Today is #PopPunkDay, in honor of my late friend Scotty.

This song is particular, not just because it's fantastic. The Plus Ones were a band fronted by Joel Reader, former bass player of The Mr. T Experience, a band I REALLY loved. The Plus Ones were playing a show at this bar called Rudys in New Haven and I wanted to go, but I wasn't 21 yet. Still, Rudys was a pretty low-key dive bar back then, and I'd been inside before when I was underage, so I was hoping that they just weren't carding at the door, and I could go and watch the band and not try to drink anything and I'd be fine.

There's a little patio right outside (the now-former location of) Rudys, and as I approached the patio, a sufficiently inebriated Scotty tosses his cigarette on the ground and runs at me, yelling "Holy shit! Thom Dunn! I love you! What are you doing here, man? That's crazy, you're not 21!"

...at which point I awkwardly covered "Oh yeah, you know just, walkin' around downtown, seeing what's goin' on..." We chatted for a while, and it was wonderful, as it always with Scotty, until at one point he said, "Well hey, come on, let's go back inside, it's gettin' kinda chilly. Wait, that's right, you're not 21." Then he looked over at the bouncer (whom he knew, because Scotty also worked there sometimes) and said to me, "Shit, I just totally blew your cover, huh?"

Post script, the first time I was back in New Haven after turning 21, I ran into Scotty at Rudy's, and he bought me a drink after profusely apologizing for that night. Then pretty much every time I saw him after that, he would apologize, and buy me a drink.

Post-post script, I never got to see The Plus Ones, but I did get to headline a show over Joel Reader's newest band, The Fatal Flaw, a few years back when I was playing with The Backyard Committee. I had that weird moment of "Whooooa 15-year-old Thom would be so impressed that 25-year-old Thom got to headline over one of the guys from MTX!" We were talking with Joel at the show (who, as it turns out, had recently bought a house not far from me in Boston), and Scotty started reminiscing about that day he totally blew my cover outside of Rudy's, and it was a nice little point of everything converging.