Abdicating Responsibility

For my most recent stay at Coal Stove Sink, I was greeted by this:

And though a Fisher Price toy xylophone looks harmless enough, I should have known that this would be no ordinary visit to [location deleted].

Intrigue grew to eleven once there was an Aubrey sighting:

And, even though Aubrey was in the house for the where’s aubrey performance, he was nowhere to be seen for the opening of the second set. Fortunately, he wasn’t lost. Maybe he was just chatting up a bartender?

The crowd was a joy—warm, enthusiastic, a true pleasure to play for. They can be heard but not seen at the end of this video:

A highlight of the evening was being joined by the rest of the Bitter Liberals. The first three tunes with these fine minstrels were a complete blast. Then, all !@#$%^%$ broke loose on the opening of the fourth song. In fact, the start of this tune has been described as a sonic version of some super-famous explosion on Battlestar Galactica. Either my bandmate can’t count very well, doesn’t know Spanish, or possibly both. Fortunately, the pulse somehow emerged from the rather chaotic opening, as you can hear if you stick with it:

The music and merriment continued late into the evening at the post-performance gathering back at Coal Stove Sink. Finally, when the festivities really had to come to an end, we abdicated all responsibility for the remainder of the night (or was it for the rest of all time?) with a Berryville Passage. At last I called it an end to a beautiful day-evening-night-morning and headed up to the guest house as Eno’s new ambient masterpiece Lux was playing.

Oddly enough, Eno was still playing in an infinite loop at 11am the next day. In fact, Eno continued as the soundtrack of our Sunday recovery until Aubrey left…

Hey, wait a minute, where is aubrey???