Myung and I travelled back to 1996 and found ourselves surrounded by a lot of empty seats.

With small groups cancelled for the summer, and the church softball game not worth the drive, Myung and I decided to go over to the Taste of Chicago. Neither us of were all that excited about the typically overpriced food and oversized crowds, but there are free daily concerts, and we still had fond memories of John Mayer from a few years ago.

The weather was spectacular, so we walked the mile or so from my place. We stopped by and ate at a Subway along the way to try to minimize the prodigality of the outing. Once we got to the Taste, we headed directly for the Petrillo Music Shell, and to my surprise, we were able to find a pretty good spot in the actual seating area.

Lovehammer - or as Myung called them, The Lovehammers - was playing, and we just sat and enjoyed the sun for a while. And even though the time for the main act was nearing and the promoters were encouraging people on the lawn to move up to the seating area, the place was maybe half full. Then to lukewarm cheers came The Wallflowers.

I'm sure not too many Tasters remembered, and probably even fewer cared, but The Wallflowers were kind of a big deal back in the day, even if only for a year or two. They won Grammys, they had a song on a big movie soundtrack, they were hip. Then Britney and the boy bands happened, and mainstream hip-hop happened, and all of a sudden, The Wallflowers become the wallflowers.

They played a bunch of songs, with only a couple of recognizable ones in the mix. People were bored. I was bored. I didn't know whether these were old songs or new songs, but they all sounded the same, like a bunch of b-sides from my freshman year of college. Everyone was getting antsy, and there were even a few calls from the crowd for "One Headlight." They didn't fight it, and played the song, probably for the millionth time, to the most enthusiastic response of the night.

And I couldn't help but feel a little sad, like I could almost identify with them, that there was a point in the past when things had been really, really good, and part of us was stuck there while the world had moved on.

Myung and I left immediately afterward. We bought a couple of things to munch on, and walked back to my place. We were walking in a crowd as we left the Taste, but little by little, we shed everyone until we neared my building alone, a couple of wallflowers down by the water, telling riddles in the dark.