PRESIDENT

Some concert nights are built around discovery. This one was built around reunion and controlled bad judgment. I met my longtime friend Dave at House of Blues Orlando for PRESIDENT, ordered a Coors Light, and eventually made exactly one trip over the crowd. No encore was required from my spine.

Coors Light is not a beverage that asks for analysis. At a show, that is a virtue. It is cold, familiar, and unlikely to become the story unless something has gone terribly wrong. PRESIDENT had named the tour the North American Campaign; the beer served as campaign logistics—simple fuel while the actual reason for being there waited beyond the bar.

Dave was the more important constant. Longtime friends carry enough shared history that meeting up again does not need ceremony, and a concert gives the reunion somewhere to point its energy. House of Blues only needed to hold the occasion together. PRESIDENT supplied the name on the bill, Dave supplied the continuity, and the Coors Light occupied the hand not otherwise doing anything useful.

Then came the single crowd surf. One is not caution, exactly, but it does suggest a functioning relationship with consequences. Zero would have left the night suspiciously responsible; two would have looked like a platform. For a tour called the North American Campaign, I cast one full-body ballot and retired undefeated. That was the correct count: enough foolishness to make the reunion memorable, not enough to require a policy explanation the next morning.