted a Yogic sun blessing.
Others were somewhat less flamboyant, but no less embarrassing. Dancing should be made illegal once you reach a certain stage in life (after kindergarten?), and any campaign to that effect should show footage from last night. Couples mangled the salsa with gay abandon, and two people obviously on the verge of their third mid-life crisis even began riverdancing to Here Come the Sun. I contemplated calling an ambulance.
Sadly all the goodwill gained from this (and, possibly, the thick fog of illegal smoke being slowly circulated by the ceiling fans) was somewhat squandered by the gig's middle-section of obscure, slow, drawn out dirges. I was waiting for Revolution #9 to start, but we were spared that.
And so at 12.45am Dana and I found ourselves to be two of the dozen people left in the club, determined to squeeze every last painful cent from the $10 entrance fee. I can't remember what the final song was, but we had certainly witnessed a true slice of the 60s (with genuine original fixtures). Like everything in Berkeley, it was just running a little late.
