May 23, 2002 - 9:36 a.m.

a story:

sometime at the end of 1997, when i was still studying in melbourne, simon and i had dinner with paul. it was one of those amazing things where you just click with someone. we had a fabulous time, not to be repeated since. we stayed at paul's house until three in the morning, just sharing music and stories. as a funny sidenote, i remember us telling paul we should go home so he could sleep, to which he replied that he was waiting for his girlfriend to get home because he couldn't sleep without her anyway. at the time (ha ha), i thought how different this was to my situation with simon and how we really must not be destined for each other after all.

anyway, one thing paul and i had in common was grant lee buffalo. we were both huge fans, which was not such a common thing back then. in fact, i only knew one other GLB fan. so to find out paul liked him, too, was pretty special.

in 1998, i ended up with an extra copy of paul's solo album under the name "scared of horses" (paul and simon each sent me one). i also had an extra copy of his band's debut full-length cd. so what did i do with them? i gave them to grant-lee phillips of grant lee buffalo, of course. i snuck my way into a show in los angeles, introduced myself, told him the whole story and then gave him the cds. he was wearing blue eyeshadow at the time. he was also very gracious. when i relayed what i had done some time later to paul, he was very surprised.

now flash forward to last week's double bill in melbourne with paul and grant-lee. how proud was i, thinking i had something to do with it? very. but i never found out for sure because paul was attacked by a record-industry mob after the show.

now we get to last night. simon and i saw what was supposed to be a solo show for grant-lee at the night cat, and there goes paul. really, you can't miss him because he's 6 foot 7. so i pull him over and ask if i indeed had anything to do with the double bill, or if it was just record-industry tactics that made it happen. "you should feel responsible," he said. good.

grant-lee played three encores, including two after the house music and the lights had already gone up! paul joined him onstage, and they played a few songs together (including REM's "the one i love" and david bowie's "ashes to ashes"). i was ecstatic.

then i wanted to say hi to grant after the show. we talked to his violin player, who told a very different story, about how "paul's people" had sent some CDs to "grant's people" and it went from there. hmmm... so i asked grant himself if he remembered getting those early handouts. no go. his response? "i do remember the blue eye shadow, though."

what i want to know is if he chucked those early CDs in a bin somewhere. where did they go? and does paul really think they did the trick, or was he just trying to boost my ego? i guess i'll have to find out next week.