last night i went to the new found glory show at toad's place here in richmond. i had a free ticket courtesy of marisa and was excited to go to a show, which i haven't done in a little while.
i'd been kinda avoiding "scene" shows the past few months since i left olympia. i always have a good time, but it's bittersweet because i just start thinking about my own experiences in music and missed opportunities and things that went wrong. it was just bad luck and bad timing, but it's hard not to feel a little bit of jealousy. we never got the chance to really prove ourselves, while bands with significantly less talent and a few gimmicks rose to the top with meteoric speed.
last night was sorta like that. there was a band that we had shared the stage with last year in GA who was now main support for new found glory, playing to a packed house of kids singing the words and going crazy. their songs weren't written any better than ours, their music wasn't groundbreaking. they just had the right sound and the right look for the right kids at the right time.
just goes to show what a crapshoot it is trying to be a musician on that national touring level. and the reality is.. in a year, all the kids who know every word to this band's songs will have moved on to some new band.
any time you are basing your livelihood on the fickle tastes of your average 15-19 year old, you have to deal with the reality that you have no idea if what you're saying/doing/thinking even translates to them because their life is so different from your own.
the whole thing definitely gets me bummed out. which is another reason i'm glad i've distanced myself from it.. because it makes me a bitter dude and i don't want to be bitter. i want to be happy and stoked and go to a show and enjoy it for what it is.
8 months ago
2 comments:
I hope that stoked>bummed for you last night.
Thanks for coming with.
:)
dude i'm with you on this. it is melancholy, but i think you hit the nail of the downside right on the head. you don't want to spend your life chasing after what you think the kids will like. because the kids really aren't that cool. and i personally subscribe to the theory that the larger your fan base gets, the more it's composed of kids you really wouldn't want to have to talk to. but boy oh boy do they want to talk to you.
as for getting over it and enjoying shows again, your mileage may vary but it took me about a year and a half. it's only been in the last month or so, about the two year mark, that i've started going out again to check out bands i didn't really know about just for the hell of it.
you'll get there dude, just do your thing and get into what you want to get into for now (for me it was lots of yacht rock and fantasy metal). eventually you'll find you really want to go see so and so, and it'll start falling back into place from there.
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