These past few days definitely go down as the first great weekend of the spring. My good friend Brent paid a visit to the east coast for the first time since I’ve lived here, and we spent a glorious Saturday exploring Cambridge and Boston like tourists with a stopwatch. After giving a tour of the campus to his high-school college-visiting charges, we took off for a little tour. We had about eighteen hours to cram it all in, so we spent the minimum on sleep and managed to hit the sights of Harvard, Central, and Inman, plus my first trip to the Gardner Museum and a brief stroll on the Freedom Trail, through the Granary Burial Ground, and across the sun-splashed Common.
We met up for a delicious dinner with Aimee at Kashmir, a choice which presaged an excellent Zeppelin conversation later that evening. After dinner, Brent and I headed off the the Paradise for to see Mr. Josh Rouse, back in town with a four-piece band. I think it was the fourth or fifth time I’d seen him, and it was the best show I’d ever seen, save the intimate solo acoustic evening at the Kendall Caf? a few years back.
I kept turning to Brent, amazed at the number of people in attendance, wondering who they were. I heard about Josh Rouse five years ago, and I’ve only met one other person who knew and liked him, so it was a pleasant surprise to see the Paradise filled with enthusiastic fans. A great energy filled the space, and Josh played mostly upbeat songs from his last two albums. The material, especially the stuff from 1972, really came alive in the club setting, and I’ve had some of the songs stuck in my head going on three days now. He was in fine form, dealing with the manic conducting fan in the front row (that’s her arm in the first photo) by donning her hot-pink tiger-striped velvet cowboy hat and tossing it back to her at a dramatic moment in the song. Brent enjoyed the music more than I’d even hoped; it meant a lot for me to be able to show him my favorite music-going venue, and regale him with stories of seeing the likes of Coldplay, Doves, the Strokes, and the Charlatans there in days past.
At the end of the show, we rushed out of the club and down to Blue Cat Caf? to catch as much of Mark’s 30th birthday celebration as we could. We got in before midnight, and greeted Aimee and Paul with a surprised “Where’s everyone else?” Turns out Mark and his friends didn’t make it to all of Mark’s 30th birthday celebration, so the four of us shared a drink and talked about music, from De La Soul to Led Zeppelin, thanks to the eclectic DJing going on next to our table. We all headed back to Aimee’s, and Brent and I took off for the airport about five hours later, with a brief detour through (I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea. It was great to see him, my oldest friend, the kind of person who really helps you enjoy life.
After a brief post-airport nap, Aimee and I headed to Michael and Ali’s for a great birthday brunch in their backyard in Cambridgeport. As another guest put it, it always seems like the same people come to these brunches, familiar faces you never really see anywhere else besides these great get-togethers. Then he had to go and add “And this is probably the last one, since they’re moving.” Great – thanks a lot. It was a good crowd, Kennedy School students, newspaper reporters, creatives and teachers, and we all enjoyed some amazing food, like french toast casserole and some amazing strata. It was my for-the-record perfect temperature, somewhere in the low ’60s with a cool breeze and bright sun. We took a walk in the newly refurbished Dana Park at the end of their street to walk off the huge meal. Sunbathing, frisbees, doing nothing all day – it’s almost here. We capped off the weekend with our last day of pre-cana, and now have our certificate allowing us to get married, so it was not only a fun weekend, but a productive one as well.
