(via Photo by mcscoop • Instagram)

Tumblr was down for so long yesterday that I’d forgotten what I originally wanted to say when I posted this photo. Maybe it was about Greg Dulli’s voice, about how much he blew everyone away, about how seeing him shaking his ass on stage made me want to dance too, or about how when they started playing “What Jail Is Like” I shook J by the denim jacket and screamed “THIS IS MY FAVORITE SONG.”

Maybe it was about how awesome it was to see men in their late 30s pumping their fists and jumping up and down and dancing and singing along at the top of their lungs, about the realization I had that 90s alternative is the new classic rock, about how much I thought about tapping one of those dudes on the shoulder and pointing up to see if they’d lift me up for a crowd crawl.

Maybe it was about Marni and Ike, the couple who stood next to us at the beginning of the show and knew all the words and were so incredibly excited and possibly a little bit drunk. Maybe it was about how I accidentally head-butted my husband.

Maybe it was about how the gig was in the same venue I used to go to in high school to see bands like The Sundays and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and Toad the Wet Sprocket, and how weird it was to walk down the street and see all the places we used to flock to all closed down, like Scentiment’s Rock City, where everyone used to buy their Doc Martens, or Sudsy’s, where I once interviewed The Wrens atop a stack of washing machines.

Maybe it was about how much I love Cincinnati, how big a cheer John Curley got because he still lives here, is still very much a part of this city, how much you could feel the love for the city in that venue. These were our boys, and we were welcoming them home.

Maybe it was just what those fingers in the air say, that this show rocked.

I don’t know. But this picture, taken by J, is so goddamn good that I high-fived him when he took it. (It was also chosen by The Afghan Whigs themselves as live photo of the day.)