This particular gent went down.

Hard.

Dropped straight, as if sucker punched on the chin. Crumpled, like a napkin on a dinner plate.

Timing is everything and, well, in this case, we weren't even two minutes into the opening song: 46 Days.

It was almost as if the band sensed the commotion and sought to lean further into the muck.

This was, after all, Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, July of 2018, and a general admission indoor show in the height of summer. The next time they'd roll through (it would take nearly seven years) the floor would be packed like sardines, but back then it felt almost roomy - like a deep conversation scattered with comfortable pauses.

Had there been rows of seats, with assigned numbers just so, you'd say this was six to eight rows back, and just slightly to the right, Mike side. This a spot one might covet. A spot one might spend the previous week thinking all about, because weeks and months and years are measured by tours and shows to attend.

This particular gent went down in a blur of a leathery jacket. Not the fancy type mind you - the type you might wear to a chichi restaurant with a four-week wait list - but more the hippie variety, patch-covered and leather-faded; one that smelled more of tour than tanned hide or musky wood.

When the lights drop, there's an anxiety bounce as you await the identification of the first song. There's the jostle of positioning: Understanding the vibe of your neighbors, who is encroaching and will require elbows; who is going to dance spastically like they are walking on hot coals while flinging a boa repeatedly about their neck.

In cases like the gent, there's also confusion, as if the design of the night is about to turn strange. And somewhere in that confusion, you start to feel as if the band is tapping into the room’s unease.

Friends or friendly neighbors crouch, examining the situation. Too much booze too early, or maybe chemicals advanced past the edge of experience?

After twelve glorious minutes - as the inspection continues - the gloopy mud of 46 Days ends; after a short pause, Fishman asks if they can play it again. Mike departs the stage to remove some piece of clothing or to blow his nose, and returns to pick up the first notes of the animalistic McGrupp.

The transition feels curiously pointed - as if narration has begun.

The inspection appears to satisfy the decision that further medical care isn't required. And so the gent remains prone, napping unconscious in a sloppy fetal position, his face obscured by darkness, the splash of stage lights, pant cuffs and skirt hems.

One approaches attending shows solo like the gift of receiving fine art. No one to blather in your ear or hang on your shoulder; no one to point at something on stage, to make a snide comment about a wrong note to distract you. And yet this gent is lying motionless - and that is crowding your mental space all on its own.

Concert goers mill about him as the obvious Pigtail begins and ends unceremoniously, and then the Talking Head's Cities struts to life as a barnyard animal out of its element - it gloops into the modulation of guitar pedals. The pairing feels less accidental now; the soundtrack is starting to sound like commentary.

All the while the gent doesn't move a muscle; the distraction is louder than the music itself. Nellie Cane beckons, as if we're now deep into prime hog country; the domain of livestock is the labor of heartbreak.

Nearly 35 minutes into the set and the swampy piano of Gumbo slinks to life; if you were able to focus, you might have noticed Page tries to finish the opening stanza a half measure quicker than Trey who seems to be saying, patience my friend, patience, we're farming here.

The whole progression feels like the band is circling the prone figure, musically poking him with a stick.

But the call doesn't work: The gent doesn't move. He doesn't twitch. Should you call over an EMT? Should you nudge him with your foot?

Finally, of course, of course:

Guyute

Because then, as if a shot of Narcan straight to the heart Pulp Fiction-style, the gent springs to his feet as if a jack-in-a-box. Trey beckons with his opening line, "Guyute was the Ugly Pig," as if a fight bell, and the gent has been delivered smelling salts.

The gent is laughing, slapping-backs, well-rested and ready to be fed. And in that moment, you can’t help but contemplate the reality: either the band has conjured him or him the music.

And this is where you would be blind if you ignored the fact that life often imitates art (or is it the other way around?). And, well, you hate to even notice something so superficial or self-absorbed, but the message was there all along.

Because the fact is the gent is hideous as sin.

Almost, one might say, pig-like.

His face is mottled like four-day overdue cottage cheese; his hair thin and cut short where it should be long and long where it might be short; his eyes bulge with animal intensity, like he's been repeatedly punched in the gut; his smile crooked at one end and toothless at the other as if making room for his pudgy snout.

The set carries on, with more animals and more dirt under your fingernails, but you are now permanently distracted by the coincidence (or was it correlation?) of the gent.

And so you spiral. 

The second set has no recourse, it carries on into the night as if an epilogue to a story already well complete. 

Years later one must wonder, what does the gent remember of the evening?

Because the music seemed to sense his arrival - as if he'd spent the afternoon gorging on soybeans and sorghum at the trough, and arrived overweight in requirement of the nap of digestion.

As if the band sensed his energy, knew his story, and called and called and called to him until he grunted awake, and carried himself all the way back to the farmhouse.