Mac MacCaughan the founder of Superchunk (cofounder with Laura Ballance) and Merge Records (likewise) is in town tonight Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012 at Swedish America Hall, above Cafe DuNord, as part of Noise Pop, with Rachel Haden (of that dog, charlie’s daughter, the one NOT married to Jack Black but may or maybe not the one who plays with Frisell) and a couple others, and I may even try to go, as well as a 5 pm soiree at a bar that’s new to me, Benders or something???, so before I sign off or drop out of Plastic Altlandia tonight (wednesday, or thursday or both???), I have to take another peek at “Driveway to Driveway Drunk”.

I met Mac thru Lane Wurster, Jack McCook and Jim Yardley. He wore my shirt once, the one with Cubby the Cub Bear. (It’s actually a Mordecai Brown logo). We once double-dated with Lane and Tracy at a Carolina Courage WUSA game, back before he was a pater familias. Weirdly, and I was gonna keep this brief, I ate at his wife’s restaurant last time in Chapel Hill which was 2002 already, when Blue Eyed Devils recorded in Efland with Jimbo and Kathryn – and KC and Shorty the Dog — and the table next to me I didn’t realize until much later, had Gunn and Dartmouth tennis champion Rebecca Dirksen who coaches UNC tennis. TMI.

edit to add, three months later, although I should probably make this its own post called “Have You Got A Minute, Have You Got 19 Years?”

First, I got a note from Merge saying that there is a folklore archive at UNC that will keep all the Merge papers, for academic perusal. I wonder if it includes my fake fan letters to Superchunk under the name Elton K. Smerk? (on Fairloaf Avenue — one of my yearly DayPlanner has the actual address I would use). Also, I found this clip from “Take The Tube.” What I recall about it was Mac recommending a band called “Pa Vey Ment” (Pavement, but like “vehement”). Did he really think they had three syllables or was he putting us on, or just repeating some inside joke? It’s at 5:30 of this clip: