Morning Music Unplugged

When worlds collide: I had to walk through VCU's campus on move-in day to get to the Tim Barry show at Fine Foods this morning.

The campus was crawling with freshmen and their families unloading their worldly goods for transfer to the dorms (two things common to every pile: a full-length mirror and bottled water). The students looked impossibly young and the parents looked harried even through the morning was young. The sidewalks were clogged with people and stuff. Welcome to VCU.

Arriving in Oregon Hill, minivans, SUVs and frantic families gave way to an almost entirely tattooed crowd of kids in bathing suits, kids with cases of PBR and kids on bikes. One guy had on the most amazing pair of green glitter bathing trunks; they looked like the scales of a mermaid's tail. Welcome to Best Friends Day.

Like last year, here, and the year before, I always make a point to be at the Saturday morning show at Fine Foods. It doesn't matter what the music is, either. I go because I can't resist the lure of a morning show (even earlier at 10 this year compared to 11 the last two years), the crowd is always colorful and I like showing support for a true Richmond tradition.

After the past two years of full-on noise, today's show was relatively low-key. Former Avail front man Tim Barry did an unplugged set, no doubt surprising some of the audience members. Surrounded by the sweaty and hungover crowd, he played an energetic show in the shaded part of the parking lot.

I talked to a bunch of people who told me they were there specifically for Barry. Two guys with whom I was sharing the shade of a tree told me that they' d driven up from Norfolk this morning solely to see him play and then do some rock climbing by the river. Nothing more. Barry and rocks and they were out.

I didn't have the heart to tell them that he's playing the Listening Room Tuesday night. It's a good week to be a Tim Barry fan in Richmond.

Walking home through Monroe Park, I detoured through the misting tent, using VCU's water to cool my Fine Foods show sweat. Now that's the kind of worlds colliding I'm talking about.