I'm still not entirely sure what happened Sunday night. I know that Dark Meat made it to the Comet after apparently getting snowed in at Denver, then driving 30 straight hours in their bus. I know that they all managed to fit inside the Comet along with the sizable crowd. I know there were more than a dozen but less than 20 people representing the bandâtwo drummers, several horn players, guitarists, a violinist, an organist, a backup vocalist, the guy mostly responsible for spraying confetti with a leaf blower and occasionally summoning pitchy squeals from an optical theremin. I know they do in fact sometimes lose a person; before they started their set, their singer, Jim McHugh, called out into the crowd, "Molly? Molly? We lost a member." I know the Comet's sound guy was perhaps in a little over his headâMcHugh again: "More flute in the monitors! When was the last time you heard that, motherfucker?"âthough he kept up admirably. I know that nothing gives your hippie-psych-rock ensemble (whose horn rave-ups veer dangerously toward ska) some much needed punk cred like a saxophonist wearing a Locust T-shirt. I know that the crowd was the most lively I've seen at a small bar show in a long whileâdancing, slamming into each other, crowd surfing. I haven't had my feet inadvertently stomped on by fellow revelers that much since I was a teenager, and it felt good. Toward the end of the set, the line between band and audience blurred out of existenceâMcHugh handed off his guitar to some random guy in the front row, who gamely played some one-note riffs while the singer crowd surfed; band members danced through the audience with drums; and the violinist repeatedly lunged into the crowd backward, still shredding strings. You started to suspect that some of the more involved audience members may have been Dark Meat plants the whole time. It was not, as people too often describe reckless concerts, controlled chaos; it was just plain chaos, and it was glorious. (They've been touring with Israeli pyro-trash-punks Monotonix, so it only makes sense that they'd have their live game stepped up to match.)
What I don't know is if I'd ever really want to listen to Dark Meat's debut album, Universal Indians, on my home stereo system, apart from all the festive freedom-ritual ruckus. It's not a bad recordâits mix of psyched-out, train-wrecking rock 'n' roll, woozy brass-band excess, primal rhythmic pulse, and deranged howling is plenty powerfulâbut it just feels kind of flat without all the sweat and confetti. 
