I was thinking about this the other day... what could possibly have given me the idea to start using concert venues as a forum for communication (read: rampant vandalism)?

It was years ago, when The Darkness did their first tour in the US, starting in Milwaukee... an idea so awesomely stupid and ironic, much like their first album, that some friends and myself had to go. The Concert took place at the Rave/Eagle's Ballroom, which in case you're not familiar, is one of the shittier places for seeing a show in all the upper Midwest, and we were all standing in line outside their decrepit building, waiting to be aggressively searched. It was straight outta "Children of Men," it was.

I wasn't smuggling anything in, but one of the bouncers took exception to a small ballpoint pen I had attached to my keys- Something I use to jot down random ideas when they come to me. The fascists wouldn't let me in because of said pen, stating that I could scrawl epithets and people's phone numbers all over their pristine bathroom facilities. Fuckers. So I threw out the pen, but kept my sense of disgust and scorn at such ham-fisted authoritarian power trips that undoubtedly occur routinely at establishments such as this across our great country. And it was beginning to understand this feeling and sense of collectivism that helped me create Concerted years later.

But thankfully one of my buddies smuggled in a flask, and the three of us managed to get mildly drunk mixing whiskey with their $7 glasses of fountain soda.

Victory was ours!