Date Night

Lately, Gia and I have been trying to do a date night at least once a week.  Maybe a movie, maybe dinner, whatever.  This past Friday, our date night landed us at our recent favorite haunt in town. Got to meet the new owners of the joint, and enjoyed some delicious pub food.  I had a fried pickle burger with swiss (as good as it sounds), and my woman had herself some short rib risotto.  It all rocked so very much.

Then we headed down to a little sports pub that we've been frequenting lately to watch some of the MLB playoffs. Sure, the Yankees are out of it.  But that just means I get to root for good baseball instead of my team. Lose some, win some.

As we were leaving, we heard what sounded like some live music coming from the restaurant that we ate at earlier.  So we went to investigate.  Sure enough, every Friday night they clear out one side of the joint around 11ish and a local band takes stage.  The band that night was a reggae/ska/soul group called The Bluebeats. They were...really good. At one point they took a break from the reggae/ska and did what sounded like a Motown number. And the lead singer, a dude by the name of Mike Drance, really pulled it off.

Then they did a great version of Elvis Costello's "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down".  Well, Sam & Dave originally released it back in 1967.  But I know it from Elvis, so that's that.

Anyway, I looked them up when we got home and I found out that Mike Drance was the co-frontman of my favorite ska band of all-time.  The Scofflaws.  I've written about them here before, a long time ago.  He left the band right around the time that I was getting into them and ska in the early 1990's.  But that's pretty freakin' cool.  Makes me wish I had seen more of them back when he was skankin' along with the rest of the criminals (not really) in that band.

But he's still jammin' out with The Bluebeats, and that's cool enough.

I dig date night.

Here's a little Elvis Costello for ya. Enjoy!