Texas Friday

I was invited to join a couple friends on a trip up to Denver to check out a "Texas band." I love to discover sub-cultures. I had no idea that people followed Texas bands, I don't think I knew there were "Texas bands." I got a short lesson before the trip and now have a new understanding of a people who consistently follow emerging artists from Austin as they travel and perform across our great state. We arrived at the alley-type venue in Denver and paid our $8. The first band was interesting to watch, the lead singer a female with super short hair, tattooed arms and dressed in 50's area clothing down to the boxy heeled shoes. I have always said that I love live music and always have a good time at a concert. The start to this evening was no different. Okay, I wouldn't buy the cd, but there is something about watching performers get into their own music, the facial expressions, and my imagination of what life on the road looks like for them. A short break and a new band... This one started a little rough and by the third painful song with a singer who couldn't enunciate or carry a tune it was proving to be much too painful. They clearly had stepped out of the garage or their mother's basement years before they were primed. I was not enjoying this concert or this live music. We decided to bail - on our way out the door we found out it would've been another one and a half hours of garage band music before the headliners were up. Hardly worth the sacrifice and pain.
"Let's go to the Stampede for some dancing." Why not? Right. We arrive to find the place mostly empty, not the kind of place for 3 single ladies to hang out on a Friday night. After much deliberation, we decide we will not call it a loss of a night and travel over to the Grizzly Rose to attempt the same. Shortly after we arrive, we discover it is college night. Lots of underagers with black x's remind me of how old I am. We are eventually approached by 2 young guys who have been drinking. It isn't until one of them takes me out on the dance floor that I discover he can't country dance. For the length of the song, it is free lance dance time with a strange intoxicated boy. Nothing awkward about that. Nothing quite like being out on the wooden dance floor, spotlight on the dancers, live band on the stage and smiling like I'm having the time of my life with a guy who struggles with eye and hand coordination to turn me. He was upset when, at the end of the song, I excused myself from the dance floor.
I'm kind of thinking Texas might be a better place for Texas music and country dancing.