Last Sunday, I played Paul Hines’s Acoustic Afternoon at Bourbon Street in Fullerton. It went like this:

Paul gave each of us an hour which is a damn long set. I made a list of 24 or 25 songs that I could play. I swapped some in and didn’t play others but I still played 19 songs. And as you can see, that only brushes 45 minutes.

My massive set: Becky, KD, Eliza, Zooey, Out the Other, Nicole, Apostrophe, I Gave Up, Can’t Stand Losing You (Police), I Remember Girls, Every Little Thing, Bad Scene Everybody’s Fault (Jawbreaker), Frankly Mr Turner, Lazy Man, Don’t Come Close (Ramones), News 4 U, Stay Together for the Dog, You Have the Worst Taste in Men, Selina

I’m always at a loss on how to do those shows. You know, it’s a bar. It’s midday. People likely aren’t listening. I’d flip-flopped between playing a largely covers set and playing my short pop songs. I decided that I should just play what I want to play since the crowd probably won’t care. And that worked for me at least. I should have made a longer list of songs. But there’s this distance you feel when you’re in front of a microphone and no one is really paying attention. I like those gigs in a way cause they toughen you up but man, it’s lonely on the mic for that hour. So what do I next time that happens? Just bust into half an hour of Ramones songs? Just keep playing whatever I want? I wonder.