Seeing my good friend's band last night, it struck me that I've always had at least one friend in a band, and I've spent a good amount of my life at their shows, trying to find a personal connection to music they played.
Vegas (the first time) - Hemlock
I didn't have the ability to grasp Hemlock's sound, it was just a wall of noises fighting to get inside my brain. It confused me. It hurt -- but it hurt a lot less when I was barrelling into other people, awkwardly trying to externalize what their music meant to me.
I guess that's High School for pretty much everyone.
Claremont, CA - Captain Almost / Lead Pipe Justice
Even the name(s) of this band was detached from honest emotion and covered in thick layers of irony and cruelty. They took it so far, I'm still not sure if this was a real band, or just a theoretical construct.
Being 19, broke and clueless in Southern California, the only way I survived college was taking on a similar stance -- attacking everything first and playing it for laughs when a verbal punch connected.
(absolutely nothing exists of this band on the internet)
Vegas (again) - Slow to Surface
A raw howl surrounded by glossy electronics, a group that looked and sounded so perfectly like early 2000s Vegas, it's hard to seperate the two. Every sound they made felt like angry sex made symphonic.
Being young and a local in Vegas meant living out the mythos that tourists would spend a drunken weekend trying to get inside. Here I finally found my confidence when I realized there was no consequence to anything I did. Tip well, be nice to anyone that didn't speak English, and find a dark room to sleep off the daylight.
New Mexico - Coping with Quicksand
A dark, loud metal band, I'm actually at a loss to describe why I went out of my way to befriend them and go to their shows. I think it was their optimism -- they were playing an outdated sound in a city where no one would ever hear them, but they played with such certainty -- success was an eventuality.
I think I was just extremely happy, and I didn't care how about much. It was nice to be around a group of guys who felt the same way.
Chicago - Fort Frances
A thoughtful, earnest band, they're not trying stun the world or get rich, but making increasingly beautiful songs. They're so comfortable with their identity, so effortless in their skills, and so welcoming. You can see they're driven to create, but there's no mad desperation, no uncontrolled explosions.
I'd like to say I'm in the same place, that I've accepted myself and my place in the world, but the fact is, I'm using them as an escape. Chicago has been all jagged edges and assholes for me. To be able to retreat into a sound that sound opposed to all that is sometimes enough of a distraction to keep me going.
