My girlfriend and I went to FW Thunderbird on Sunday afternoon, about an hour before the Super Bowl kickoff. We stayed until right after the halftime show concluded, and I will forever think about the experience of watching Kendrick Lamar’s performance as a cultural moment in a “where were you when …?” sort of way, mentally bookmarking experiences for future moments of nostalgic fugue, the way I recall my first mosh pit experience or what I was doing the morning of 9/11.
Never forget, amirite? That’s a thought I had while looking for Thunderbird’s bathroom, because there in the back, before you get to the toilets’ doors, was one of those mental anchors, an image burned upon my brain during the era of Freedom Fries and The War on Errorism, one that has occasionally drifted across my hippocampus for over 20 years. At that time, when the world learned that steel beams could indeed melt and cell phones were not unlike big, plastic bricks, I was in my early 20s and regularly getting shitfaced at the bars on West Berry by TCU. One of these was a live music venue called The Aardvark. It was one of a handful of live music bars around town, and if you still listen to Bob Schneider, you probably saw him play there. If that’s the case, then you also probably saw this piece of art way back when.
Realheads, as they say, know what I’m talking about: an 11-by-17-inch poster, its white-lined design practically leaping from a field of emerald green, advertising a May 17, 2001, performance by Aardvark owner Danny Weaver’s band, Trampo-Lean, opening for Flickerstick, at fondly remembered, long-gone downtown venue Caravan of Dreams.
In this poster, a Rolling Rock beer logo has been cleverly manipulated, inserting “Trampo-Lean” in place of the beer’s name, large and in charge, despite the fact that Trampo-Lean (or “Trampolean”? or “Tramp-o-Lean”? Who can recall?) was the opener and Flickerstick was presumably the bigger name on the bill. I always chuckled at that. Anyway, seeing that poster, black-framed and protected behind glass, cast me back in time, a decade’s highlight reel flashing forth in an instant.
There were other ancient Aardvark posters on Thunderbird’s walls that jogged my memory — pretty sure I saw a Bob Schneider one, in fact — as well as a slew of the art that once adorned the interiors at both iterations of Lola’s Saloon: Jack Russell prints and paintings by Clay Stinnett and Jesse Sierra Hernandez, old show posters hanging on sky-blue walls, a comforting melange of country and rock ’n’ roll. Weaver partnered with Lola’s owner Brian Forella in opening Thunderbird, and if you miss both of those bars, Thunderbird will hit that spot for you. But even if you were too young to have drank at either, Thunderbird is still a nice place to hang — there are a couple pool tables near the front, and there are plenty of TVs, all of which are tuned to sports or music. It’s a nice downtown watering hole, the sort of place an out-of-state visitor might check out to get a dose of “Texas vibe” without having to go to the Stockyards. Moreover, it’s also not a “concept” or part of a chain. It’s just a cool spot in a neighborhood –— Houston Street, in Sundance Square, above the Red Goose — that could certainly use some coolness.
By the time the afternoon light faded away, a handful of other patrons had settled in to watch the game. The Eagles scored their third touchdown. The commercials flickered with aging stars and throwback campaigns. Samuel L. Jackson dressed as “Your Uncle Sam” introduced Lamar with the demeanor of an electro-cutioner excited to throw the switch, and in the middle, when Kendrick and his dancers made that initial “Not Like Us” feint, I could feel the tension in the room, waiting to see if he was really going to do it, to say those lines, the kind of defiant subtext that seems to be in short supply at this moment in time. Maybe that’s all the NFL allowed him to do, make one comment, its possibility obliterated when Kendrick actually then pivoted to the Drake-burning track after dueting with SZA on “All the Stars.” Then he did “TV Off.” We were all awestruck. I looked around at the old stuff on the walls, the signifiers of a hundred different moments at a couple of rock ’n’ roll clubs from a long time ago, and at the people around me and the amusing synching error between two of the nearest TVs. They all made a vivid memory. The commercials returned, and we left.
