Thursday and Friday was a rare double-shot of live rock for yours truly when Don and I caught Rana out at The Saint in Asbury Park and then again at John & Peter’s over in New Hope, PA the next night. The Thursday night gig was the only one we originally planned to hit, but considering that New Hope was less than an hour away we said “What the hell” and made the trip.
The Saint crowd did it’s usual disappearing act for the headliner of the evening. After the friends and family of the opening act left, there was about 12 or 13 Rana fans left to watch and cheer. Well, on the bright side of that we were all very loud so it sounded like there were more people there than there really was. The crowd in New Hope was much better, with about 70 or so people there for most of the evening.
And even better than it being a packed house in a rather cozy venue that felt like we were in a friend’s appointed basement instead of a bar was the fact that Rana played for nearly three hours. First they backed the opening act, a gentleman they invited to play by the name of Chris Hartford who both rocked and grooved with an excellent stage presence. Then Rana started a set of their own material that came close to two hours, bringing their usual raucous rock stylings to bear on the crowd.
On top of all that good music (which left my ears ringing well into Monday morning) I had an opportunity to go tubing down the Delaware River on Saturday afternoon. The outing was arranged by and for on Ian Keogh, in honor of his leaving to go live down in the pan handle of Florida. I think school has something to do with it, thought you never can be sure with Ian. He’s been known to do some weird shit.
The group consisted of the aforementioned Ian, good friends Don and Joanna, Ian’s friend Kelli and myself. We had a blast on the river, listing away for about 3 hours or so. We saw houses on the mountains and the shores of the river and made plans to wrest them from their owners. Don and Kelli tried to master standing on the tubes and almost always fell upon getting upright. We paid extremely high prices to eat hot dogs from a little ram-shackle operation run on one of the islands called “Hot Dog Man”, then contemplated how we could drive said Hot Dog Man out of business with a bass boat and about $30 worth of groceries from the local food store (all in good fun of course; not like we were sore for having to pay $4 a dog or something).
Afterwards we headed down to New Hope to wander around and grab dinner. I find it rather humorous that I had never been to New Hope before this summer, and yet I’ve now been there three times in the last two weeks. Go figure! We ate at “Cafe Lulu’s“, where I had one of the best Turkey Clubs to ever pass these lips. Shortly there after the lingering exhaustion from splashing around in the sun all day (not to mention the tryptophan from the turkey) came to the for and wiped me out, so it was as good a time as any to head home.
A weekend well spent. Getting a jump start on things with a Thursday night out was icing on the cake. Getting to see Ian for the first time in about three years was one of the bigger highlights. Hopefully the Florida sun will even out the color on that freshly shaven skull of yours. ^_^
