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I swore I’d never write a review of a show I played.

And I’m not, not really. But it was just too surreal a night for me not to comment on it a little bit.

As I confessed last time, I recently found myself in a battle of the bands, Little Steven’s “Rocking Garage.” Contrary to what I thought when I fessed up, I didn’t get to play at Lupo’s, ‘coz the venue got changed kinda last-minute. And I didn’t get to play with either the Real Kids or the Lyres — we got option C, about whom the less said the better.

(I actually got a lotta respect for Little Steven. After all these years, I still rate his albums Voice of America and Freedom, No Compromise highly (even if they haven’t aged well production-wise, their hearts are in the right place).)

As such things go, I guess it was pretty low on the corporate bullshit scale. But even still, I had the unpleasant feeling that I had heard some of the bands before. And it was seriously weird to be surrounded by so many people taking it all so seriously. I got interviewed. Twice. Both times I was standing in front of a brick wall (not my idea, believe me). There was Dunkin Donuts swag everywhere, including guitar picks (not my gauge, but kinda cute) and these quote latte unquote things that were pretty much like melted coffee ice cream (only way sweeter).

We didn’t make the semi-finals. I’m OK with that. We were mostly competing against bands that are much better established, and I don’t think we came off too badly. And from what I heard, it sounded like bands really were being judged more on merit than on who-knew-who.

God help me, I had fun.

(What makes this all even more bizarre — like I need it to be any more bizarre — is that pretty much exactly while I was in one band battle, my pal Greg was writing about another one in his most excellent column. It is an odd small world, folks.)

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