Rock and Roll Animal

New Year's Eve, 2010, I attended my first rock and roll club show in years.  Many, many years.  I wanted to see J. Roddy Walston & The Business, a group whose debut album has been in heavy rotation on my iPod since it came out earlier in the year.  I had missed them at a previous show, in a smaller venue, and reckoned now was the time.  Carpe diem, and all that.

The band went on at midnight, right after the ball dropped.  It was like opening the door into a hurricane.  A loud, raucous and just-this-side-of-controlled hurricane.

Standing there, about four people back from the stage, stomping my feet, pumping my fist and shouting choruses at the top of my lungs, I felt something wake up inside.  Something that had been asleep for a long, long time: the animal, and it felt good.  It was like watching a jaguar stretch, flex and growl.  It makes the blood run hot, and alive.

The tired, run-down me shook hands with the rock star me, and together we pushed back the great gray walls of the universe.  The volume knob on life went to eleven.

And it was good.