The Coalesce show has come and gone. It was last week.
Things that meant the most to me about the show:

• Meeting and hanging out with Mr. Brady McGarry, who also writes and occasionally edits my writing for SSG.
• Having a couple of dudes in Coalesce recognize/hug me from the bunch of times that I've traveled to see them.

That about covers it. Coalesce were great and so were Converge (who were better) but I hung out at the side of the stage and just watched from there, where the sound wasn't quite as good. Part of me just felt... old. I still beat my chest and air-guitarred but I feel like some of the magic of these shows, especially the incredibly packed sold-out ones, is lost on me.

I had a better time watching Dosh at a far smaller club from a far shorter distance just earlier last week. He and his buddy Mike Lewis put on a hell of a show. They looped, synthed, made crazy sounds with their instruments and bantered with each other and the audience, which maybe amounted to about 80 people. Everyone should at least check out Dosh's myspace page to see what that dude is doing. I've seen him be Andrew Bird's entire backing band at least twice. The guy is a genius and his new record, Tommy, is great.

I'm surprised that this is the case but the Dosh show is more likely to wind up on my top five shows of 2010 than the Coalesce one.

Tonight I'll be seeing Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars. I expect it to rule.

Next week Coalesce will be playing at Neumos with Converge.
Say what you will about their post-Give them Rope material.

This is all that matters.

My coughing situation is getting better. I went to the Doctor and was given a prescription for a Z-Pack. A Z-Pack is a pretty heavy duty anti-biotic and last time I had to take it it was for mono in my early 20s. It destroyed me and had me in the bathroom a lot.

This time, though, Beth suggested that I pop some pro-biotics at the same time to help with my stomach and really, they have. I'm still coughing, but the anti-biotics are done and supposedly they work for a whole seven days after they're all gone. That sounds kind of arbitrary to me but hopefully it'll translate to my being cough-free very soon.

Now I'm supposed to go to the gym for the first time in a couple of weeks. ugh.