Updated June 07, 2008

Thinking about the inauguration: If Obama wins the White House, shouldn't he be inaugurated at the Lincoln Memorial?

The last hobo: Remembering the great cantankerous Utah Phillips

What's in a middle name? The right wing thinks it has Obama nailed.

Listening to Al Green, it's like the '70s never went away

He's ignorant, vain and good-looking, and he's the hero of the sharp new French spy parody 'OSS 117:Nest of Spies'

There used to be a thing in the newspaper industry called the "morgue" where they kept all the old newspapers. Many papers still have them, but most now archive everything online, which makes sense, and is a boon to consumer. But some of us miss the experience of diving into the old newspaper morgue to look for one thing, and spend three hours reading other things. This site is my own personal newspaper morgue. Thanks for visiting.

Seeing a rock concert through fresh eyes

by WALLACE BAINE

Before last Sunday, one of my housemates had never been to an actual rock concert.

This is odd, considering that her room across the hall practically pulsates with rock music much of the time (her favorite style is “screamo,” I’m told) and she often dresses like she’s got a piece of the Green Day concession. True, she has neither a car nor a job. But still, this person never having been to a live rock show is like Homer Simpson never having been to a buffett. It just didn’t seem right.

Now, my housemate – we’ll call her Daisy – is a changed person, having seen live in concert the white-hot neo-punk quartet AFI last weekend at the Santa Cruz Civic. For the first time in the 13-plus years that we’ve shared the same address, Daisy has something akin to a swagger in her walk. She’s cooler than the other side of the pillow and she knows it.

I was privileged to accompany Daisy to her first concert, which turned out to be to our mutual benefit. Having been to a thousand concerts, I was able to help her navigate the rituals of concert-going. She, being to the work of AFI what English majors are to Shakespeare, was able to debrief me on a group to which I was merrily ignorant.

With the aid of a fortysomething concertgoer’s best friends (earplugs), I was able to squeeze more than a little enjoyment from the show. Punk music has become awfully earnest these days and AFI – which, not surprisingly, stands for “A Fire Inside” – may be the most potent symbol of punk’s modern-day sincerity. The front man, Davey Havok, comes straight out of the “Velvet Goldmine” school of glam rock. Wearing more make-up than Carol Channing at the Tony Awards, Havok emerged with his band, all wearing white, a shocking change of pace for a group known for an approach to fashion blacker than Saddam’s mustache.

Havok brought the Civic crowd to a frenzy with his brash and messianic front-man antics. At one point, he stepped out into the undulating, adrenaline-mad masses, literally walking on the shoulders of fans like You Know Who walking on water.

That metaphor seems to have resonated with Daisy who was entranced with the experience. While I watched from my perch high in the bleacher seats, Daisy and a girlfriend labored to see what was happening from the floor. It was with some anxiety I watched the mosh pit – the designated circle in which large, often shirtless male bodies flung themselves at each other like blinded roosters in an Ensenada cock fight.

From my perspective, the crowd on the floor was a Caribbean sea and the mosh pit a gathering hurricane. Daisy, who wouldn’t weigh 100 pounds with bricks in both pockets, was merely a body or two away from the violent outer edges of the hurricane, reminding me vividly of my purpose as her chaperone: to avoid getting her killed.

As AFI moved into their umpteenth painful confession of rage and confusion, I found myself reflecting on how Daisy has changed since we first met. When she first moved in with us, she didn’t show much interest at all in music. In fact, she mostly slept all day.

When the show was over and I was finally able to pull my earplugs out, Daisy glowed in a kind of elation that I had never seen in her before. Her first concert was behind her and it was everything she had hoped it would be.

The next day, she confided, “Yesterday was one of the best days of my life. Ever.” Then, she said, “But today, it was back to the same old boring life.”

Boring for you maybe, I thought, but not for me. With a 13-year-old daughter in my life, I have yet to experience a boring day.