Go, Tigers!

Jankowski cradles his cue and lines up his shot. He's as serious about pool as he was earlier about bowling.

Outside, neon beer signs cast their light on falling snow and rising drifts that are going to make it hard to get home tonight.

We have ended up at the Clarette Club, a strip-mall sports bar across the street from Mission Bowl. Young Pinkston has gone home, but the rest of the Tigers continue their gaming among the expanses of pool tables and TV screens not far from a refrigerator-sized vending machine stocked with cigarettes.

"I'm gonna take care of the jukebox problem," Pepperman says as he hops out of his chair and strides across the room.

Moments later, "Dazed and Confused" howls in the air.

It's times like these when rock and roll matters more than just about anything in the world.

"I miss days like these," Tricomi says.

Tricomi and his bandmates will probably get fewer days to relax as their life as a national-level band kicks into motion. They're lined up to play at South By Southwest, and there's talk of Coachella, too, plus spots on the late-night talk shows.

Who knows what flavor of buzz will surround the Tigers when Keep Color finally arrives in early April. But it should be a good, solid buzz because people need to hear this album, get drunk to it and pull it out years from now when they want something reliable.

With the telltale ringing of clocks and chimes, "Time" from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, sounds from the jukebox. Pepperman does his best David Gilmour: Ticking away the moments that make up the dull day!

For rock musicians and teenage boys, that 1973 album is a sacred tablet. For snobs, it's a goofy relic for adolescent geeks who have outgrown The Hobbit. In any case, Dark Side has sold around 34 million copies, and people keep buying it.

Before Dark Side, Pink Floyd had moved well past its Syd Barrett days, cranking (or, in some cases, shitting) out half a dozen records. The point is, classics rarely come about unless a band has time to develop, time to experiment freely in the studio and test its powers on the public.

If one of Jankowski's other bold claims is true — that the Tigers already have enough material for five albums — then we may be looking at a band that's going to stay around.

"Time" winds down. Soon, a slide guitar arrives like a house cat. Cymbals sizzle, an old Irishman announces that he's not afraid of dying, and drums let in the freezing night air of Dark Side's "The Great Gig in the Sky."

"Do we have any more questions to answer?" Pepperman asks.

Not unless he can see the future.