One of what I estimate to be among the top ten “moments that have left me utterly speechless” took place this past weekend. I’m still reeling from it … in a good way.

In the spirit of speechlessness, I’ll just recount the essentials:

• In 1997, I was an undergraduate student living in Washington, DC
• That same year I saw many performances by local punk legends Fugazi
• One such appearance took place at a venue by the name of the 9:30 Club
• This weekend, I watched a video of a song from that performance on YouTube
• At 2:33 of that video, the videographer focuses on the crowd and captures clear images of myself and two friends. We’re on screen for about 5 seconds, during which I raise my camera to my eye and snap a photo of the band. Here are the screen captures:

Nuts! The flood of memories, the shattering of time, the re-lived experience, the serendipity, the depth of the internet, the idea that damn near everything is on tape/video/film somewhere … all of it stunned me. Yeah, it’s not the craziest thing that ever happened, but it’s pretty damn cool.

Here’s the full video, should you like to rock out to “Bed for Scraping” from Fugazi’s album Red Medicine:

[youtube]u2w5lB4n3H8[/youtube]

Huge thanks to my friend Jill who originally posted this video on her blog, and to my college pal Laura H. who apparently bumped into this while looking for Fugazi videos on YouTube. Very, very cool.

UPDATE: I had many folks asking me if I could post “that photo” – meaning the exact picture I was shooting in the YouTube video (very meta, no?). Although the negatives certainly exist somewhere, I can’t put my hands on them at the moment. (Records from that era are spotty at best).

However, the photo at left may be from that show. If not, its from a Fugazi show at the 9:30 Club somewhere around 1995-1997. (Click to enlarge).