The oak and weed together rise along the common ground

Once again, I am lacking energy as I sit to write. I'll get through it, though, so don't fret. It is Monday, after all, and after an eventful weekend that ended with me going to bed way too late, I'm entitled to be a little sleepy.

The weekend. Shane and his girlfriend, Jenni, came by in the early afternoon on Saturday. It was a few hours before his gig at the Lizard Lounge, and by gig I mean to say his participation, along with a couple of dozen other performers, in the final round of a songwriting competition.

We ate an early dinner replete with good conversation. It's not often we get to see Shane; it was a treat. And it was just as much a treat getting to know Jenni better. They left around five and headed over to the club. About an hour later, Mike arrived at the house. The two of us walked over to the club, with the idea that Janelle would meet up with us later.

Mike and I had a beer at the Cambridge Common, which is situated above the Lizard Lounge. When we headed downstairs, we met up with Shane and Jenni and it was only a few minutes before the show began.

The performers. I have to say I was disappointed in the lack of variety. Most were good at what they did, but what they did was so derivative that it didn't matter how good they were. Most of the male performers sounded like Damien Rice, Jack Johnson, John Mayer, or any other male singer/songwriter you're liable to hear on adult contemporary radio. And the women, especially if they were at the piano, sounded just like Feist, Jewel, Melissa Etheridge, or any other female singer/ songwriter you're liable to hear on adult contemporary radio.

I wasn't expecting pure originality, pure inventiveness -- that's not easy to come by anywhere -- but I was expecting variation. Mind you, there was some -- there was a guitar and bass duo (guy on guitar, tiny cute girl on bass which was taller than she was) that had a punchy post-industrial vibe on at least one of their songs; a guy with a basso profundo voice that sang/spoke in the vein of Lou Reed or Bill Callahan, but way more mainstream -- closer to that fuck Shawn Mullins; a young buck with a raw manner and throaty bellow that pulled his muse from the fiery bowels of his being- an unexpected treat; and there was Shane, the shining light, the most refreshing of the bunch. And that's saying something, considering he's the only one I'd ever heard before.

Where was the blues player, the bluegrass performers with fiddle and mandolin, the Elliot Smith fan, the Joanna Newsom-inspired harpist, the Mark Kozelek devotee, the Joni Mitchell girl? Nowhere to be found. Disappointing, I say. This was supposed to be a representation of the best of the best, locally speaking? I don't believe it, they're out there. Somewhere. I'm sure of it.

As the night progressed, so did the length of the host's rants between performers. He wasn't so bad, seemed like a nice enough guy, but whenever you combine the manic intensity of Robin Williams with alcohol consumption, you're in for a long, sometimes frustrating night. If Shane had been eliminated early on, we would have bailed and gone off into that good night, but that wasn'tj going to happen -- he pressed right on to the final round. Boo yeah, son!

We were so proud watching Shane progress through the rounds. Not so much because he was defeating other performers -- that really didn't have much to do with it -- okay, just a little bit -- music, like any art, is subjective and who's to say who's better than who-- but it was cool, thrilling really, seeing one of our own excel. Sure, we were partial as fuck, but I'm confident each one of us would have voted him the best performer if we didn't know who he was.

As I said, he made it the final round. He had beat out his biggest threat, a Paul Simon-esque performer named Reed Waddle, who was actually quite good and had defeated Shane in a prior competition, in one of the middle rounds, and I figured he was going to be a shoe-in for the grand prize, which was five hundred smackers, in case you were wondering.

By the time the final round hit, it was nearing two a.m. Everyone -- the performers, the judges, the host, the spectators -- was exhausted. The host ushered in the final round laying on the floor with his eyes closed.

Shane was up against the deep-voiced guy, who wasn't so bad, but did not hold a candle to Shane. Fuck, he couldn't even hold a match to Shane. That is the incontrovertible truth. It just is. So did Shane win? Hell, no! The judges fucked up, made a huge mistake, committed a grave injustice that will be felt throughout the farthest reaches of the cosmos.

Know what, though? It didn't matter. We still had a blast. We were still proud as proud could be of Shane, who performed flawlessly, and for whom this contest wasn't so much about the grand prize, but about making connections and challenging himself to excel at his craft.

Janelle, Mike, and I walked home through the post rain Cambridge after hours, buzzed and a little outraged at the injustice we'd just witnessed. But it was done in good spirits and with humor. Hell, Shane made it to the finals. Nothing to sneeze at. And, even if he was eliminated in the first round, would that have made him any less than the phenomenal talent that he is?

Nope.
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For me, it's music, music, music. On the verge of completing a trio of songs and, hopefully will have at least one finished for Wednesday's practice. And, in between music, music, music, I'll watch some Office: Season Five and maybe some Six Feet Under. Oh, and I'll for sure read from A Betrayal In Winter because it's such a gorgeous read.