Concerts: a ritual that keeps on going

So, for my writing class, i had to write about a ritual that I do. Instead of doing an obvious one like church, I decided to do it on Concerts. Bekah and I went to the Sea Wolf concert and I decided to write my paper on that one concert. Enjoy!

Music is my Religion

Rush. Rush. Rush. Pant. Pant. Pant. Running on a cold winter night is the worst idea ever, especially when I have to be at my house in about 5 minutes. Finally, I get to my dingy apartment, throw my massive school bag on the weathered armchair, and figure out what I want to wear. I want to look cute, but also be warm at the same time. Merde. My friend, Bekah, picks me up and complains about how she doesn’t feel cute enough to go anywhere. As we drive to our destination we start listening and singing to our favorite songs. Finally, we get to our target: Kilby Court. The place where we can actually see Sea Wolf play his music.
Walking down the dark alley to the show trying not to get mugged, looking stupid, and getting money out to pay for my ticket can become quite a hassle sometimes. We’re late, and there is a big line waiting to get in. We get to the back of the line and people start murmuring about how the show is sold out. I think to myself, “WHAT? Seriously, for this small of a band they are pretty big in the indie scene.” Suddenly, the line parts as if I’m Moses. While going through the Red Sea, I figure out a plan. Maybe I’ll show the ticket guy my boobs? No. But then, I see that the ticket guy recognizes me. “Abby!!” he screams. I’m a little bewildered, I’m not gonna lie, but still I manage to keep it cool. We talk, or he talks to me, and then it clicks; he used to be my Great Harvest buddy that would give me free hot chocolate and bread every morning of my junior year of high school. Good times. Luckily, he’s very nice and gets my friend and me in. Going into Kilby Court is like going into a church, or some kind of sacred space. There is a big fire pit in the courtyard waiting for me, roast marshmallows, ponder about music and have conversations with people that I don’t know. Everyone is here for one reason: to listen to good music. All the people I talk to make me feel that I am in the right spot. I can ask a person what their opinion is of a band and they’ll not only know which band that I’m talking about, but also give priceless insight. When asking my friend, Bekah, why she goes to concerts, she says “it makes her more excited about music and closer to the band.” I agree. Sometimes it feels like I can make a connection to bands, whether I’m singing (horribly I might add) to one of my favorite songs, or actually watching the lead singer pour out his heart to the audience. That’s what makes the connection between the band and the fans; there is this hidden understanding in that moment where there is no time or regrets, when you can just actually feel the music fill up inside you.
It seems that music is much more important when it’s live. Even though, I might have the CD and listen to it over and over again, there’s nothing like seeing the band face to face. “There’s a personal connection not only between the fans and the musicians, but just between everyone. We’re all here for one purpose: to listen to some great music,” says Chaz (my ticket-taker/Great Harvest friend).
Bekah and I go into the small venue that used to be someone’s garage. The micro stage is in the right corner. It’s lit up with cheap Christmas lights and a green wavy plastic backdrop that is enhanced with light bulbs in the back giving an eerie glow. Sea Wolf walks onstage. Everyone starts clapping, chanting more like it. He starts strumming his guitar like it’s his old cat, waiting for it to purr. Everyone’s waiting. Swiftly, he starts singing: This part is for my love of old/ How the Rose in your heart would hold. Each person in the crowd starts swaying to the music, like daisies on a summer breeze. This moment is the part where everything gets magical. Where you know that you are exactly where you need to be at that time: In a dingy but mysterious box with a group of people that you adore. I become hypnotized with his voice. If he told me to jump off a building I would totally do it. As the time goes by, Sea Wolf has ended. People start moving/pushing through to get to the other small box that has the souvenirs (or relics in some peoples’ perspective) to show others that they actually saw the band play. I’m still in the same spot where I heard the music, still mesmerized. Bekah and I finally leave. Not only did we listen to the band on the way to the concert, but also on the way back. We talk and discuss our favorite songs and the funny things that he said. When I drift off to sleep, we still hum the melody and dream about music.Because of this ritual, of going to concerts, I’ve created this side of me that is totally my own. Yet, music has created this community that will never break as long as people listen and appreciate what they are hearing. After going to concerts, music becomes an obsession to most people. It’s a way of living and a breath of fresh air.

oh what a night

Happy New Year everyone!!!! Bekah and I had one surreal time during the New Years Eve. A lot of making out with cheeks that's for sure. First off, we went to Kilby Court to support some of our coolest local bands such as Patter Stats, Kid Theodre, The Future of the Ghost, and Tolchok Trio. At the Kilby, I ran around with a Martinelli's apple cider bottle and everyone that it was alchohol. This one girl also gave me the stink eye and I know for sure that it wasn't how her face normally looks. Then we went to some other parties with a lot of drunken people. One person head-chucked a window and broke it. As my frined olivia says "New Year's Eve isn't the best holiday for Mormons because they don't drink"...so very true. Here's some pics for you to reminice about:

New Band Alert

This past Friday, Abby and I went to fabulous concert at Kilby Court involving two great bands and more snow than I care to think about. How, you might ask yourself, did we know that going to Kilby on this particularly snowy Friday would be worth the cold and wetness of it all? Well, the answer is simple: we're hardcore. Actually, there is a bit of a history behind the madness. It all started out with googling Bjork . My brother and I found some whacked out picture from a blog and I have been obsessed ever since. It's hilarious.Anywho, this kid's blog recommended his cousin's band called Vampire Weekend. I watched the music video and decided this band was, in fact worth my time. Abby found out about them from her friend Matt Coleman who said that everyone who was anyone was listening to Vampire Weekend and that she should too.

So, We went to this sweet show and even the opening band was good. We got to meet the bands and they were good people and everything and they signed stuff for us, the whole shebang. I lost my camera, but if I had had it with me at the concert I could upload some sweet pics. Unfortunatley, it is indeed lost and this couch picture will have to suffice.

of Montreal: Selling Out isn't Possible

I found this article on and it gave me a new outlook on music. I'm the kind of person who loves music sooooo much that when there's a song that I love that's on the radio or on a commercial, I freak out and then I just don't really feel the same for the band that I once loved. I actually first heard the band 'Of Montreal' on a steakhouse commercial, and then my friend introduced me to their music. I really like this article and it changed my views on selling out or going comercial. Enjoy!

Selling Out Isn't Possible
by Kevin Barnes

Are you a sell out? Yes. Don't let it bother you though, cause apparently I am also a sell out, and so are your parents and everyone you've ever known. The only way to avoid selling out is to live like a savage all alone in the wilderness. The moment you attempt to live within the confines of a social order, you become a sell out. Once you attempt to coexist you sell out. If that's true, then selling out is a good thing. It is an important thing. If we didn't do it, we'd be fucked, quite literally, by everyone bigger than us physically who found us fuckable.

The pseudo-nihilistic punk rockers of the 70's created an impossible code in which no one can actually live by. It's such garbage. The idea that anyone who attempts to do anything commercial is a sell out is completely out of touch with reality. The punk rock manifesto is one of anarchy and intolerance. The punk rockers polluted our minds. They offered a solution that had no future. Of course, if the world would have ended before Sandinista! was released then everything would have been alright. It didn't. Now we have all of these half-conceived ideas and idiot philosophies floating around to confuse and alienate us. I think it is important to face reality. It is important to decide whether you are going to completely rail against the system or find a way to make it work for you. You cannot do both -- and if you attempt to do both you will only become even more bitter and confused.

When I was younger, and supported my parents, I chose to float between the two. A lot of people choose to do this. There are so many confused young people running around now polluted by this alloyed version of the tenets of the punk rock manifesto. Of course they're confused. It isn't possible to be in chorus with capitalism and anarchy. You must pick one or the other. Very few people are willing to do it, though. The worst kind of person is the one who sucks the dick of the man during the daytime and then draws pictures of themselves slitting his throat at night. Jesus Christ, make up your mind! The thing is, there is a lack of balance. When capitalism is working on a healthy level, everyone gets their dick sucked from time to time and no one gets their throat slit. It's impossible to be a sell out in a capitalist society. You're only a winner or a loser. Either you've found a way to crack the code or you are struggling to do so. To sell out in capitalism is basically to be too accommodating, to not get what you think you deserve. In capitalism, you don't get what you think you deserve though. You get what someone else thinks you deserve. So the trick is to make them think you are worth what you feel you deserve. You deserve a lot, but you'll only get it when you figure out how to manipulate the system.

Why commercialize yourself? In the art industry, it's extremely difficult to be successful without turning yourself into a cartoon. Even Hunter S. Thompson knew this. God knows Duchamp and Warhol knew it. Some artists are turned into cartoons and others do it themselves. I prefer to do it myself. at least then I can control how my cock is photographed. Why should it be considered such an onerous thing to view the production of art as a job? To me, the luckiest people are the ones who figure out a way to earn a living doing what they love and gain fulfillment from. Like all things in this life, you have to make certain sacrifices to get what you want. At least most of us do. If you're not some trust-fund kid or lotto winner, you've got to slave it out everyday. People who wanna be artists have the hardest time of it 'cause we are held up to these impossible standards. We're expected to die penniless and insane so that the people we have moved and entertained over the years can keep us to themselves. So that they can feel a personal and untarnished connection with our art. The second we try to earn a living wage or, god forbid, promote our art in the mainstream, we are placed under the knives of the sanctimonious indie fascists. Unfortunately, there isn't some grand umbrella grant that supports indie rockers financially and enables us to exist outside of the trappings of capitalism.

The thing is, I like capitalism. I think it's an interesting challenge. It's a system that rewards the imaginative and ambitious adults and punishes the lazy adults. Our generation is insanely lazy. We're just as smart as our parents but we are overwhelmed by contradicting ideas that confuse us into paralysis. Maybe the punk rock ethos made sense for the "no future" generation but it doesn't make sense for me. I like producing and purchasing things. I'd much rather go to IKEA than to stand in some bread line. That's because I don't have to stand in a bread line. Most people who throw around terms like "sellout" don't have to stand in one either. They don't have to stand in one because they are gainfully employed. The term "sellout" only exists in the lexicon of the over-privileged. Almost every non-homeless person in America is over-privileged, at least in a global sense.

Obviously, I've struggled with the concept. I've struggled because of the backlash following my songs placement in TV commercials. That is, until I realized that the negative energy that was being directed towards me really began to inspire my creativity. It has given me a sense of, "well, I'll show them who is a sellout, I'm going to make the freakiest, most interesting, record ever!!!" ... "I'm going to prove to them that my shit is wild and unpolluted by the reach of some absurd connection to mainstream corporate America."

I realized then that, for me, selling out is not possible. Selling out, in an artistic sense, is to change one's creative output to fit in with the commercial world. To create phony and insincere art in the hopes of becoming commercially successful. I've never done this and I can't imagine I ever will. I spent seven years not even existing at all in the mainstream world. Now I am being supported and endorsed by it. I know this won't last forever. No one's going to want to use one of my songs in a commercial five years from now, so I've got to take the money while I can. It's the same with pro athletes. You only get it while you're hot and no one stays commercially viable for long. It's not like Michael Vick is going to be receiving any big endorsement deals anytime soon. As sad as it may seem, one of the few ways most indie bands can make any money whatsoever is by selling a song to a commercial. Very very few bands make enough money from album sales or tour revenue to enable themselves to quit their day job.

Next time you see a commercial with one of your favorite bands songs in it, just tell yourself, "cool, a band I really like made some money and now I can probably look forward to a few more records from them." It's as simple as that. We all have to do certain things, from time to time, that we might not be completely psyched about, in order to pay the bills. To me, the TV is the world's asshole boss and if anyone can earn some extra bucks from it and they're not Bill O'Reilly, it's a good thing.

WTF!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I think it's funny and sad how people have used the colloquial texting in our everyday speech. For insatnce the infamous Cingular commercial with that little bratty girl saying "IDK my BFF...Jill?" So, just to be a smart-ass, I've started saying "WTF!?!?!?" I used that little explosion on a sales girl at Urban Outfitters. I don't know if she knew that I wasn't serious, but she kept laughing. She was hurling away for a good 5 minutes while ringing up a unicorn keychain and some hot-pink glasses that I was buying. I was thinking to myself "dude, either she's been smokin' too much 'urb' out of the 'Urban Outfitters' or I'm just really funny...." hmmmmmm.

anyways, that's my story. you can tell it at parties but please put "abekah" as the source; therefore, our love will spread out to many other parts of this world.

Of Montreal: the new Prince/David Bowie?

I have one word: WOW. I went and saw Of Montreal with my good friend, Matt Coleman. The concert was at "In the Venue" and I'm tellin' ya, the place has changed (and it turns into a gay club after concerts apparently; I have a good source)! We got there for the second opening band. I forgot their name, but they were awesome. Basically, they just rapped to this techno beat. They also had a stuffed animal that was a dog in a motorcycle outfit. I really have no words. It was that amazing.

I've noticed that there are three different types of people that go to concerts: 1. the person who jsut stands there looking bored and pissed off while leaning on you because they, ironically, want their space 2. get all roudy mosh-pit style...even to mellow music (aka Peter, Bjorn, and John; Of Montreal) and 3. the coolest people that dance in their own little space and closing their eyes by singing. Picture this: matt and I were surrounded by 1s and 2s and we were basically the only 3s. I was kind of miffed, but it wasn't as bad as RS where people were just RUDE. And there wasn't as many people.

OK: OF MONTREAL!!! They came onstage. Their opening song was a cover of Prince's "I Would Die For You." That's when I realized Kevin Barnes (the lead singer) is the NEW Prince. He wore this eighties style green blouse with a ruffly front (where one could see a hint of chest hair) and awesome shoulder pads. oh! and he was wearing really cool sparkly blue eye shadow. He also kept stripping onstage and apparently he went in his birthday suit at a Las Vegas concert, but he got in touble. :) Kevin also talked about how "Saturday's Warrior" is one of his favorite movies and that he bought it for a friend. For the encore, they played "Party's Carshing Us" which was AMAZING. Overall, the concert was highly pleasable. In other words, I loved it. They was so fun to watch and the music was great. I think everyone should become Of Montreal fans because they are absolutely spectacular.

At least I think I know my ABC's...

well, I gues that I have to do this because my SISTER is making me...sheesh:

A- Attached or single? I'm single
B- Best Friend? There are so many I can't even begin
C- Cake or Pie? both. yellow cake, cherry pie, AND peach cobbler
D- Day of choice? Wednesday becasue that's when gossip girl AND ANTM is on! YAYA!
E- Essential item? Ipod and chapstick...I'm obsessed with both
F- Favortie color? I'm not really sure. maybe voilet and olive green?
G- Gummi bears of worms? neither, but for sure cinnamon bears. duh
H- Hometown? Salt Lake City. oh man
I- Favorite indulgence? food and facebook. and gossip
J- Janaury or july? I don't really like either, but I guess I was born in july, so july
K- Kids? no, thank goodness! I just have a lot of nephews. that's good enough
L- Life is incomplete without? loved and being loved
M- marriage date? I don't know...I was thinking 12/12/12? no, maybe to cliche?
N- Numbers of brothers and sisters? 4 bros and 4 sis'
O- Oranges or apples? oranges fo sho
P- Phobias or fears? SNAKES!!! especially on planes!
Q- Quote? You're only funny if you offend at least one person
R- Reason to smile? to know that someone is thinking about you
S- Season of choice? Fall! YUM!
T- Tag three friends: BEKAH, OLIVIA, SOMEONE ELSE WHO WANTS TO DO THIS!!
U- Unknown fact about me? I'm not clever under pressure. sorry.
V- Vegetable? brussel sprouts
W- Worst habit? I annoy people really easily
X- X-ray or ultrasound? um, X-ray?
Y- Your favorite food? lemoned salmon
Z- Zodiac sign? LEO RRAAAWWRRR!