Tonight I've had a really interesting night: Although I considered staying at home after a hard working week, the longing for companionship -or merely a pussy?!- drove me out around 10 o'clock in the evening after all.

At first I went to a Punk rock concert in a cellar joint mostly visited by students. I had some beers and placed myself near the bandstand, sideways to the speakers, in order to save my eardrums from bursting. I liked the music and the guys in the band and the young people pogueing away to those aggressive Punk sounds. One of the girls in the audience caught my attention, sporting a Scottish-checkered skirt, like a kilt, interestingly patterned hose and a real Iroquois Punk haircut. She looked like one of those girls from my youth, who I admired from afar back then, while being an uncool geek myself. Nowadays I dress in all in black and I am well-figured and tattooed, but I'm basically too old. But that apparently so many young people even today can identify with the protest/anti-fascist message of Punk gives me hope. Hey, Punk lives!

When the concert was finished I was really drunk and I decided to stumble across the street to a former favorite hangout of mine called "Die Goldene Krone" (The Golden Crown) and get a coffee to sober me up somewhat. What happened was that I had the unexpected luck of witnessing one of the rare Blues concerts of a local legend of sorts: A man named Fred Hill, an African-American who's been living here in Germany for ages, was slumped in a chair on stage when I came in, looking ultra-cool, with a white leather cap on his head and wearing dark shades and black leather pants, not moving much, looking like a statue.

The man is in his 70s or 80s now and being a long, long way from Missisippi or Chicago, Fred is as close to a real Bluesman as one can get over here. I got my coffee, placed myself at a table and tried to stop my head from spinning around. After a while, I realized, that Fred wasn't sitting on stage for nothing and that he might be waiting for his performance to start soon. And start it did, after the 30 minutes or so that it took me to consume my coffee, the guy who owns the place and another guy playing drums joined Fred and they started jamming. Although being quite old -or especially because of that- Fred Hilll emanated a believability when doing those Blues songs that got to my heart.

There's a Blues song that says "You got to suffer, if you wanna sing Blues" I'd say, you have to know suffering if you want to UNDERSTAND Blues. I do. I mean, while sitting in this bar and listening to the Blues I thought about a lot of sad facts: About the last woman I ditched, who afterwards really meant so much more to me than I ever realized while we were together, about me not having become the famous author or journalist I've always hoped to become, about the friends I'd lost....And hey, why is it that -no matter where I go- I'm either too old or too young?? At the Punk concert I was sort of an elder, having witnessed the birth of this musical style back in the 80's and the audience being in their teens or twenties but at the Blues concert, most people were in their Fourties or Fifties. Hell, where are the guys and dolls my age? I guess at home caring for their kids and about each other. I neither have kids nor a wife...no wonder I dig the Blues so much. I've loved and I've lost and now I am lonely...

Anyway, when the band took a break, I decided I was sober enough to drive home. End of story.