Episode 2 — Aaron and Harry
We discuss songs in our Spotify playlists; what they mean to us; why we like them.
At 7:30 PM there was just one lone cowboy hat in the crowd. Two more trickled through the security check by 8 PM when Jaime Wyatt started the night’s music performance. There was an older crowd, but not the typical die-hard country music fan. Local favorite Angela Perley arrived on the scene. The room was filled with free-thinkers flirting with the idea of country music. Nikki and Jaime were indeed country music artists, but both iconoclasts in their own right.
It was a cold night in Columbus. The kind of night where you don’t see many people waiting outside the doors of the Newport Music Hall for a show to start. This crowd, however, showed up early for a performance they previously thought might never happen. Gen Xers and millennials filled the Newport Music Hall with the front row packed with women. They continued to wait patiently for a show that was originally supposed to happen more than two years ago.
You know how after watching countless advertisements over your life, you discount the idea that anything is as great as they say it is? We’ve all been burned on recommendations for a must-have, or must-see that we don’t know who to believe anymore. Maybe you find it difficult to believe me when I tell you that Palaye Royal’s Forever Dream North American Tour is the best show to see this year, but I have photos to prove it!
Mobley has released 1 album, and 3 EPs, and even if a recording artist writes and performs as a solo artist, it is rare that they would perform on a full stage by themselves. Who is that on drums? It’s Mobley. Who is that on vocals? It’s Mobley. In the crowd? On the keys? Playing guitar? IT’S ONE GUY! Even the beginning years for band Shakey Graves as a one-man-band, Alejandro Rose-Garcia was able to affix everything to himself. Mobley had a full drum kit on stage, electric guitar, keyboard, microphone, and moved through them all throughout his performance.
Things have changed for live performances since the start of the pandemic, and we haven’t fully recovered. People are allowed to return to events, while no longer required to wear masks or show proof of vaccination. There is still a fear of the unknown affecting ticket sales. The recent price spike of gasoline, food, housing and energy is also a factor in the decline of ticket sales. The crowds just aren't filling in the venues like they had been … yet.
At our core, people want to feel music. If we hear, but don’t feel it, it’s just noise. If it moves us, it now has meaning and we want to listen to it again and again. Unfortunately, like most jokes and stories, it loses meaning the more we hear it. Some of us are music junkies - always searching for new music; chasing the dragon to feel what we once felt with another song.
Rage Against the Machine’s sophomore studio release was named to show what Ronald Reagan called Russia could also be applied to the U.S. Evil Empire protested the U.S. – in it’s military spending, economic inequality, domestic violence and a lot more. A few songs are on a personal level like Snakecharmer and Born of a Broken Man, but every word has purpose and meaning, as we all should.
Last night in Columbus, it was a heavy 98• spring day. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power in the late afternoon, and are still without power as I write this. Unaware of the situation, I parked my car on the street and checked out the venue’s website. Where previously the page announced the show along with the opener’s name, it now read ‘The Unlikely Candidates is Still Happening’.
Recently I listened to an unknown satellite station in a bar, where I heard an entire Weezer concert set from their current tour. It made me think I should check out this year’s Spring tour with the Pixies. During their March 20th performance in Columbus, Weezer played music picked from their entire discography. There were a few LPs omitted, that I have only recently gone back to find I really enjoy, but you can’t please everyone all of the time. There are so many songs that I love by Weezer, it is naive of me to believe they could play a show of just my favorites. I don’t think they have that much time to perform. They would have to continue playing even while the workers are going home.