At the High-tone Cafe

I've been running with a nostalgic reminiscence across the far reaches of my own personal blogfolio, and I thought I'd make it the clean sweep. So, this is a story about a show at the High-Tone Cafe, a hip little spot in Midtown Memphis, at a time in my life when I was as outgoing as I would ever be.

At the time, I had just recently forgot to take my ATM card with me after taking my cash and my reciept, and so had no access to actual cash, only the plastic kind. I had a few bucks, which is usually enough for the minimal cost of entrance to the various musical extravanganzas that are the weekend glory of Memphis town. Unfortunately, the one I was aiming at was not the usual local fair. Neko Case was coming through town and charging eighteen dollars a head.
Not to be dissuaded, I spent about thirty minutes at the Circle K next door convincing various patrons to give me cash in exchange for the use of my plastic money, so I could make it through the door of the Hi-Tone. It took some doing, even with the favorable rate of exchange I was offering. People are generally wierd about such things outside the bounds of their normal non-triangular money exchanges, but enough customers were heading next door and so wanted to help a fellow music lover in his pursuit of the experience of it live.
After finally gathering up enough actual cash money for my entrance, I headed back to the Tone feeling truimphant and ready. A quick beer at the bar and a hello or two to some casual acquaintances was enough to pass the time before the show got underway. Neko Case is just lovely and a towering inferno of country-tinged beauty, and after the first set I was half full of a spirit of desire and turning.
At the time I was doing some intensive studying of microsociology and would extoll the virtues of Goffman, Mead, and Collins at the veritable drop of the veritable hat. It was just a quiet coincidence that the couple to my left were both graduated sociologists, and we excitedly engaged our concordant love of the field; A nice moment between strangers.
The second set interrupted our delighted conversation and erupted with the downbeat buzz of all that is great about alt-country. The pedal steel intertwined with the expanding plain of her voice was the spiritual most, and I just died with the savage wonder of it all. After the show, I went out and off down the streets singing at the top of my lungs some lunatic nothings that sprouted up from my brain. When I got home, I wrote this:
A Slight History of Music, which I pimped to associated content for four short dollars for no apparent reason a year or so ago. Forgive the excessively muddled grammar and meanings in the piece, it was written in a windstorm and published in a sandstorm.