I come from the water.

Today I saw the Toadies for seventeen dollars. Andrea went with me, and we were right in front-- You seriously could not have been any closer to the lead singer than where we were. No more than five feet. I could see all the intense angry facial expressions he made when he sang, and occasionally his eyes would dart around, and he'd stare directly at me out of the corners of his eyes for a couple seconds while he sang and I swear his irises are solid black.

They played all of my favorite tracks and obviously had a fun time doing it. "You're a fanfuckingtastic crowd, and this one's for you," they'd say. And then jam on their guitars for ten seconds and say "Thank you." This sort of thing happened more than once. There was a bobblehead of Thor from Marvel Comics on the drum set.

The Toadies are getting up there in the years, but the vocals are still solid and they definitely still have it; the show kicked ass and I screamed my lungs out and sung along. Andrea liked it too, in spite of not knowing the band.

The lead singer switched guitars twice. Each time he did he threw a guitar pick. All the people around me were very drunk and uncoordinated. I now have a guitar pick that has a t in a triangle and says "toadies" on one side and "This pick was STOLEN from Vaden Todd Lewis" in scratchy letters on the other. And to top it off, the bassist gave me a set list and the guitarist signed it for me, skirted requests from drunk people (including arm-signings and 'will you leave my sick girlfriend a voicemail') and talked to me for a minute or two before leaving for an end-of-tour party backstage.

"Hey, I have a question for you: my friend and I were having a bit of a debate a while back. Is 'I Burn' (which I was absolutely thrilled that they played, I might add) about smoking pot?"
"Nah, it's about a book. Do you know Fahrenheit 451? Todd read the book and as soon as he put it down he started working on that song. Trust me, if it was about pot it would be way more flowery and have absolutely nothing to do with smoke or burning or anything."

He smiled and took a drag of a joint, and I wondered if I was being led on, if he was making this up on the spot.

They have a new album out after eight years' hiatus, "No Deliverance," and they played some things off of it. It certainly sounded good live, good enough that I'm going to look into it.

I thought they were going to leave it out, but the very last song they played was the song that sounds like a love song but is actually about breaking into a girl's house, kidnapping her, and running away to Mexico. I think I pulled a muscle in my throat singing along as loud as I could with the rest of the crowd.