March 3 2007: The Thermals, the Big Sleep - T.T. the Bear's Place, Cambridge MA

This was probably the most punk rock of a show I've been to in a long, long time, and all these kids were packed into this tiny room and they were all jumping around and fucking CROWD SURFING and just going nuts, and the band was playing these 2.5 minute songs back to back to back, and I felt kind of old standing there in the back with Sweeney and Jared, just standing there sharing a PBR (for old times' sake)with Sweeney, and every now and then someone would fall into me or bump me en route to the front or something like that, and these are all things that I usually don't care for. Plenty of shows have been ruined for me by probably the vary same assholes who were jumping around tonight. But I think that if there was ever a time/place for kids to jump around and crowd surf and just go nuts, it must be a Thermals show. And really, maybe jumping around is the only appropriate response to a set full of songs like "Our Trip," especially if you're that 17-year-old with the fake ID who told his mom he's staying at a friend's house in order to make it to a show that didn't finish until 145am? I mean, punk rock isn't supposed to be about sharing a beer in the back while tapping your foot. And it's not as though all I was doing was tapping my foot - there was definitely some moving going on on my part. But these kids. Wow.

So yeah - crazy show. People all over the place, the Thermals up there rocking everybody's ass off, it was almost perfect. The set was pretty well-rounded between their three albums, and I have to give the kids credit for even knowing the old tunes. "Back to Gray" and "Brake and Brace" got the same response as "Pillar of Salt" did. "Everything Thermals" got played, and "God and Country" opened the encore, and "It's Trivia" and "No Culture Icons" were as great as they've ever been.

And the whole thing kind of took me back. I got to know the first Thermals album while driving through southern Utah just for kicks, and probably the wildest/craziest/broken-glass-all-over-the-place-type sex I've ever had happened after seeing the Thermals play for the first time. So the Thermals and I have some pretty good memories together, and it was nice to see that they haven't gone soft on me.