Last Sunday I ran the Shamrock Shuffle here in Chicago. The Shamrock Shuffle in Chicago is generally not run until well after St. Patrick’s day, but nobody cares. It’s still cold on the seventeenth of March.

The event is as big as a marathon in terms of numbers of people participating, even though it’s only an 8K run. So much money is needed to put up an event like this that Bank of America sponsors this thing. Bank of America is huge. The upside is the swag, lots and lots of swag. The downside is that all of the swag says “Bank of America” on it.

It wasn’t really that big a deal to me – I had completely forgotten I even registered until a couple of days before the run. But I’m glad I did it, and I definitely want to do it again next year. I ran faster than I thought I would – I put myself in the ten-minute-per-mile corral and it turns out I ran slightly faster than that.

Still don’t believe I can run like the wind blows? Click here for proof.

It was cold and rainy, like a fine Chicago spring day, and like any good Chicago athletic event, beer was involved. Apparently registering for the Shamrock Shuffle entitles you to one free beer after the run. You also get a free pair of socks if you can jump through the hoops.

I was going to write a little post about this right away after the run, but two things stopped me. One, I was tired. Two, I was distracted by free music from Drive-Thru Records.

Drive-Thru Records is one of the country’s most excellent mid-sized record companies. This is both my opinion and a solid fact. It can be verified by the fact that they have survived as a business for the twelve years since I first discovered them plus however long they were in business before I discovered them. They introduced me to one of my favorite bands in the world, RX Bandits. (At the time, they were called the Pharmaceutical Bandits, but I guess “Pharmaceutical” is too long a word to fit on most of their merchandise.)

RX Bandits have been around for a long time, and it’s been great for me to watch them grow as artists/musicians/peace activists/beard enthusiasts/whatever. They are no longer with Drive-Thru, though, as they have gone on to co-found their own specialized record company.

I recently discovered Drive-Thru Records’ MySpace page, and was delighted to find a free offering of their 2008 sampler album, which has introduced me to a whole new line-up of great young bands. It’s free, so I highly recommend downloading it. Myself, I am very impressed with the quality of bands on this record label these days.

I am more impressed, however, with how many good bands I found here. This label was much smaller when I was in high school, but they’ve got quite a menagerie now. And I really like a lot of what I’m hearing, especially bands called An Angel, Biirdie, Steel Train, Roark, and Socratic (whose new EP is also available for free on this label’s MySpace page – go get it now, you won’t regret it). It’s really nice to see they’ve embraced the internet, too; they aren’t too big to give away music for free, but they aren’t so small that they don’t have a good variety to offer. Check out this (free) music video from An Angel:

“Clean and Gold”

I was thinking the other day about where some of the bands that I loved a decade ago and where they are now, and I wondered where some of these new bands will be in a decade. Will they still be on this label, or will they move on? Drive-Thru Records, I concluded, is like a hometown minor-league baseball team: you’re proud to see some of your favorite players make it to the major leagues, but you’re also secretly glad that some of your favorite players are still there after so many years.

My own ten-year high school reunion is coming up next year. It’s odd to think that I’m in the latter half of my twenties. When I think of other people being in their mid-to-late twenties, I think, “well, they’re still young and vibrant, if they ever were vibrant.” But to think of myself being this age is bizarre and hard to accept. I still feel that thrill of discovery, that sense that the future is bright and far away, like a kid with a shiny new toy, every time I hear a new band that I like, and I wonder what music will be like when I’m all grown up. Then I realize I am all grown up, and it catches me by surprise. I can’t count how many times this has happened over the years, because I don’t have a terribly strong sense of just how many years have actually passed. Man, they go by faster than lightning, don’t they?

Filed by Bil at 8:05 pm under Pop Culture