Dear Jane @ CUHK

I am lucky enough to actually play with a band that I am a huge fan of. Thanks to Dear Jane, I have gotten to be on TVB:Even better, I have gotten to  to play at Hitec Hall:This way you know I'm not lying.I've gotten to hear girls scream:At someone standing next to me.I have taken photos with giggling fans:Which I frankly see as charity work, considering how frigging uncomfortable it makes me for so many obvious reasons.But hey, rock and roll really is all about the kids, right?

And I'm old enough that they could be my kids...

In related news, that gig (it's not really a job since I don't get paid and I am not in fact part of the band, just an extra 'live' musician,' will soon be my only 'job.'

I didn't publish enough research as a professor, for a lot of reasons, both good and bad. So I am not being asked to return next year. My professorship has sunk.

Which, for a lot of reasons, both good and bad, I am actually quite happy about.

In a rare bit of luck and happenstance, Dear Jane actually played at CUHK the last week of class; I have previously blogged about it, though at that time it had yet to happen.

There were two bands from 'up above,' who apparently won some sort of China-wide contest. Thus, they were supposedly two of the best bands in China.

Of course, Hong Kong wasn't part of that contest, and we wanted to be sure that people understood why.

There was another band from Hong Kong, but they were matched to one of the China bands, both playing something rather less confrontational than rock.

I'd personally say that about the second band too, who apparently though that they were punk rock. Leaving aside that they played four covers of Mandopop songs and only one of their own, and were very nice and well-behaved.

Dear Jane felt (and feel) that we/they have a mission. Howie lived in Canada for a long time, and Tim (and I) lived in the US. As a consequence, our understanding of rock and roll, what it should sound like, and how people should react to it, is not necessarily a widely held view here in Hong Kong.

But I'm an educator, and it was a gig at a university.We played five songs, like the rest of the bands, but we played ours with minimal pauses in between for tuning, blather and other (needless) interruptions.

It is for this reason that I apologize to anyone kept waiting to see us. The original idea was 5:00 start, 4th band (us) @ 6:00. Even in optimal situations, that's grossly optimistic. We made it on about 7:00 or so.

The funny thing is, as Warner once told me and I know to be true, the good shows seem to last five seconds and the bad shows seem to last a week.

This gig seemed to go by faster than I thought possible. "Howie, did you fart?" "Tim farted!"Tim can't resist having a Kodak moment. Grandpa always falls asleep when he's up late . "Stay over there and you won't be stepping on my toes!"There was a pause at one point, when Tim introduced the band, and of course made a point to remind them who I was.Tim and Howie made me say something to the crowd:

Caption Contest:

"________________ you!"Rather than some sappy goodbye, I used it to ask the crowd (in Cantonese) if they'd rather study or vacation.

Because the next song was "Vacation." My favorite movie-date Vickie was there with her mother. Vickie wore a dress in my honor, which her mother says is very unusual. I made sure she wore earplugs.

And we made sure she needed them.

During this break, Vickie gave me a bouquet of flowers.

It was so nice that I wasn't even embarrassed.

"No, no, it's sweat..." It did my aging heart good to watch young kids go apeshit. We whipped them into a frenzy and had them jumping up and down in front of us.We came, we saw, and we kicked a lot of @ss.

The only thing better than being able to watch it was being part of instigating it.

I'm grateful for the screaming of my students and the presence of my colleagues, and for Vickie being there, and apparently being special enough that this tomboy-to-be would wear a dress for me.I am, as always, verygrateful to Dear Jane for giving me the chance to play for them.  I have really, really great friends.There's more photos and video of all the songs on my Facebook page.I'm too computer-illiterate to port the videos.