errantember

This past Friday night, I breathlessly attended the Information Society concert at Elysium. I've been an InSoc fan since their first Tommy Boy album in my pseudo-hacker 80's youth. The five concerts I've been to span over fifteen years, two during the Hack tour, two during Peace and Love, Inc., and this final one for their new album, Synthesizer. In high school I hung out extensively with Aaron Price, aka Boomer, the SysOp of the Yellow Submarine BBS, and, at the time, InSoc's biggest living fan.

My musical tastes have broadened since those halcyon days of youth, but I can still honestly claim that there's no other band I identify with more closely than Information Society. The Bitmaster, my hacker pseudonym and SysOp identity, still lives on in the electron pathways of my soul.

I remember listening to Peace and Love, Inc. and hearing something that felt like the end of the band. I was vaguely aware of the release of Don't Be Afraid in '97, but like many fans didn't find it fit my expectations enough to buy. A vehicle exclusively of lead singer Kurt Harland, it was far darker and more industrial and lacked the poppy-funk feel of previous albums. Ironically, in intervening years I've developed a taste for exactly that sort of music, and recently was delighted to score the two CD set of Don't Be Afraid.

In the intervening eleven years of silence, I had several probable Kurt sightings at various Industrial events in San Francisco, and reaped one of the many rewards my first time at Burning Man in 2004 when I got to see The Car. At the time I was somehow simultaneously aware that The Car was at the burn, but not that Kurt himself was the person I saw officiating at Thunderdome. The "Doh!" came when I saw Kurt describing himself as a "washed up rock star" during a BM documentary segment on Death Guild just a few months ago.

Fast-forward to January 2007. After hearing a dirty rumor that InSoc was active again, I jumped online to chase it down. Disappointment set in when I got sidetracked by the aborted attempt to get InSoc to appear on Where Are They Now, which I erroneously assumed was the source of the rumor. Somehow it surfaced again, though , and within two minutes of confirming that Information Society was not only releasing a new album, but were also on *tour* again, I was on Orbitz looking to buy plane tickets to -- well -- ANYWHERE! When I found out they were going to come to *Austin*, I nearly shit my pants. And then, to top it all, to discover they were playing at Elysium, my favorite club and hangout, was almost life-threateningly joy-inducing. It skyrocketed me to a level of excitement that I had actually forgotten it was possible to experience, and spooled up the Nostalgiatron to previously unseen intensity.

There are some advantages to aging. Unlike many of the fresh faces grooving to Bauhaus on Sunday nights, I'm actually *from* the 80s!

Fully both aware of and apathetic to the danger of over-expectation, I forged recklessly ahead and bought tickets and the new album for both myself and another artifact of that period of my life, my good friend Chris Robison.

Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow!