While wandering aimlessly through the arteries surrounding the chair-filled bladder of a local stadium I noticed an interesting fellow. He was signing CD’s, T-shirts and the occasional patch of exposed flesh during the quiet time between the warm-up act and the main event, which was an appearance by the Canadian group, Barenaked Ladies¹.
    It was only through intense meditation that I was able to identify this tattooed fellow positively as the band leader of the aforementioned warm-up act which I’d found to be an enjoyable, albeit Dave Matthews-ish² affair. His name is Mike Doughty and he commands a tiny cult following, the glossy-eyed Detroit chapter of which was pushing clipboards at passersby with the breathless promise of blessed mailing list membership to all who would sign.
    Tempting though the offer was, I brushed right past a portly lass with one such clipboard and took my place alongside the other supplicants with no clear idea of why. Not being so much as a Mike Doughty initiate, I was worried about seeming out of place despite the best efforts of my cheap Izod shirt. So I did my best to fit in by bobbing my head in unison with my chattering queue-mates and muttered “yeah, this guy is awesome” in response to the their intermittent attempts at inter-cult communication. It seemed to satisfy them; while their head-bobbing was unchanged, I somehow sensed a certain warmth in the bobs following my contribution that was not present in the bobs prior to my dissemblance. At any rate, none of them pulled a Donald Sutherland.
    As I neared the head of the line his handlers began to discern something might be wrong. Security senses tingling, they shifted about and patted at their clothes to reassure themselves of their armaments and candy stashes. Fishy eyes darted about, but while they seemed to smell my presence, they couldn’t pick me out of the crowd–thank god for Izod shirts. In a few moments I found that there was only one of them between me and Mike Doughty. When that handler nervously reached into his pocket for a wad of Laffy-Taffy, I knew it was my only chance. Charging, I evaded the clutching arms of the lackeys and ignored their inhuman shrieks long enough to reach Mike Doughty and obtain this photograph:

Mike Doughty and Me!

1 – No, just shut up Davecat. I’ll have you know I’ve enjoyed their tongue-in-cheek/scary-relationship music since these boys had barely escaped their Toronto metropolitan prison some fourteen years ago. Perhaps they’ve become overplayed in recent years but, as with many acts that achieve some amount of commercial success despite their best efforts, their best stuff has nothing to do with 96.3FM.
2 – Or is it Matthewsy? Matthewsesque? Oh, and I guess that in some circles it might be considered an oxymoron to speak of an enjoyable Dave Matthews-anything, but the music Mike Doughty spewed from his band and himself was well played and decently arranged.
3 – The Palace of Auburn Hills Beer-Soaked T-Shirt Stand, serving all your Beer-Soaked T-Shirt needs since 1988.