On the 6th I was invited to a show at a place called Fort Seriously. The bands were Jason Stein trio, Hypercolor, and one that I think may have been called Eloe, but I can't be sure.

I knew that it would be a house show, but getting in proved to be a bit difficult. We got there late, and I could hear the music coming from behind a large set of doors, but there was a fence-gate in front of those doors. To the left there was a normal apartment building entrance. Pressing the four buzzer buttons produced no response. I went off to the right and found another set of doors. "Pull" was written on one of them, so I did. It seemed a little sticky, so I pulled harder. I started to see some living room furniture inside. Then I heard a man's voice angrily shout "YO!", and footsteps hurrying over to the door. I ran away, and just then someone let us in to the other door on their way in. Soon we were inside the fort.

The space was a typical hipster residence: high ceilings, lofted beds, sculptures made of 50 computer mice hanging from cords all tangled together, Adult Swim posters, computers stacked everywhere. My kind of place.

The Jason Stein trio played free jazz, with the namesake member on the bass clarinet.

Eloe's set went as follows. A guy in a starfish costume made of out of foam pointed out different locations on a large map of the world they had hung. A girl dressed in black played with a bunch of kitchen knives, making them kiss each other and such. Another guy sat in a go-cart, occasionally wheeling himself around and appearing to play with a toy telephone. My friend Matt, who had organized the show and had been recruited by the others with little or no preparation, sat in front of a TV with a huge rabbit's head costume tied to his head, and rocked back and forth while declaiming an improvised monologue that loosely followed the video that was on the TV.

Hypercolor played hyperactive jazz-rock that was absolutely incredible. They reminded me of Built to Spill's early stuff in the way their songs were sprawling, layered, and spontaneous-sounding yet also quite carefully composed. The guitarist was brilliant. It was clear hearing it that he could express himself far better through a lead guitar line than he could by singing any words, and so there were no vocals. This is a band that I hope to hear a lot more of.

The show reminded me of my days at the Halfass, the venue in the basement of a dorm in Ann Arbor that I helped to book for in college. Partly this was due to the fact that the bass player in Hypercolor was James Ilgenfritz, who played in a band called Larval that I once booked (Jason Stein played in Larval in that show as well), and was generally part of the scene. I was surprised to find out that he remembered me, and we talked of the good old days. For a while it seemed like every few weeks I would attend a show there and discover an amazing new band that I had hardly heard of before, but that I would soon hear a lot of: Ted Leo, Japanther, Liars, to name a few. It's ridiculous to say, but it just hasn't been the same in New York lately. Perhaps it's just that with so much going on it's harder to find the good stuff. Or maybe Ann Arbor somehow has us beat, because it's a real community of bands that love to be doing what they're doing, rather than simply trying to make it big. Then again, Japanther and Liars are from Brooklyn, so maybe those examples don't help my argument.

Either way, Fort Seriously gives me hope again. After the show I checked out their website, and found out that you can download recordings of all the sets in full. I also saw some of the bands that had played there recently, including Japanther and a band called Harry and the Potters, who improbably enough are incredibly hip even though they write songs about Harry Potter. This made me wish I had found out about it earlier.