This weekend I’ve decided to share a song with you.

Do you remember a band called The JudyBats? They were from Tennessee, I believe, and popular in the 90s. I don’t know how big they ever were, but I loved them and even got to see them in concert when I was in college.

It was at an intimate concert venue in Houston called The Tower Theater, which later became a Blockbuster store, which later became something else, which later became a vacant space whose windows were used for ad posters, which is now I-don’t-know-what. I went to the concert with my friend Maggie, who was one of my closest friends our freshmen year at UH, and my little sister, who had probably just turned thirteen at the time. (She is now a rock star herself.) I saw quite a few great shows at that place, including Tori Amos (touring for Little Earthquakes) and Dream Theater (touring for Images and Words).

The JudyBats were touring for Pain Makes You Beautiful. The concert was fantastic, but partway through it, the music stopped abruptly and the band left the stage. Some jackass in the audience had maced the area, though at the time — and this is an important detail — I hadn’t actually realized why the concert had ended so quickly. And remember how I said the venue was intimate? It probably held 200 people when it was packed, maybe less. So we all had to clear out.

Remember how I implied it was the 90s? Guess who carried mace on her keychain? This girl. Every young woman and half the young men I knew did. I never used it, ever, not even to test it. But the theater manager came chasing me — and Maggie, and my little sister — into the parking lot anyway, nearly knocking me down as he swiped the keys from my hand, just when I was about to unlock my car door. I put him at about his mid-40s, but not the young-looking, health-conscious mid-40s that people are today. His long, scraggly blond curls blew back in the hot summer wind like he was some reject from a Robert Plant lookalike contest. His skin had seen better days. He had a half-ashed cigarette in one hand and a scotch-and-rocks in the other, and he had to put his ciggie back in his mouth while he fumbled drunkenly with my keychain, shouting and cursing at me the whole time.

“Did you do this?” he demanded. “You sprayed your mace in my concert hall!”

I denied having done it. I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“We’ll just see if it’s your fault,” he insisted, jangling my keys and growling and sloshing and becoming absolutely beside himself with his inability to listen to us.

After some more foul-mouthed impugning of my person, he shoved the keys back at my hand. The mace canister was lodged partway out of its faux-leather sheath, the top mechanism askew, my keys wet with his scotch. He stumbled with self-righteous indignation back into his theater while I stared dumbly in shock.

“Hey, don’t be an asshole!” my friend Maggie shouted after him.

“What a dick,” my little sister said.

I looked down at my keychain. I was going to have to throw it away.

That was the last time I saw a concert there; with a manager like him, I’m not especially surprised the place closed down.

But The JudyBats? They were awesome. Here’s one of the songs from their album Down in the Shacks Where the Satellite Dishes Grow. Enjoy.