The number of Orbital tickets on this list scares me, frankly. I'm pretty sure that the main reason that I went to see Orbital this time was that Spring Heel Jack was opening, and by the end of 1996 I was on a heavy Spring Heel Jack kick.

I drove down to Gainesville for this one and visited with Esther. I was expecting Spring Heel Jack to put on a great show, but I was sorely disappointed with their set. The music was good and loud, but I've never seen two guys who looked less interested in performing than those two. I had hyped SHJ up to my friends and I had to backtrack quickly when I realized that they made great records but that they weren't too hot on the stage. Spring Heel Jack eventually veered off into jazzier territory and I still collected just about everything they released, but this show was a real downer.

The only other memorable bit was the fact that a guy from my high school was a bouncer at the Florida Theater, and it was a job that he took far too seriously. I'm sure that he didn't remember me at all--we weren't friends, but I recognized him and also recognized that since he'd gotten to college, he had probably been working out. He had sort of ballooned into the kind of person who looks like they have to be pumped up with air before they leave the house. Having known him as a mostly good-natured and kind of geekier kid, I was surprised to see how much the working out and the small little bit of authority went to his head. He slung trash cans around and checked people's badges and he carried a mag light and he moved with a quick, deliberateness that seemed to scream "I'm busy and important and I know what I'm doing." It was OK to me if none of those things were true, but he'll probably never know that.