I was twenty-one years old when I first met Marc Brownstein. Back then we used to call him "Brownie." I had just moved back into my parents' house after having decided to temporarily put my college education on hold. My life at the time seemed to be a giant attempt at meandering.

The reason I gave for my academic leave of absence was this: I wanted to go for my dreams. The only problem was that I wasn't quite sure what my dreams were exactly. I knew I wouldn't find them stuffed behind textbooks in dorm rooms and lunchhalls on some secluded campus in Western Mass, so I split. I would like to say "I took off" but the truth is, I just went home. I guess I figured that if I couldn't find my dreams, maybe my dreams would find me. It's easy to see that I didn't know much about how things worked. I didn't know where I wanted to go, or with what or quite how. But I knew where I wanted to start. I wanted to start with music.

I was twenty-one and a fool.

So okay, there it was. I was going to "go for my dreams." If it's true that I didn't know anything, it's also true that some things I found out fast. Real fast. Other things I still have yet to figure out.

One of the first things I learned though was that my dreams couldn't involve playing music. So I immersed myself in all other aspects of it. Mostly listening and dancing.

As it was when I first saw The Disco Biscuits.

The first time I saw The Disco Biscuits play was in the Spring of '97 in a bar the size of a living room in the middle of farm country, Pennsylvania. There were maybe ten other people in the bar. Probably less. Two or three of them were the band's friends, and the others were there to drink or shoot pool. It was an average crowd for the Blue Terrapin.

The band's sound mix was awful. You couldn't hear the vocal tracks - and when you could, you wished you couldn't. The original songs were undefined; the covers unknown. The patented Disco Biscuits sound had yet to come into focus.

Just months earlier they were playing "Run Like an Antelope" and "Help On The Way" in fraternity basements at Penn. Right before I first caught them, the band must have made a conscious decision to either go for it or not. That is, they could put their college life on hold, spend 24 hours a day focusing on the band, on building original material, on achieving an original sound, on building a solid fan base...or they could stay at the University and continue entertaining their friends' requests at frat houses and keg parties. The band had decided to go for it. In the beginning this meant a little bit of fumbling around. Some nights they tried to play jazz, some nights funk, some nights balls-to-the-wall jams.

The product was raw, but appealing. The potential was mind blowing.

The band's sound would be tuned and retuned constantly over the next couple of years. From the start though, Marc Brownstein, on bass, created a funky bottom which moved you in the rump. He added ass-shaking to the band.

Overall, I've seen around eighty-four Disco Biscuits shows. All with Marc Brownstein of course. I've seen them in empty bars and I've seen them on festival stages in front of thousands. I've hung out with them at my parents' house, watching the NBA Finals and I've sold merchandise for them at packed venues along the East Coast. In January and February of '99 I went on a couple of Disco Biscuits mini-tours with some friends of mine, and again a two-week tour in the spring.

During that time, I was entering what would turn out to be a period of rapid growth and change for me. It was also a period of rapid growth and change for the Disco Biscuits. They were rediscovering themselves as a band, just as I was rediscovering myself as a human being. The way they worked as a band was becoming more refined, their sound defined. Just as I too was refining and defining myself.

I danced constantly at these shows since, as you know, at a Disco Biscuits show that isn't a choice really. But I remember I used to get down harder to Morph Dusseldorf. The chorus of which includes the line "Morph, Morph from Dusseldorf changing all the time. If you stay the same one day, that would be sublime." I, of course, was Morph. And Marc, of course, wrote the song about himself.

The feeling at those Spring '99 shows were of an unmatched and unprecedented intensity all their own. It was a golden time, really. Every night was an explosion. The band was playing sounds that stretched out beyond the walls of the venues. They were pushing outwards, and upwards, and you could see the electricity in the air as it shocked the bartenders and electrified the rest. You'd look around after the final encore and God damn it, people were excited!

The Disco Biscuits were ALIVE. They made *me* feel alive. They'd be on stage jamming their faces off and it made me want to jam my face off in my own way, for myself. It energized me. It inspired me. I looked up on stage to see four guys - friends of mine around the same age as me - and here they were on-stage becoming themselves, attaining wonderful things, challenging the universe and often coming up fully loaded. As much as they made me want to stick around and dance, they also made me want to run out the door and start finding out what ways I too could attain wonderful things, challenging the universe with a loaded gun and a sure shot.

In 1999 The Disco Biscuits on any given night could tap into IT. And by tapping into IT, they made you experience a bit *more*. Their jams were transcendent and in transcending your soul beyond the dance floor, they showed you that you had an entire galaxy at your disposal and beyond that too, if you dared to dream it.

They showed you....or at least, they showed me...that it can be done. They also showed me that it only comes with hard work. The Biscuits fought tooth and nail to get where they were. To get where they are. Three years earlier they were playing cover songs to completely empty rooms. Their sound was off, their vocals sucked. Working on one thing at a time, each day every day, the Disco Biscuits grew and their audiences, well, they grew too. So much that by 1999 the band of Ivy League drop-outs from Philadelphia were selling out increasingly larger venues across the country. And the snowball had only begun to roll. The dream was like a fire in them and it was either extinguish the flames...or burn burn burn. The Biscuits burned.

And so it is that they find themselves, once again, on the precipice of change. No doubt things will never be the same. Marc Brownstein is no longer a Disco Biscuit. He has left the band.

I remember once when the band broke into an extraordinarily great version of Magellan. The band must've reached into the heavens to find the notes; the jam a gift from the gods. Each orgasmic peak touched lips to holy grails. I wanted it to last forever. It didn't. When it ended, I had to sit down for a couple of seconds and catch my breath. I knew I had just witnessed something great. I knew that there would never again be a jam that was exactly the same as that one. And I wouldn't want there to be. The first time was orgasmic...the second time would be pointless. There are other jams to discover, other peaks to reach. Always. Fifteen minutes later I was once again dabbling in bliss, locked in the arms of another monstrous jam. Mountains were collapsing into the oceans, great gaping holes in the earth were being ripped open and everything that ever was and ever will be sacred was fully present and accounted for between that stage and that dance floor. Everyone there bowed in its honor. Again I didn't want it to end. For the moment, time stood still - it couldn't end. But then it did. And then the whole thing repeated again.

There's a lot to be learned from this. And from this new evolution. With Marc leaving, the jams will change. They would have changed if he had stayed though too. But Marc's got a new tune to jam and the Disco Biscuits, well, they have theirs.

One of my favorite nights of the old skool Disco Biscuits was New Year's Eve, 1998. They played to a capacity crowd of just under 200 at the intimate Silk City Diner in Philadelphia. Afterwards, they invited the entire audience back to their house for an all-night rager to bring in the New Year. At one point during the night, Marc was talking with friends about jam bands and their fans. He recalled with enthusiasm some of Phish's shows from the Summer of '94 that inspired him. "I'm after the same thing that everyone is after." he said, "The same reason you go to shows - that's what I'm there for too. I'm after the same thing. It's no different."

The point is this: Dreams change. Situations change. Things evolve. Marc Brownstein needs no reassurance from me that he's still going for his dreams. And of course the Disco Biscuits, as a band, won't end up as they originally envisioned. But they'll end up in a place just as wonderful and it'll be a thrill to watch them in-the-moment, growing as a band at the same break-neck pace that they always have and attaining heights as high as they dare to reach.

So have my own dreams died? Not even close. But they have changed; evolved. A year ago I was contacting record companies in hopes of being hired as an A&R man. I tried my hand at being a booking agent, a talent buyer, a publicist. I was chiseling away at what my dreams really were and the more I chiseled, the more I found what my dreams WEREN'T - which is essential in finding out what they ARE. So here I am, in the Two-zero-zero-zero and on the verge of discovery. I think I have a much better idea of my dreams now. And although they're still blurry around the edges, the picture is slowly, pixel by pixel, coming into focus. It's one hell of a different picture than I imagined three or four years ago, that's for sure.

For one, I'm in love. For another, I'm moving to Colorado with her 'till the spring and from there there's talk about California. When following your bliss, things never turn out as expected. They turn out better. The Disco Biscuits will still be challenging the universe of course. As will Brownie. As will I. It just takes on different settings, different backgrounds, different plans of attack. That's all.

Marc Brownstein, you have given me more than just 84 phenomenal nights of music. You have given me experiences that have helped my growth as a human being. You have touched my life and, more than once, inspired my own desire to go for what it is that makes me happy. That is, to go for my dreams, whatever they may be and wherever I may find them.

Thank you.