Brooke told me to meet her at this cafe. She showed up and introduced me to Joe. We were at 3rd Avenue Cafe on the corner of 3rd Street and Oak. Tuesday was “Dead Elvis Ball.” The staff was dressed in full Elvis garb, and karaoke was available for customers. All I remember hearing was a few Elvis tunes, a waitress singing “Baby Got Back,” and a few other random maulings of otherwise decent classics. The cafe raffled off prizes, and despite stuffing the ballot box with three tickets, Brooke won nary a prize. A true disappointment, I’m sure.
We three talked a bit about music and I tried to catch them up on the trip as best as I could. I thought it hard to concentrate with a sound I could only liken to someone reversing their car over a cat berating my ears. Joe, I believe, works some sort of construction job when he’s not playing in bands or helping out other bands with merchandise. Brooke called him a “roadie” and he was quick to state that he’s never touched a piece of equipment. Over food and drinks, the table talked about local bands and traded off recommendations. When the meal concluded, when the sound of shattering glass silenced, with customers fashioning nooses out of ties and shoelaces, we decided to exit the cafe. Maybe we underestimated the karaoke skills of this location.
The party moved to (I think) The Outlook on Baxter. It was 8:00pm and no one was really there yet, so we grabbed a table and pumped the jukebox full of quarters. They had a pretty good selection. The chosen tunes consisted of Nirvana, Radiohead, Rolling Stones (Sticky Fingers), Pavement… Brooke opened a tab on her credit card (thanks!) and we got down to some serious business. She was knocking back bottles of La Fin Du Mond, I had pints of Blue Moon, Sierra Nevada and Newcastle, and I don’t remember what Joe was drinking. It’d be impossible to relay all the conversation because we were there for so long, but it pretty much traversed any conceivable topic. From audio engineering to construction to Dave Grohl’s signature drum sound to The Beach Boys. Mostly music related, I guess.
Considering it was a Tuesday night, the scene eventually livened up a bit. VHS or Beta was well represented, as was My Morning Jacket. Joe introduced us to Jim and Patrick from My Morning Jacket, who we chatted up briefly before they got heavily involved in the billiards table. Someone queued all of OK Computer in the jukebox. At that point it seemed like the session was in full swing, but by 12:30 or 1:00 most of the room had cleared out. There’s such a fine line between when a bar is happening and when it’s dead. My barometer for this is when the music shifts from something palpable to David Gray. That’s how you know the evening just totally fucking ended.
As I was coming to this conclusion, a bunch of crazy shit started to go down. At the risk of being a gossip monger I’ll leave this part of the story out, despite it being probably the most interesting/bizzare… dare I say exciting (in a negative way) event of the night. There’s no sense in drudging up bad feelings. We’ll leave it at, “Things got frenzied because everyone was drinking. A lot.”
Eventually I crashed on Joe’s floor. It wasn’t a great night of sleep. I first felt myself drifting off just as his alarm started beeping in the other room.
My affection for Louisville stands firm. A wonderful city with some incredible people. I feel fulfilled by these experiences I share with new people. Our interactions help to mold who I am. This time it was just a bit more surreal. Very weird and wild. I think you get the idea.
<3
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