Toad's Place in New Haven is an old storefront, I'm almost certain, with the pressed tin ceilings. We got there only to find the concert room a vast, standing-room only space populated by a horde of UV-glowing folks milling about and staring at the mike stands and drum set like they were rocks at the zoo and maybe they'd be lucky enough to see the bears come out from behind them. The only alcoholic portion of the room was THE GAMEROOM (labeled in dayglow and Frankenstein-animated by the omnipresent UV-lights) which Shelby described only as "gucky and boring."The Sundays T-shirts were remembered to us every so often by a disembodied voice, but once we wended our way to the ROCK SHOP we found them to cost 23$, so I settled for a Toad's Place Tank top, with which (under the UV, again,) I lit my way back to my place in the crowd. Matt and Shelby and I stood and waited and waited waited waited into the evening as the fanatics and fans and preteens and folks milled, and maybe it was just who we were or how we were but we stood still in sea (see?) of people until the UV lights went out and the speakers got louder and the Sundays' opener, Madder Rose came out. One guitarist was all hair, (as one guitarist in every band of this type must be) and the drummer's beats made my spleen quiver up against my upper intestine, the music was that loud. The bridges were wild forays into dischordance and cymbal crashes, and the lyrics were rote, but by the end of their set, I was beginning to appreciate the bassist more and yet was still overjoyed when the UV lantern popped back on and the press of bodies got closer in anticipation of the Sundays' appearance. the ubiquitous background music was punctuated by bursts of fog from a smoke machine on stage, which was punctuated by wild cheers from the audience as the collective conciousness surged to the realization that something, ANYTHING AT ALL could be the signal for the concert to begin. And begin it did.

Harriet Wheeler, the lead singer, seemed the most recongized, and as her pixie voice began, the press got closer and the eyes shooting by me to the stage rivaled the lights for straightline measurement. Her hair was up and rumpled enough to produce a glowing halo onstage, and every once in a while she would dart her eyes sidelong to her guitarist, who seemed intent. A picture of her would pass without unusual comment in a magazine, and still somehow the way she carried herself in her overalls and her smile and her almost literally ethereal voice made her suddenly art as she held her mike and carried and soared. Harriet looked as if she could kiss you and kiss through you to the real you six inches behind what you wore to the concert, she was that honest and focussed. The bass and the lights and the smoke and the sweat and the bodies turned the air inside into a gelatin of sound and motion, a Jello mold turned English and multicolored and moving, as mirrored lights whined and turned, now beaming down on the band, now sweeping the sea of surf-tossed fans. The walls of the club were covered in posters and paintings of groups who had played Toad's at some earlier date, and it was completely natural to look on stage and see another one, the only difference being everything. Each song was a familiar one, each moment in the crowd brought new people pushing their way through, new people brushing underhand and smalloftheback and grinning when you met their eye as if to say, look, we're all in this together and what can we do? but move to the music and accept the touch and hope it all comes out okay...

And after three encores, come out okay it did. The band went off for the last time, the strange shoulder-diving man behind Shelby stopped screaming THANKYOU, FUCKING THANKYOU, and we were suddenly handed the space to breathe and hear, the background music barely a rumble on the horizon, barely even worth putting an ear to the ground to hear. I asked the Light board op if I could watch him set up sometime, and he told me he toured with the Sundays, which made his freehanding all the more amazing. He KNEW the music well enough to juggle electrons and patterns around it and make it all look effortless.

We had Raspberry Ice Cream ont he way home, dripping and grinning and ringing in our ears, still talking about how amazing Harriet looked and the spots in our eyes, and although we had seen it coming, when the odometer turned over to 5555555.5, we all had our eyes on the road for Middletown and home.

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