by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The good ol’ OWH has done a pretty good job of reporting on the permanent closure of The Anchor Inn, though we’re still waiting to get comments from the business owners who probably don’t have a whole helluva lot to say about the matter, anyway. If you missed the story, the Anchor Inn got swept away in last year’s Missouri River floods. And now the city isn’t going to let them rebuild because the area is in a floodway. The first thing that came to mind after reading about this was what’s going to happen to The Surfside Club and The Cottonwood Marina in Blair and all the other businesses that saw their livelihoods washed away last year. Do they have to deal with similar ordinances?

The irony of the Anchor Inn disaster is that I’d only discovered the place over the past couple years, when Bright Eyes and Jenny Lewis played there (even though they’d been hosting biker/metal/rock concerts for years). I remember talking to the owner during Bright Eyes and how excited we was about the possibility of doing more indie-type shows. So was One Percent. It was a terrific venue, and I’m going to hate to see it go.

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Yesterday At the Drive In announced that it’s getting back together after more than a decade of being broken up. ATDI was a sonically dangerous, groundbreaking act back in its day. Sparta and The Mars Volta, not so much. Rereading a review of their 2000 show at Sokol Underground, I remembered the overwhelming tension in the room throughout that entire night. We hadn’t seen anything quite like the Cedric Bixler before. Now, a decade later, do we really want to see him again? Count me in if they book a show at The Waiting Room.

Among ATDI’s gigs is a performance at this year’s Coachella Festival, whose schedule was announced yesterday and which everyone is going ga-ga over. Lots of talk about a fIREHOSE reunion there, as well as Radiohead, Pulp, God Speed! and Mazzy Star being on the bill. It’s a real Who’s Who of indie rock, and probably the most important U.S. festival going. But it’s hard for me to get too excited about a festival that I know I won’t be attending. And something tells me if I want to see any of the acts perform this year beyond Coachella I’m going to have to do some traveling.