~ After I finished setting up in Hell’s Kitchen this evening, I went upstairs to catch some of the Tom Tom Club’s soundcheck. (I’m glad I got to see some of the soundcheck, since I usually miss bands that play upstairs.)

I was the only one in the club, aside from the front-of-house mixer and Melinda doing the stage mix. The band played “Genius Of Love.” It was like a special, private performance of “Genius Of Love,” especially for me.

I had met Victoria, one of the lead singers, and I was having trouble taking my eyes off her. Those eyes… that dazzling smile… that body. And a voice that made me feel like I was floating.

After soundcheck, Victoria and I will make out in the dressing room. She will whisper to me that I am her “Genius Of Love.” Then we will hold hands and run laughing through the fog on the Halifax waterfront.

When I woke up from this genius daydream, the band were starting another song. I went and stood with Melinda beside the stage.

The guitarist leaned into his amp to produce a feedback-drenched lead intro. Then at the appropriate moment Tina Weymouth hit an open-E on her bass. BOOM B’DOOM. As the music picked up, she continued to drive out this open-E rhythm with her left hand–BOOM B’DOOM–while her left hand hung at her side, not even going near the fretboard.

She glanced over and saw me watching, and she smiled and nodded along with the music. Still pounding out the one-note bassline with her right hand, she grinned and raised her left hand to me in sort of a shrug.

My interpretation of this gesture was, “How can you improve upon perfection?”

All this combined with her black miniskirt and red fishnets made for a sexy rock’n’roll moment that I will never forget.

~

“So what do you do at the club, Philip?” Victoria asks me.

“I’m the ahh, bahhh, dhahhh downstairs sound tech,” I say.

I’m not normally tongue-tied around women, but then I don’t normally talk to sexy rock stars from New York City.