AIDS Wolf

"I've been in bands since I was 17 and I'm now 34. My self image is that of a jammer. A scroungy jammer. If I don't have a band and don't play shows, am I still a jammer? If not a jammer then where do I fit in?"

That's a quote from Chloe Lum's recent piece about her time in Montreal trio AIDS Wolf, titled "On the End of an Era," which has stuck with me since I read it a couple weeks back. It's already been dissected by other publications and blogs, and she's not the first person to question whether devoting a good chunk of your life to playing in a band is worth it. Still, I found myself revisiting it, her words rattling around in my brain like one of those plastic balls you put a hamster in.

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​It came from inside the house. Or rather, from below: The very familiar sounds of someone learning to play bass. And not just that: Learning to play "Iron Man." Then, 15 minutes later, came another sound from across the hall: Pink Floyd's "Money" at full blast, as if to negate Black Sabbath. I turned my music up louder too. This was ridiculous. Had I somehow fallen into a wormhole back to my sophomore year of college?

No, I'm an adult, and I have to resist the urge to tell other adults to shut the fuck up in the middle of the day, but the one thing I noticed when I moved into my East Dallas neighborhood was music. It was always in the air: Outside, blaring from a passing car or, since January has decided to bless us with 70-degree days, wafting from an open window.

So I decided to do a little experiment on a Sunday afternoon. I started at one end of my block and kept walking, making a mental mixtape.

Press play.

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Cool shirt ... what are we defending Dallas from again?

​"Did you hear about that guy on the news?"

"Oh, yeah. But what do you expect when you have a gas-huffing problem? One day you're going to absentmindedly light a cigarette and explode."

"You sure are. You got a light?"

Strange things happen when you go out on a Monday. You hear conversations that are just a few degrees off from those weekend ones, the shouted, slurred missives of the soused and pickled you're often forced to listen to if you're in the vicinity. No, Monday night conversations feel secret, like you're on the set of a movie no one else knows about.

As I slid into a leather booth at the Slip Inn, I thought about that. Right on cue, a man slid in next to me, his shirt wet, most likely from sliding into another booth after another lady and spilling his drink. He already had his pickup line ready, but thankfully it was not "Come here often?"

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​I was having a hard time figuring out what this column would be about this week. Resolutions? Hot new bands? The fact that three East Dallas liquor stores sold out of Ciroc? All my ideas were falling with a thud. And then, on New Year's Day, my heart did too.

In the early morning hours of January 1, 2012, Esme Barrera was found murdered in her home near the University of Texas campus. Much has been written about it since, and my grief is fresh, as it is for many, many folks who knew and loved her in the Austin music scene, where I came to know her over the last couple years. I want to impart what an ideal music fan she is/was. I'm still having trouble with present and past tense.

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