one night of glory

he said.

know any hendrix, dylan? what about the beatles?

not well enough to sing. no. you know bright eyes?

its gotta be oldah....

i dont know that much old stuff very well..

(we sat a moment in thought, sipping our beers while hendrick watched us, smiling.)

say man, lets just make it up. yah right on the spot.

yeah. yeah. haha. yeah.

(my laugh was probably more nervous and ironic than happy. i mean what the heck were we going to sing about.)

you can play the tamborine. they have a tamborine? yeah you can play that and sing backup.

ok.

(i was thinking about the talent show at the ymca, where i played kazoo in a band, without ever having heard what we were going to play. i think we were the only act that didnt make it on the show.)

(hendrick was our acting manager. we were up after the dj finished playing a few songs. he was another couchsurfer who came out to have a few beers with us.)

andrew- you gotta come up with our name. and you can introduce us. use a real texan accent theyll dig that man.

me- yeah. haha. ive been in a few pretend bands in my day... we can use one of those names.... how about linus?

andrew´- yeah thats deep man. layers. but lets say THE linus. sounds more important you know. like THE strokes.

me- yeah alright. so we´re the linus.

andrew- rock on.

(i met andrew at the flat where im staying. he lived here up until a few weeks ago. hes from australia. met his german girlfriend in australia and decided to move to dresden for a couple years to be with her and to try to make it as a journalist in europe. a real cool guy. i ran into him again in neustadt (or new town, where all the cafes and cool shops are in dresden). he was eating chinese.

you wanna grab a beer or sumthin man?

yeah yeah.

so we did. that was at 630. it was about 10 when we decided to play in this open mic guitar contest. you get a free beer just for trying. and how many times will i be able to get in front of a crowd in dresden?)

andrew- we´re up man.

right now?

right now.

(we sat down on these stools in front of the bar. a few people were watching us. most didnt really care. i forgot that i was supposed to introduce us.)

andrew-nathan why dont you introduce us?

me- howdy folks. wur thaw linus. im from tayxes. and mah pardner here, hes from awstralia.

(i think this aroused the germans curiousity.)

a one a two a one two three four.

(and then andrew busts out this wicke. that i guess he just made up. reminded me of the black keys. all i had to do was bang the tamborine and shout echos. which personally i think really added something to the material. the kids were tapping their toes and taking pictures of us.)

I NEED A BED TO LAY MY HEAD

(i dont know exactly what he was saying. he confessed that most of it was just garbled sounds. but it had something to do with beds and heads.)

LAY MY HEAAD!!

(i echoed. after that song was over. they gave us the go ahead to play another. andrew was eating this up. he rocked. and i felt like a star. its quite a sensation. i mean even if its just three guys keeping time with their toes. its quite a sensation. wish i didnt suck so bad at guitar or id give rockstar a go as a possible career path.)

(as we got off the stage the audience applauded. i was still buzzing from the energy of performing. and couldnt help but move and sing along to the song that the dj was playing, one i happened to know and enjoy, house of the rising sun. we went to the bar to get our free beers and bask in the afterglow of celebrity. but it seemed that everyone had already forgotten us and moved on to the next big thing. someone else had mounted the stool.)

(we basked and talked until about four in the morning (dresden his the only city in germany that has no laws about closing time), when the bar was slowing down and a young and quite intoxicated german sat down at our table and ordered us another round, a round that neither andrew nor i wished to partake in, and began to confront us with a drunken rationale about the iraq war. we decided it was time to go home. i had no idea where we were, and i wasnt exactly in the state of mind to figure it out, so andrew offered to let me crash at his flat nearby. he even had an extra mattress.)

(justin i want you to know that the linus is an entirely different entity from linus. i hope this entry didnt cause you any discomfort. i hope we can still be friends. and i hope that the legends of both linus and the linus will live on for generations to come.)