The Ottobar is a great little club - cozy, gritty, with a tiny peanut gallery balcony. I would guess that there were maybe 200 people there, packed (comfortably) wall to wall and right up against the small stage. The energy in the room and the intimate setting I think really fueled the band, because they were all charged up. Robyn looked sort of fiendishly happy, very smiley and loose. He did a lovely slithery dance during "The Authority Box." In fact he danced a lot - no sign of back trouble. He was coughing quite a bit though. His voice must be getting tired but he still hit the bottom of his lower register in "Not Dark Yet." Morris Windsor was there, looking (as Chris - or was it Bayard? said) like he just came from someone's wedding. You know, stuffed the bow tie in a pocket, undid a couple buttons; a bit rumpled and wilted but still cool.

There were three longish bits of ramble, one about guitar tuning, coccyges ("the cell-phone shaped bits that stop our spines from growing right down into the ground") and rodents; one delivered in a scratchy falsetto that I couldn't make out very well, and the recap of "Magnum Force" preceding "A Man's Got To Know His Limitations Briggs."

The music was... what everyone else has been saying about this tour, wonderfully exciting.

Towards the end of the night a nasty bar fight was short-circuited when the somewhat weedy-looking, deceptively unintimidating bouncers firmly ejected a drunken asshole who
WOULD NOT SHUT UP during the show. If only they had done it sooner.

All in all, a rousing good time in seedy Baltimore. I got home at 2am. I was halfway to my car this morning before I realized I was still wearing my slippers. But what the hell, I'm a teen services librarian. A sleep-deprived glaze and tell-tale blurry handstamp are not going to dismay my patron base.

- Jeanne