Thank you and good night, fine sir.

If in life we may be so lucky, we get but a handful of moments to sink our teeth into so strongly that little bits and pieces of those days never get out from between our teeth. In the winter of 2006, our band had the grand fortune of being asked to play a show at a place called The Tiki House–a small residential garage in a military neighborhood converted into a venue via stolen milk crate stage and spray paint. Even fewer people than now cared to see our band play back then, and we felt honored and obliged to play any place that offered.

We went into the evening expecting little more than a hodgepodge scattering of punk kids and their tagalong friends, but as we pulled up to the house, barely-muffled noise seeping out from down some overcrowded driveway, the swarm of laughter and joy and intensity and Safeway brand Tiki Soda announced immediately that we were in for something else. The garage was so packed that we could barely squeeze ourselves into it. Everyone was going bonkers, doing microphone hand-outs with bananas instead of microphones, moshing while sitting down, stagediving off of backs into the roof, and everyone knowing every word to every song their friends were playing. Words are going to fail here, but hopefully something of the sentiment will not: I was 22-years-old, a thousand miles from home, feeling like maybe I was wasting my time, like maybe there was a suit and tie in some department store I was supposed to be wearing, and that the silly loud music I was playing was a phase I had let stay on past its prime. Five minutes into our set, though, and it was already enough to right my mind and convince me that so long as my bones would allow it, those small little sweaty rooms were the only real home I would ever really know.

It has been many years now since that moment. Many years since I met the boys and girls that taught me how to eat life up in gulps. Many years passed, many of them moved away, or making smaller versions of themselves, or turning tassels, or getting up onto stages more fitting of their talents, many of them growing up and on and past our band being relevant to them anymore. Much (most?) of me, though, has never left that room, and has never moved passed the awe that those boys and girls instilled in me. One of their own, Sam Silverstein, passed away today after a terrible diving accident at work. And while he and I did not know each other for long, qualitative periods of time, the handful of moments that he shared with me were enough to remind me how much more in love with life I could be. He was a singular man, warm, meaningful, important, and one of the few people that has ever passed away and made me wish whatever heavens others believe in actually exist. If there were any justice in this life, Sam would be there now, in his short shorts, skanking deep into the night, swinging me into the crook of his elbow, trampling this odd life underfoot ad infinitum. Rest in power, Sam, forever and ever.

Al / DANGERS