I was driving Bridget's car around Hampden last night trying to figure out how to get to the G-Spot gallery for like half an hour last night. The edge of the neighborhood has all these twisty confusing woodsy roads, and it's hard to remember where you are at any given time. The building is an old logging mill or something, no longer in use, right in the middle of these woods. When I found it and parked, Ian MacKaye was the first person I saw walking up. I'd been meaning to introduce myself; I interviewed him over the phone a couple of years ago, and I'm supposed to be interviewing him for Pitchfork whenever he feels like it. But I totally froze. This guy has been making music that's meant the world to me for as long as I've been alive. This wasn't my first Evens show, but it wasn't any less jarring seeing him sitting onstage in front of 100 people in an art gallery the second time after I've seen him like five times in front of thousands of people with Fugazi. After that initial shock, though, an Evens show isn't really all that different from a Fugazi show. There's still that feeling of communal warmth and friendliness and mutual goodwill hanging in the air, and there's still Ian, who gives off this enormous generosity of spirit no matter where they're playing. And then there's the music. It's really, really easy to hear most Evens songs as Fugazi songs, to mentally fill in the bass parts and beef up the guitars and hear them as huge, monumental things. One thing that makes Evens shows different from Fugazi shows: Amy Farina has this amazing, gorgeous voice that just cuts through the air and makes the walls shiver. When she was singing harmonies with Ian, it was almost impossible to hear Ian even through he was singing louder. She's a great, inventive drummer, but I kind of wish she was just a singer. I'd like to see Fugazi reform and include her as a full-time member. She is just so fucking good.

Al Shipley was at the show too. He's graduating next week. Happy graduation, Al!

I'm going up to New York tomorrow for my brother's graduation, and I'll be sticking around for a few days. My girl just got into NYU's social work masters program, and we need to figure out if we can picture ourselves living there. New York dudes, tell me about neighborhoods where broke-ass people can afford dog-friendly apartments. Make noise at me. I'm friendly.