I haven't updated in a while. Sorry. I am in full-tilt crazy mode. How is this different from your everyday, Partygirl? I don't know. Just is.

Work is crazy; my personal life is crazy. I am sizzling like someone just plugged me into a massive electrical volt. Wet.

I'm not going to backtrack to the wild weekend I had or Toastgirl being here Monday night to see her favorite band. Let's skip to Tuesday night. Tuesday night I saw Stand and they changed my life.

I see a lot of bands. Tons. I've worked with bands. Still do. I've dated sound engineers, music store managers, bassists, keyboardists - even a guy that played a bitchin' accordian! Wannabe rockstars.

I've sat for hours, indian style on the floor of a recording studio, listening to playback after playback and watching starving musicians waste precious studio time. I've read through pencil smudged songbooks. I've listened to songs written about me.

I've sung Tiny Bubbles (albeit, terribly off-key) at the soundcheck for mid-sized gigs. I've been lured into tour buses, before I knew better, goggley-eyed at the mention of a private acoustic performance and the promise of cheap canned beer.

I'm the girl a band calls when they think they have an A&R guy coming that night and they need someone who is charming and conversational on hand. I'm the girl that friends who are agents or managers call when they have to show face at the flavor of the month's industry gig or gold record party because they know I won't starfuck the flavor of the month and that I will find it all as amusing as they know it is.

I've scrambled hours before a show to fill a room for band's desperate to keep their gigs. Spent afternoons rallying friends to show up at open mic nights to support friends that I talked into performing. I've said "great show" approximately 8,908,567 times.

I *know* the drill.

I go see so many bands, that often I can tell by song 1 in a set that they will be a one-hit wonder. Often, after a few songs, I spend more time scoping industry people and gauging their reaction rather than paying attention to the performance.

Occasionally, or maybe I should say rarely, I see a band that totally *hits it* and I am blown away. That's what happened last night with Stand.

They are friends of a friend and they had some industry people coming to an important gig and my friend told me to bring some people to fill the room. She's been talking about them forever, so I figured I'd better make good on my promise and get down there and see what all of this Stand talk was about. And now I know.

When I tell you that I have never wanted to fuck a lead singer so much in my entire life, I'm not exaggerating. I sat there, paralyzed. I didn't smoke, I didn't drink. I stared. In awe. They were amazing. This singer, he's also the bassist. Unbelievable. He had this raw emotional honesty on stage that felt like he was sacrificially offering himself to the room.

There was no shame in his game and he just bared his soul for everyone to take a peak inside. He was*positively*infectious. After living through recent years filled with morose grunge, and *damn the man * bands like Pearl Jam, then the wrath of Billy Corgan and the goth melancholy of NIN and Manson and the wigger anger of Eminem, it was absolutely refreshing to watch a lead singer on stage smile and sing while he just absolutely-fucking-high-energy-rocked.

I mean, he just saw the absurdity in this thing called rock-n-roll and he let the crowd in on the joke. His beauty emanating from the pleasure he took in sharing the group's music and lyrics was overwhelming. He wasn't one of those angry at the world, image-crazy musicians. So intense they forget to have fun. He was intense and electric and wild and punk and rock and folk and sweet and saucy and a showman. Watching him was like a standing in violent storm on a hot summer evening and watching lightening injected into the ocean from a safe vantage point on a nearly dune, witnessing the beauty of nature.

He blinded me with his beauty, not unlike many of you do with your writing. He offered himself purely to this room full of strangers and me, the skeptic, sat there abstaining - mentally reaching for him and internally holding back to allow him to publicly fuck the room with his melody. All in one verse, I recognized him for the lover he must be...open, loving, embracing, nuturing, silly, natural. I almost felt the need to run to him, and I knew if I did, he'd greet me with the genuine smile and open arms he displayed on stage when he sang.

After the show, we were introduced. I hated sharing him with the crowd that was demanding so much of him. With the stranger's hands that reached for him, no different from mine.

He drew me so deeply to him, the entire band did, with their comfortableness among each other and their connectedness that I saw no point in staying. I didn't want to be that girl. The starry-eyed one. Reiterating the same tired praise that they've heard echoed in similar venues for years.

So I walked past him. I allowed the black velvet sleeve of my coat brush against his naked hand, as he spoke with a fan. He turned in surprise, perhaps aware of the sensuality of the fabric and as our eyes met, I slowly smiled and lifted my head shyly toward his, using my eyes to reach inside of him. To speak to him and communicate words that I couldn't find to express.

And I continued to walk, right out the door, into the cold, wet night.

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