"Hi, I'm Tim's friend, Dave."

I had some options to spend Saturday evening. After briefly considering going over to the Canadian Walk of Fame induction ceremony so I could toss whiskey bottles at Nickelback, I decided I'd start off a NXNE concert crawl with an 8pm show at the El Mocambo. My blog-buddy Tim (Broken Engine) Knight was playing a final last gig. You see, the band he's in, +nurse (the "+" is silent), had played a last gig at The Gladstone Hotel last month. But then a request for +nurse to play a showcase for NXNE came through, and faster than you could say "Cher" (or "the cheque cleared"), the band was back for one more go.

I just had to point out how much I loved Tim's description of the band. He submitted it to NOW Magazine with no idea it would be printed verbatim:

"+nurse - Think Radiohead and Interpol playing euchre against U2 and Coldplay. They're ALL cheating, and eventually someone pulls a knife. Drama and tragedy ensue."

Yeah, that was strangely accurate.

It was a great show, a pretty good turnout for a relatively early slot. A few folks asked where they could see +nurse again, but Tim told them it was the last gig. Whenever someone asked Tim why he was calling it quit, he'd say "Because..." and point to his t-shirt which read:

"I Love My Wife"

Or more accurately, this is why.

I planned to say hi to Tim after the gig, check out some more shows.

Then Tim and I went for drinks. Oy.

Now THAT was a fun night, as we bounded between the ElMo and the Red Room for pints with some of his friends. Tim tried to set me up with every girl on the block, usually starting off by introducing me as his friend "Dave". This is apparently supposed to lead to me chatting up the girl, and if she seems interested, then I say who I really am. Tim did fail to mention my "reasons" for a fake name, but I went with the mysteriously ambiguous "keeping a low profile at the festival" line.

So pint pint pint, laughs about music and soccer, pint pint pint, laughs with some new mates. Went back and forth between bars, was back in the ElMo and caught The Brown Brigade. Unbeknownst to me, that's the new band that Dave "Brownsound" Baksh the former guitarist from Sum41 now fronts, and they weren't bad at all.

Eventually Tim and I ended up at the Torontoist BBQ where I had the chance to meet some more fun people whose blogging I've been reading for the past year or so. Tim and Marc shared memories about the show "Battle of the Planets" over the embers of the BBQ, where I was reassured they had only recently sacrificed a small orphan child. Because that's how bloggers roll. Mind you they were still bloggers, so it was a free-range orphan.*

Tim left to hit the ElMo, I stuck around the BBQ a bit longer and then made the long trek back to Richmond Hill, lest I find myself in Newmarket again at 3 in the morning.

All in all, a great night. I never ended up seeing any other bands, but I didn't mind one bit. how could I with the prospect of more pints, more laughs, some BBQ and some Wii on the horizon? For that, I could be "Dave".

*no, not really. silly buggers.