My extended stay in New York is bookended by two sets of concerts: Smashing Pumpkins and The Flaming Lips last Monday and Tuesday followed by The Dead Weather and Arcade Fire (with Spoon) this Tuesday and Wednesday. And although these are all rock bands, each one has its own distinct flavor and its own distinct crowd.
Most concerts that I attend are a bit of a challenge for me. First of all, being a larger gentleman, there's the issue of standing on my feet for three or five hours. After the second hour, it begins to be a struggle but I always manage to push through. The biggest issue is that I have an aversion to large crowds. I get anxious when I am in social situations with large amounts of strangers. I enjoy my personal space. That's why I have never been a big fan of house parties. I lack the genes for drunken small talk and random "WOOOOO!"-ing.
I have always felt like an outsider. I am socially adept enough to be able to pick up on certain cues and get a good read on the crowd, but I feel as if I'm faking it, just reacting the way the situation dictates. I feel like an alien observer, sent from another planet to compile a report on human social interaction. In high school and early college, this outsider perspective frequently held me back. I would stay confined in my comfort bubble, only venturing out when the peer pressure got to be strong enough to burst it.
I am a different sort of person. That's the conclusion I have reached through my three decades of observing human interactions. I think my mind works in ways that most people's doesn't. That sounds a bit pompous. I'm not claiming to be a genius or anything even close to that, it's just that I tend to draw parallels and reach conclusions that other people don't immediately see. I've been told that I am funny. I think I probably am. But what most people don't realize is that frequently when you are laughing at something I have said, there was no intention of humor behind it. This can be very frustrating for me at times. I accept the fact that, yes, I do frequently try to make people laugh. But I also have a serious side, and sometimes when I am trying to express it, the message gets misconstrued and people end up laughing. It happens in school, at work, at home.
When I was in journalism school we discussed communication models. Basically it breaks down to this: In communication there is a sender and a receiver. The sender creates the message, encodes it into symbols (writing, speaking, singing, painting, body language, etc.) and transmits it through a channel (this blog, a song, a movie, conversation) for the receiver to decode. Simple, right? It should be, but along the way there is noise that interferes with the message. This noise can be environmental (literally, noise) but it can also be internal. This internal interference is where I believe most of my communication problems stem from. For some reason the systems for understanding that I have wired into my brain are slightly different from that of most people. To me, the message that I am trying to send is clear as day. But once the message leaves this here transmitter, it's meaning gets altered. Everyone's perception is affected by their own experiences. Everyone is wired to receive messages according to what they know about the sender, the subject, the channel, etc. There are an infinite number of factors that interfere with the communication process. Or maybe it's these factors that inform the process. Whatever the case may be, I frequently have trouble with noise disrupting my messages.
I kind of went off on a tangent there. The point I was trying to make is that I feel (and this may just be my own internal noise) like I am frequently misunderstood. When I am in a small group, or with close friends, I have a better chance of getting my point across. But in larger social situations, when there is a lot of noise (still talking about communication here, but environmental audio noise is a factor, too) I get uncomfortable. Communication is extremely important to me and I tend to be very careful about the ways my messages are structured, so when there is a large potential for interference, I get uncomfortable.
(Um... That was an interesting trip into my psyche. I didn't mean to get all academic on you there. All I wanted was to write about my concert experiences, but these communication issues have been on my mind for the last week. Sorry.)
I think my ultimate, highly unrealistic goal is to create messages that are immune from noise. This is impossible, I know. But I feel that by striving for this simple, unattainable goal, I will be able to at least hone my craft.
OK. I'm done with all that. Back to our regularly scheduled program.
The Pumpkins show was a test of endurance. We arrived early and found a nice spot about twelve rows back, the closest that the mob of people already in attendance would allow us to get. (Although, the whole concept of "rows" is misleading when there are no seats.) My friend Noah is kind of a Pumpkins fanatic. Strike that, he's a Billy Corgan fanatic. (In case you don't know, Billy Corgan is the frontman, the heart and soul of the band.) He has seen more Pumpkins shows than he can count. He even saw Billy's short-lived Zwan experiment. Noah's relationship with Billy and his bands has followed the course of most romantic relationships. That is to say, the early years were intense with shared emotions and deep connections. But people grow and change and it gets difficult to stick it out when both partners have a different idea about where the relationship should be headed. Billy went in a direction that many of his early fans objected to. They broke it off and decided to treasure the memories of the good times. But Noah, loving partner that he is, stuck it out. He supported Billy through his transitions. And although he has faced disappointment, Noah remains steadfast in his love for the band.
I think sometimes we treasure our childhood obsessions because it simply feels good to feel passionately about something. As we grow up and become jaded to the magic of the world, it is comforting to return to an earlier time in your life- a time when you still cared deeply for something, anything.
So we scootched up as far as we could go, planted our feet and waited for the show to begin. The three opening bands sucked ass. That's a bit unfair to them. I get it; it's hard to be a no-name band opening for a rock legend. You have to warm up a crowd that has never heard of you and doesn't want to hear from you. It puts a band in a difficult position. I appreciate all the hard work and grinding it took to get up on that stage. But I'm sorry, Mr. Skinny Emo Man, I do not want to hear you sing about what a rock star you are. You are not a rock star yet, so why don't you shut the hell up and bring out the band that we all paid money to see.
Once the real show got underway, the Pumpkins played a lot of new material. This was to be expected, of course. For an artist the new stuff is just as significant as the old stuff. Sometimes even more so. Anyway, Billy serenaded us for a while with his latest songs. But once they began to play "Bullet With Butterfly Wings," shit got real.
Now, I'm a thirty-year-old man. My youthful mind cannot wrap itself around this fact. My body, however, frequently realizes it. When Billy declared the world to be a vampire, there was a surge of energy through the crowd. Suddenly we are all teenagers again and here's this guy who knows what we are going through and he's singing directly to us and it's magical because all this time we thought no one else knew. And being teenagers in the 1990s we know no other way to show our appreciation to him but by moshing. So that is what we did.
Here's a crowd of young professionals and college graduates jumping elbows-first into each other, pushing, pulling, flailing about. The temperature rises from all the energy being expelled in the room. Everyone is singing, bouncing, feeling the music, living it. We may not be rats in a cage anymore, but we still have quite a lot of rage, apparently.
This was a moment that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I felt like I was in a storm in the middle of the ocean, struggling to stay afloat in the crashing waves. There was no fighting it. It was either join in or sink to the bottom. With that one song, Billy had demonstrated to us the raw power of music. But for me, it isn't just about music. It is about the emotional power of all art. To be able to elicit such a deep, primal response in such a large audience is a demonstration of art's ability to bring us together. Billy, I am in your debt. Thank you for sharing your art with me.
The moshing continued for most of the rest of the show. It got to be a bit much for me, but the crowd quickly formed a defensive wall of people who wanted no more of those youthful shenanigans. I enjoyed my place on the front-line, using my substantial frame to redirect moshers back into the fray. Walking out of the venue, I was ready to collapse. But I knew that I had witnessed something special. All the discomfort was worth it, just to be carried away by that one song.
I bet there was a lot of aspirin taken in New York City the next day.
The Flaming Lips show was an entirely different experience. The crowd was smaller, more mellow. The Lips are one of my current favorite bands. Their optimistic, happy and weird-as-hell songs speak to where I am in my life right now. I probably have listened to more Flaming Lips on my trip than any other band. So my anticipation for that particular concert was off the charts. It did not disappoint.
There was a sustained feeling of pure joy in the room. (Coincidentally enough, this was at the same venue as the previous night's Pumpkins show. It was an interesting juxtaposition of different energies in the same physical space.) It could have been the all the happy rainbow confetti being constantly dumped on us or maybe it was the abundance of giant three-foot balloons bouncing around or maybe it was the naked lady dancing on the giant LED screen or it could have been fact that the band entered from said lady's glowing LED vagina or maybe it was how Wayne, the lead singer, crown-surfed the room in a giant hamster ball. Whatever the reasons, this was an energetic, fun show. They played good music and we had a good time. That's pretty much all there is to say about that.
I will be leaving New York this week. I'm a little sad about that. I think that one day, when I'm rich and famous, I'll keep a little place in the city. Here is a brief list of some of the things that make New York a special place to me:
• The food. Oh, the food. Anything you want, whenever you want it, often delivered right to your door. Highlights have been the Vietnamese sandwich shop, the mac and cheese store (That's right, only delicious, creamy mac and cheese... It. Was. Heaven.), pizza to cry for, the hipster meat shop, and momofuku- a fancy, popular place where an old high school acquaintance now works. I could spend the rest of my life eating one meal a day at a different restaurant and still never experience all that there is in this city.
• Stuff to do. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of doin' stuff. But if you are the type who likes stuff, this city has plenty to offer: concerts, shows, bars, parks, comedy clubs, pool, think of it and it's here.
• The rooftops. I have always been drawn to rooftops. If there is an easily accessible rooftop and I am near it, chances are that I will try to go up there. This city has the best rooftops I have ever seen.
• My friends. I love you guys.
I want to end by expressing my sincere thanks to everyone who has been keeping up with me through this blog. Writing is how I want to make my living and this is a small step in accomplishing that goal. Thank you for the support and comments.
Most concerts that I attend are a bit of a challenge for me. First of all, being a larger gentleman, there's the issue of standing on my feet for three or five hours. After the second hour, it begins to be a struggle but I always manage to push through. The biggest issue is that I have an aversion to large crowds. I get anxious when I am in social situations with large amounts of strangers. I enjoy my personal space. That's why I have never been a big fan of house parties. I lack the genes for drunken small talk and random "WOOOOO!"-ing.
I have always felt like an outsider. I am socially adept enough to be able to pick up on certain cues and get a good read on the crowd, but I feel as if I'm faking it, just reacting the way the situation dictates. I feel like an alien observer, sent from another planet to compile a report on human social interaction. In high school and early college, this outsider perspective frequently held me back. I would stay confined in my comfort bubble, only venturing out when the peer pressure got to be strong enough to burst it.
I am a different sort of person. That's the conclusion I have reached through my three decades of observing human interactions. I think my mind works in ways that most people's doesn't. That sounds a bit pompous. I'm not claiming to be a genius or anything even close to that, it's just that I tend to draw parallels and reach conclusions that other people don't immediately see. I've been told that I am funny. I think I probably am. But what most people don't realize is that frequently when you are laughing at something I have said, there was no intention of humor behind it. This can be very frustrating for me at times. I accept the fact that, yes, I do frequently try to make people laugh. But I also have a serious side, and sometimes when I am trying to express it, the message gets misconstrued and people end up laughing. It happens in school, at work, at home.
When I was in journalism school we discussed communication models. Basically it breaks down to this: In communication there is a sender and a receiver. The sender creates the message, encodes it into symbols (writing, speaking, singing, painting, body language, etc.) and transmits it through a channel (this blog, a song, a movie, conversation) for the receiver to decode. Simple, right? It should be, but along the way there is noise that interferes with the message. This noise can be environmental (literally, noise) but it can also be internal. This internal interference is where I believe most of my communication problems stem from. For some reason the systems for understanding that I have wired into my brain are slightly different from that of most people. To me, the message that I am trying to send is clear as day. But once the message leaves this here transmitter, it's meaning gets altered. Everyone's perception is affected by their own experiences. Everyone is wired to receive messages according to what they know about the sender, the subject, the channel, etc. There are an infinite number of factors that interfere with the communication process. Or maybe it's these factors that inform the process. Whatever the case may be, I frequently have trouble with noise disrupting my messages.
I kind of went off on a tangent there. The point I was trying to make is that I feel (and this may just be my own internal noise) like I am frequently misunderstood. When I am in a small group, or with close friends, I have a better chance of getting my point across. But in larger social situations, when there is a lot of noise (still talking about communication here, but environmental audio noise is a factor, too) I get uncomfortable. Communication is extremely important to me and I tend to be very careful about the ways my messages are structured, so when there is a large potential for interference, I get uncomfortable.
(Um... That was an interesting trip into my psyche. I didn't mean to get all academic on you there. All I wanted was to write about my concert experiences, but these communication issues have been on my mind for the last week. Sorry.)
I think my ultimate, highly unrealistic goal is to create messages that are immune from noise. This is impossible, I know. But I feel that by striving for this simple, unattainable goal, I will be able to at least hone my craft.
OK. I'm done with all that. Back to our regularly scheduled program.
The Pumpkins show was a test of endurance. We arrived early and found a nice spot about twelve rows back, the closest that the mob of people already in attendance would allow us to get. (Although, the whole concept of "rows" is misleading when there are no seats.) My friend Noah is kind of a Pumpkins fanatic. Strike that, he's a Billy Corgan fanatic. (In case you don't know, Billy Corgan is the frontman, the heart and soul of the band.) He has seen more Pumpkins shows than he can count. He even saw Billy's short-lived Zwan experiment. Noah's relationship with Billy and his bands has followed the course of most romantic relationships. That is to say, the early years were intense with shared emotions and deep connections. But people grow and change and it gets difficult to stick it out when both partners have a different idea about where the relationship should be headed. Billy went in a direction that many of his early fans objected to. They broke it off and decided to treasure the memories of the good times. But Noah, loving partner that he is, stuck it out. He supported Billy through his transitions. And although he has faced disappointment, Noah remains steadfast in his love for the band.
I think sometimes we treasure our childhood obsessions because it simply feels good to feel passionately about something. As we grow up and become jaded to the magic of the world, it is comforting to return to an earlier time in your life- a time when you still cared deeply for something, anything.
So we scootched up as far as we could go, planted our feet and waited for the show to begin. The three opening bands sucked ass. That's a bit unfair to them. I get it; it's hard to be a no-name band opening for a rock legend. You have to warm up a crowd that has never heard of you and doesn't want to hear from you. It puts a band in a difficult position. I appreciate all the hard work and grinding it took to get up on that stage. But I'm sorry, Mr. Skinny Emo Man, I do not want to hear you sing about what a rock star you are. You are not a rock star yet, so why don't you shut the hell up and bring out the band that we all paid money to see.
Once the real show got underway, the Pumpkins played a lot of new material. This was to be expected, of course. For an artist the new stuff is just as significant as the old stuff. Sometimes even more so. Anyway, Billy serenaded us for a while with his latest songs. But once they began to play "Bullet With Butterfly Wings," shit got real.
Now, I'm a thirty-year-old man. My youthful mind cannot wrap itself around this fact. My body, however, frequently realizes it. When Billy declared the world to be a vampire, there was a surge of energy through the crowd. Suddenly we are all teenagers again and here's this guy who knows what we are going through and he's singing directly to us and it's magical because all this time we thought no one else knew. And being teenagers in the 1990s we know no other way to show our appreciation to him but by moshing. So that is what we did.
Here's a crowd of young professionals and college graduates jumping elbows-first into each other, pushing, pulling, flailing about. The temperature rises from all the energy being expelled in the room. Everyone is singing, bouncing, feeling the music, living it. We may not be rats in a cage anymore, but we still have quite a lot of rage, apparently.
This was a moment that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I felt like I was in a storm in the middle of the ocean, struggling to stay afloat in the crashing waves. There was no fighting it. It was either join in or sink to the bottom. With that one song, Billy had demonstrated to us the raw power of music. But for me, it isn't just about music. It is about the emotional power of all art. To be able to elicit such a deep, primal response in such a large audience is a demonstration of art's ability to bring us together. Billy, I am in your debt. Thank you for sharing your art with me.
The moshing continued for most of the rest of the show. It got to be a bit much for me, but the crowd quickly formed a defensive wall of people who wanted no more of those youthful shenanigans. I enjoyed my place on the front-line, using my substantial frame to redirect moshers back into the fray. Walking out of the venue, I was ready to collapse. But I knew that I had witnessed something special. All the discomfort was worth it, just to be carried away by that one song.
I bet there was a lot of aspirin taken in New York City the next day.
The Flaming Lips show was an entirely different experience. The crowd was smaller, more mellow. The Lips are one of my current favorite bands. Their optimistic, happy and weird-as-hell songs speak to where I am in my life right now. I probably have listened to more Flaming Lips on my trip than any other band. So my anticipation for that particular concert was off the charts. It did not disappoint.
There was a sustained feeling of pure joy in the room. (Coincidentally enough, this was at the same venue as the previous night's Pumpkins show. It was an interesting juxtaposition of different energies in the same physical space.) It could have been the all the happy rainbow confetti being constantly dumped on us or maybe it was the abundance of giant three-foot balloons bouncing around or maybe it was the naked lady dancing on the giant LED screen or it could have been fact that the band entered from said lady's glowing LED vagina or maybe it was how Wayne, the lead singer, crown-surfed the room in a giant hamster ball. Whatever the reasons, this was an energetic, fun show. They played good music and we had a good time. That's pretty much all there is to say about that.
I will be leaving New York this week. I'm a little sad about that. I think that one day, when I'm rich and famous, I'll keep a little place in the city. Here is a brief list of some of the things that make New York a special place to me:
• The food. Oh, the food. Anything you want, whenever you want it, often delivered right to your door. Highlights have been the Vietnamese sandwich shop, the mac and cheese store (That's right, only delicious, creamy mac and cheese... It. Was. Heaven.), pizza to cry for, the hipster meat shop, and momofuku- a fancy, popular place where an old high school acquaintance now works. I could spend the rest of my life eating one meal a day at a different restaurant and still never experience all that there is in this city.
• Stuff to do. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of doin' stuff. But if you are the type who likes stuff, this city has plenty to offer: concerts, shows, bars, parks, comedy clubs, pool, think of it and it's here.
• The rooftops. I have always been drawn to rooftops. If there is an easily accessible rooftop and I am near it, chances are that I will try to go up there. This city has the best rooftops I have ever seen.
• My friends. I love you guys.
I want to end by expressing my sincere thanks to everyone who has been keeping up with me through this blog. Writing is how I want to make my living and this is a small step in accomplishing that goal. Thank you for the support and comments.
the pumpkins are about to be in p-town and i cannot bring my self to go, i did not remain steadfast in my love.
ReplyDeletethe flaming lips put on a very memorable show, its awesome you were able to see them.