Last weekend, I went up to Portland for a sort of reunion with one of my old bands, The Feelings. A few weeks prior, we'd been asked to play at a party to celebrate the centennial of the Lucky House, which is something of a rock institution in Southeast Portland. Initially, we were all a bit reluctant to do it. What if we sucked? We hadn't played together in six years, and I'd hardly sat behind a drumkit at all in that time.

An even more worrisome question was: what if it was weird? Back in the day, we enjoyed a modest kind of success of which I'm still really proud. Rock stardom wasn't really the point; rather, we simply were able to put together a couple of albums' worth of songs that made us really happy and seemed to do the same for a lot of our friends. I guess I was just worried that we might somehow diminsh that in a clumsy attempt to recapture it.

But eventually, we persuaded ourselves to do it. I don't think we would have done a show at a club, but the fact that this was a party at friend's house with the New Bad Things somehow made it all just fine. It seemed like it would just be uncomplicated fun no matter what we did. And in fact, it was.

I flew up about 24 hours before we were to play. We only had about six hours total to practice, but the songs came back with surprising ease. We even wrote a new song, never to be heard again, and learned a new cover. We sounded pretty good in practice, all things considered, though I think we had some pretty bad mistakes during the actual performance. I don't think anyone cared too much, though.

There were quite a few people there. It was great to be able to talk, however briefly, to some people I hadn't seen in years. The whole affair was basically a block party with the bands set up in the driveway and everyone in the street. There was a really difficult drinking game involving ping pong - no one got drunk that way. There was an improvised 20-foot long multiperson teeter-totter that was wisely dismantled before anyone was seriously injured. Someone had an infinite supply of roman candles and wasn't afraid to use them. There were a number of video cameras running, and the performances were projected live onto the warehouse across the street.

In short, it was all fun, no weird. Fun to play, fun to see the New Bads, and fun just to hang out with everyone in PDX again. It was also extra fun because Grace played hookie for the weekend and flew all the way out from Boston just for the occasion. I still think that this was a bit insane, but I doubt she'd have another chance to see this. What're ya gonna do?

Those pictures I have up there are not great. Everyone has scary eyes. If anyone who was there got some more and could send them to me that would be super.