Everyone I Want To See In Concert Is Dead

Everyone I Want to See in Concert Is...

DEAD

The Openers Prince I Wanna Be Your Performer: The Essentials Purple Rain - Purple Rain I Wanna Be Your Lover - Prince Little Red Corvette - 1999 1999 - 1999 When Doves Cry - Queen Controversy - Controversy Uptown - Dirty Mind Dirty Mind - Dirty Mind Life ‘O’ The Party - Musicology Private Joy- Controversy Theives In the Temple - Queen Musicology - Musicology Call My Name - Musicology I Would Die 4 U - Prince

“Now where I come from, we don’t let society tell us how it’s supposed to be.

Our clothes, our hair, we don’t care.

It’s all about being there.”

The Openers Jimi Hendrix The Wind Cries Jimi: The Essentials All Along the Watchtower - Electric Lady Land Purple Haze - Are You Experienced Hey Joe - Are You Experienced Voodoo Child -Voodoo Child Little Wing -Axis: Bold As Love Foxey Lady - Are You Experienced The Wind Cries Mary - Are You Experienced Fire - Are You Experienced Castles Made of Sand - Axis: Bold As Love If 6 Was 9- Axis: Bold As Love Bold As Love - Axis: Bold As Love Are You Experienced? - Are You Experienced Star Spangled Banner (Live At Woodstock) - Experience Hendrix: The Best of Jimi Hendrix

And the wind, it cries, “Mary.”

The traffic lights, they turn, uh, blue tomorrow, and shine their emptiness down on my bed.

The tiny island sags down stream ‘cause the life that lived is, is dead.

And the wind screams, “Mary.” Uh-will the wind ever remember the names it has blow in the past?

And with this crutch, its old age And its wisdom, it whispers, "No, this will be the last."

And the wind cries “Mary.”

David Bowie

Now he’s the starman waiting in the sky.

Though he left this earth more as a cultural icon than a musician, he would never have achieved this status without his ability to unite the outcasts with his music. Most millennials see Bowie as the lightning-bolted guy with flaming red hair, but his stage persona grew from a humble beginning. As more and more people embraced Bowie’s eccentric style of dress—which made its way into full androgyny, the more and more adventurous he became. He paved the way for artists like Lady Gaga whose elaborate costuming create a stage persona far removed from their identity as an individual.

While Bowie really canonized glamor rock, had it not been for the flamboyant costumes and artist expression of the disco era his showmanship might have been shunned—especially as it became more accepting for men in music being more extraverted in their stage presence. Just look at The Village People.

I think Bowie takes this cultural acceptance from one aspect of society and weaves it into the fabric of another. Bowie takes inspiration from the aesthetic of a musical/cultural revolution of mi-

norities and applies it to an area of music dominated by (mostly) straight white men.

In other words, he took the fabulousness of disco and draped it all over rock and roll. While, ‘rockstars’ at the time were flamboyant in their own right, they never reached the level that Bowie did. Perhaps because the emphasis was different. For other male rockstars, this flamboyance came in the shirtless with leather pants variety, trying to appear sexy and cool on stage (in the way where women would want them and men would want to be them).

Bowie took ‘extra’ the extra mile beyond the ground laid out on either side of his inspiration. He elevated the status of stage performance so far beyond the basic rock genre stereotype that he helped to create a whole new genre.

The outfits though are only part of the need for a new sub-genre for Bowie’s music.

Some of his most popular songs are performative in nature. For example, “Space Oddity” tells the story of a space launch by using dialogue between the astronaut Major Tom and the ground control unit as well as inner monologue from Major Tom. “Moonage Daydream” stays on the same vein in terms of the theme, but in this song he tells some sort of strange love story. Interestingly this song was written by cutting up pieces of paper, writing random words on them, and using the words he pulled

“He elevated the status of stage performance so far beyond the basic rock genre stereotype that he helped to create a whole new genre.”

out to construct a song. It’s much less sensical than “Space Oddity”, but it still tries to tell some kind of raconteur.

He also has performed with stars of his caliber of eccentric in popular duets like “Under Pressure” with Queen—who also was a king of glamour rock—and “Dancing in the Street” with Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones—who was a muse of Andy Warhol. These tag-teams provided the opportunity for two flames to burn into an even bigger blaze of musical and theatrical glory.

The real reason I’d love to see him though is because his music has touched such a wide number of people. Bowie has attracted many different audience throw his solo work, collaboration with others, his ventures in film with his film Labyrinth and cameo roles as himself in movies like Bandslam, and his music’s part in scores from my childhood such as Shrek and Perks of Being a Wall Flower. “Changes” will forever take me back to being on a lake at 8:15am, announcing staff “cha-cha-chachanges,” and “Heroes” will make me feel like I’m in the studio with my co-host talking about driving.

I mourned his death. I wore all black and was hyper emotional for a while. My friend Dylan and I were struck with grief. He would have been someone we would have seen together and now we never will.

Freddie Mercury The Queen of the Rock Opera

It’s hard to write about your heroes. For some reason Freddie Mercury has always been one of mine. I’m not gay (as far as I know), so we don’t have that in common. I’m not a man, so we don’t have that in common either.

I wasn’t born in a foreign country, I’m not fighting HIV/AIDs, and I don’t have an extraordinarily large mouth with hideous teeth. What I am though is unauthentically myself. I would say unapologetically myself, but I like apologizing. I wouldn’t be being myself if I didn’t. The thing is that he was too. At least he gave off the kind of confidence to show people that they could be anyone they wanted to be.

Like David Bowie, Freddie Mercury was a glam-rocker. In my mind though he took what Bowie did and pushed it even further. He wrote rock operas in his music. Try and tell me that “Bohemian Rhapsody” doesn’t sound like an opera that has been condensed in to just about 6 minutes. It has dialogue, monologue, narration, and you can even feel the story progressing through the musical changes. His songs like “Bicycle Race”, “Killer Queen”, and “Good Old-Fashioned Loverboy” create characters that are charming and quirky— most of the time. “Another One Bites the Dust” as well as “We Will Rock You / We Are the Champions” tell stories of battle and victory. The music of Queen is all over the place which is like Freddie’s looks over the years.

Unlike Bowie, Mercury never adapted a stage persona; there was no new version of Ziggy Stardust. Despite that, Mercury hit the stage is unitards, military jackets, and shot one of Queens music videos dressed in the worst drag I’ve ever seen. The man still had his mustache— though I guess the point was that they were men dressed as women. In pictures of him performing, he looks like he is either absolutely insane or absolutely killing it.

I’ve always wanted to be in music.

I love performing; I get a rush from being able to sing out in front of other people.

I’m super embarrassed when people hear me sing in the shower because I sing really dorky songs, but I also really love it because—at least in my head—I kill it in the shower. What I love about Freddie Mercury is that he just hit the stage. It just seems like he was someone who was hypnotic to watch. Whether it was because he was walking around with no shirt on man-spreading like he was actually trying to claim the whole stage, the veins in his temples seemed like they were going to explode, figuring out how long he’d have to have to have braces to fix the overbite happening under his pornstache or because you can’t believe that so much talent and confidence came emerge from one person on stage and you wish you knew what it felt like to sing your favorite words on stage with the lights and costumes and the band.

Freddie Mercury, and Queen as a whole, take music to the level of art for me.

Their songs combine storytelling, drama, and obviously music to create masterpieces that are beloved today. Queen’s songs are like Andy Warhol’s body of work. Everyone has their own favorites—the early

ink shoe drawings, his paintings, his photography, the silkscreens, etc—but everyone has one that they like even a little bit.

Sometimes it’s just the memory associated with it. What would competitions be without “We Will Rock You / We Are the Champion”? What would learning CPR have been if I didn’t know that on top of “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees, you can also give CPR to the tune of “Another One Bites the Dust”? What would Wayne’s World be without the opening scene where they sing Bohemian Rhapsody? Because let’s be serious. Nobody hears Bohemian Rhapsody come on the radio and goes “Turn that shit off.” Flash Gordon wouldn’t have theme music if it weren’t for Queen!

Beyond just having the enjoyment of Queen’s music though, there are two songs that make me feel my most powerful. Listening or singing “Somebody to Love” or “Fat Bottomed Girls” makes me feel invincible. Even if I sound terrible out loud, in my head, I’m like Bernadette Petter’s singing the end of “Rose’s Turn” in her Gypsy revival. Queen makes me feel like a queen.

It’s hard to write about your heroes in terms of what they did for society during their time because it’s hard to look past the personal of what they do for you.

Freddie Mercury and Queen have gotten me through a whole lot because no matter how low it gets, there’s a queen inside.

Some Killer Old-Fashioned Rebel, Rebel More from your flamboyant favorites Crazy Little Things Called Love - Queen Under Pressure - Queen & David Bowie Changes - David Bowie Space Oddity - David Bowie Flash’s Theme - Queen Moonage Daydream - David Bowie Suffragette City - David Bowie Fat Bottomed Girls - Queen Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen Young Americans - David Bowie Somebody to Love - Queen Don’t Stop Me Now - Queen Heroes - David Bowie

Playlists...

Try A Little R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Now he’s the starman waiting in the sky.

Try a Little Tenderness - Otis Redding (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman - Aretha Franklin Pride and Joy - Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble Castles Made of Sand - Jimi Hendrix The Weight - Aretha Franklin Respect - Otis Redding Satisfaction - Otis Redding I’m Gonna Crawl - Led Zeppelin I’ll Be Seeing You - Billie Holiday The Wind Cries Mary - Jimi Hendrix Strange Fruit - Billie Holiday Bridge Over Troubled Water - Aretha Franklin Gloomy Sunday - Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday I’ll be looking at the stage, but I won’t be seeing you.

Laying across the couch as soft light enters through the broad kitchens, a crooning voice and low blowing horns quietly fill the otherwise empty kitchen as I read my book under a fuzzy white blanket.

Soothed by the soul of the music, I read on past the inspiration for my musical selection: “I felt just the way Billie Holiday sounded, like I’d cried all I could and it wasn’t enough.” The description couldn’t have been more accurate. Holiday sounded like she was going to shed tears out of the corners of her eyes while she sang, and she made me want to cry at the same time.

I could feel her emotion. I could feel the moment in Olivia’s house with Astrid and Olivia in my book, drinking coffee on expensive platters and talking about the world of men. The instrumentals in Billie Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday” carried me beyond the words of Janet Fitch’s White Oleander.

The instrumentals that accompany Holiday on her tracks set the stage for her vocals. In the song “Summertime,” the horns create a definite feel for what the words mean. They set a background layer to create a depth to the words Holiday is singing. The

style reminds me of Scat Cat from The Aristocats because the notes have swing but can take a solemnity. They are long and slow notes which give a soulful feel and back-and-forth play between different horns that prevent the song from getting too downhearted. In “When a Woman Loves a Man,” horns do make an appearance, but the periodic piano riffs contrast the deepness of Holiday’s voice with their light high notes. It adds an eloquence and nostalgic feeling to the song. The riffs fill in well when Holiday isn’t singing, and they also top of long notes from the horn section quite nicely. When the piano riffs end, they blend seamlessly into the words that layer over them. Sometimes, the instrumentals can create the wrong mood by being too busy or too loud or just flat out wrong, but the piano really adds a nice touch to carrying out the song.

Holiday’s music is authentic jazz.

Yes, I am just discovering it now, but Holiday has been dead since 1959. She recorded from 1933 to her final performance and album recording just before she died.

Other than the fact that her music was recorded when jazz was all the rage, the sound that was produced was not created just for profit and gain. Holiday and the musicians she worked with to make music did it for the art of making music. I feel like so much music today is just marketed successfully. The time of Holiday’s music

versus today’s popular music is that the goal in her time was to please their listeners with enjoyable vocal and instrumental art while today’s goal is to create a profit. Holiday’s songs just feel so much more personal and heartfelt than the generic pop that’s churned out and aimed at preteen girls.

I can’t say that all music today is bad though. In fact some artists today really remind me of Holiday, such as Lana Del Rey. Del Rey is today’s queen of sexy and sad, but she wasn’t the original, Holiday was. Holiday has a rich voice that’s like a thick silk ribbon floating through the air: the high notes float but her low notes sink.

The vocal variety she adds creates a dynamic feel to her songs that really make it feel like she’s talking to someone as opposed to just sounding like she’s singing a song to sing a song. In theatre when there’s too much emotion to express with just words, you get a music number, and that’s what you get from Holiday. It’s like she couldn’t hold in the sadness anymore and it’s just pouring out of her soul musically.

She always expresses her words with such deliberate vocal changes and styles, so it is really

her lyrics and how they are interpreted that give the whole song purpose and a sense of what is to be expressed. In “I’ll Be Seeing You,” Holiday creates a simple list that gives off the romantic notion of being in love and seeing her significant other everywhere because that’s who she’s thinking about:

“I’ll be seeing you/in every summer’s day/in everything that’s light and gay/I’ll always think of you that way...I’ll find you in the morning sun/and when the night is new/I’ll be looking at the moon/but I’ll be seeing you.”

There are so many fast love songs, but there’s something so much more seductive and meaningful in her version of romanticism in comparison to a popular musician today such as Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, or whatever other popular teen music artist that I refuse to listen to.

My personal favorite song of Holiday’s is actually a cover of “The End of the World,” also known as the “Hungarian Suicide Song,” by Hungarian pianist and composer Rezsö Seress. The song is actually about suicide which gives it a dark origin though the words are quite beautiful. It’s lyrics sound like a love song being performed for the deceased at funeral: “Angels have no thought/of ever returning you/Would they be angry/if I thought of joining you?” I also think the chorus is incredible because it’s a singular haunting line that ties the whole song together without taking attention away from the rest of the song--in the way that some choruses do. Holiday will simply just sing, “Gloomy Sunday,” as a means of creating a chorus. The first few lines of the song resonate strongly both in meaning and in musical tension:

“Sunday is gloomy/my hours are slumberless/Dearest, the shadows/I live with are numberless.” The vocabulary is sophisticated yet I keep wanting to sing along because they are so beautifully strung together in a way that they come off almost effortless like conversation.

As I sat reading in my kitchen listening to Holiday, I became attached to her music. I felt a deep connection to it though I had never been a real fan of jazz. It wasn’t just that my book was the perfect accompaniment for it either.

There was a sort of genuineness that comes from Holiday’s music. It is real early 1900’s jazz. It’s real emotions in her lyrics. It’s her real voice singing on the recording. It’s real order from disorder type instrumentals. It’s complicated and emotional and artistic in a way that I feel we lack today in what comes from the music industry. I think that Holiday’s music is something to be revered and hopefully will last the test of time.

Amy Winehouse

Will I ever get to hear you sing live?

I say, “No, no, no.”

There’s something interesting about Amy Winehouse.

She has the such a smoky, sultry, soulful voice, but she’s not the sad, seductive singer that she could be.

We’re talking Etta James covers so good they could make you cry, but instead she sings about things far less romantic—like fuck me pumps.

“Back to Black” can really make you feel the hurt she describes of being left for some woman that’s always waiting in the wings. She gets close to making work similar to the great female jazz singers of the early and mid 20th century. She brings a modern twist.

I was listening as the WOKE AMP host on WPIR, Jaguar Mary, discussed blues music with Karma Mayet Johnson, and I understood what the difference is between singing the blues and just belting it out. I had always suspected that it was about the emotion behind it, but it’s about getting the music to resonate through your whole body, to expel powerful notes and messages. Blues is about knowing your voice and using it in it’s whole range to communicate.

At least, that’s what I gathered as a listen to her cover “Little Sparrow” by Dolly Parton acapella in the studio. She nearly had me in

tears just sitting beyond the glass as I monitored the levels.

It’s in this way that some of her songs fall flat, where she’s just belting.

“Valerie”, “Stronger Than Me”, “The Girl from Ipanema”, and a few don’t fill me with her attitude or move me to feel her pain. A lot of it I think has to do with the tempo of these songs because they are faster and lighter, but even “You Know I’m No Good” which is faster has a little bit more edge in it. I think the counter point to this is “Rehab” because it’s the most commercially successful, has a slow but up-tempo rhythm behind it, and you can feel all of her sass coming forth. It has a lot of fire behind it.

I think that’s her twist though, her modern twist. Her music has a lot of bite.

When listening to Etta James or Billie Holiday, they have a silky quality. Their voices float over the music and pour coffee with Bailey’s in it over your soul; it leaves you warm and drunk. When Holiday sings “I’ll Be Seeing You” her voice is like another instrument that’s soloing. When Winehouse sings “Tears Dry On Their Own”, I can see her in front of me sitting mostly sideways in a chair with a cigarette telling me about her breakup. It’s much more conversational. The music is background for her speaking with emotions too much to express simply just by speaking. I think that’s part of what makes her music so easy to listen to. There’s something that’s comfortable about how confrontational she is: she’s crass, she’s harsh, and she

seems down right crazy.

But if I could see her in concert, I really would. Now that I’ve gotten to a place in my life where my friends and I are regularly being disappointed in men, Amy Winehouse’s songs are applicable.

Naturally that’s being dramatic since most of her songs are probably about breakups and emotional hardships that extend beyond being stood up after a week or two of talking on the phone, but it feels right. I would just like to be able to see her bring those emotions out on stage while me and my friends whisper loudly to each other about what the songs she’s singing make us think of. I also would just like to see her because based on her recordings, she seems genuinely talented. I feel like this is an unpopular opinion, but if I could have anyone’s voice, I’d have Amy Winehouse’s voice. It’s not overly polished which means it still has character in it, but it’s strong enough to sound like she’s been blessed with a gift from the heaven’s above.

It’s her look that diverts people’s impassioned love for her voice—or huff at other people’s love for her. My friends Wade and I love to perform her songs, but people give us grief when we say how much we enjoy her music. Her

look was very…trashy looking in comparison to the posh outfits of female popstars. Her bra straps— and sometimes the cups—are often visible in her outfits, she wears enough eyeliner to cover rabbit’s ears, and she has her upper lip pierced to look like a mole. The top of her hair is usually in a beehive and she has tattoos. She’s a lot to look at all at once, but she’s really beautiful. She has great cheek bones; long, dark hair; full lips; and big, brown eyes. Her look adds to her musics attitude though. I think if she looked more like other stars her age, her music wouldn’t have the validity that it does. She looks like the kind of girl who dates bad guys and gets hurt, who wakes up alone sometimes, and who would bounce back tougher after each jerk.

Secretly though, under her hard, badass exterior, she has a soft spot that isn’t bitter or resentful like “Wake Up Alone”, “Back to Black”, or “Tears Dry On Their Own”. In 2011, Winehouse covered “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” as written by Carole King. Even more so than the versions performed by the Shirelles (the first group to record it) and Carole King, I like Amy Winehouse’s versions the best. There is a point where she shifts out of her normal low register into this high falsetto type voice, and it just amazes me every time. I can feel her—as a woman—ask her partner if they’ll be there. It goes back to what I said about the conversational tone of her music, that I feel like she’s really talking to someone in her songs. For some reason her rendition of it is even more human

feeling to me than Carole King.

She has the voice of someone who was meant to sing with the silkiness of an early 20th century blues and jazz star but was born in the UK only to take up smoking and drinking before really honing in on their talent. Her voice speaks to me in a

way that goes beyond the music. I feel like if I could have seen her live, that connection would have been even deeper.

Jim Morrison Hangin’ in the Soul Kitchen

The Doors were only able to achieve their sound because of two things: 1) Jim Morrison’s sexy voice and 2) stealing and then combining sounds from other genres—especially the blues. In all honesty, I would want to see The Doors in concert purely based on the fact that Jim’s face and body match his voice very well...and I’d like to see that in person.

Other than that though, I could pretty much go hear The Doors anywhere—not just because I can carry my iPhone anywhere but because there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of the blues.

The Doors as a group released good music but one could hardly call their discography classic rock which was what I was taught by Dewey Finn (Jack Black) in the School of Rock. The music of The Doors is really just white boy blues. It’s more well done than “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals (which I love to sing because I can as it accommodates my abilities as a white girl) but there isn’t as rich as real blues. I feel like Muddy Waters would be like, “You got real close, but no cigar, kid,” with a nice fat pat on the back. In all honesty, the fact is that they are a group of white guys who tried to create “rock music” and just didn’t cross far enough over the bridge from blues into it’s rock derivative.

It’s like when people cover another artist’s song, but they don’t really make it their own. You just are kind of like, “Oh. They played that

well.” That’s what The Doors did; they played the blues well for someone else.

With that said, I don’t want to completely shit on them. I find their music to be quite enjoyable for a listen. The beginning of “People Are Strange” has a guitar sound that is too twangy to be blues but too mellow to be country. The sound of it on it’s own doesn’t give the same nitty, gritty or full sound that blues can have because it’s too bouncy. It’s close to “Rollin’ Stone “by Muddy Waters, but not quite.

The guitar riff is much more melodic than the strings in the beginning of “Rollin’ Stone”. It’s just the sound of footsteps walking on the pavement. They also tend to steer clear of the riff and rhyme formula that you can get in blues verses. “Love Me Two Times” also has a sort of blues guitar to me, but most significantly, it talks about leaving. Even though it’s not as sad as some of the blues songs out there about leaving, it talks about ‘loving’ before Morrison leaves—and doing it an extra time before the road. “Backdoor Man” has a piano quality which echoes a lot of “House of the Rising Sun” as covered by The Animals.

The most obvious use of the blues inspiration is for “Roadhouse Blues”. It is the sound that I think most people who didn’t grow up on the blues hear in their heads when there is talk of the genre. Even in just the instruments present, I feel like it has the whole armory: guitar, bass, drums, piano, harmonica, and a rich voice. It also has moments where the instruments talk to each other, where they all break off into their own little parts. Like jazz, blues artists seem to have a knack for soloing and improvising while keeping a sound that is consistent with the other musicians

around them. Even when several instruments have abandoned the rhythm, it doesn’t feel busy or overwhelming.

Some of their songs just feel like they have a very specific inspiration—even if it’s not the blues. Some of them feel like early rock and roll, some like country, some like god-knows-what.

“Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)” has instrumentation that sounds intoxicated. You can get the feel from it that it’s about drinking even without the words. I’m not sure how they knew the combination of these sounds would make the listener feel like they’ve had at least two more beers than they did, but they did. It has a pub sound, I guess. Now “Light My Fire” is really quite synthesized sounding.

I don’t know if the noice tinkling in the background is a piano or a synth or something else that has an effect on it but it is the most worked sounding of the music.

Which is odd when some of their strongest songs are ones—in my opinion—in which they shine as musicians—like “Roadhouse Blues”. I like the words in “Light My Fire”, and I think Morrison killed it. If I could have seen him perform it live, I probably would have been like one of those fangirls of the Beatles and fainted. I just feel like musically, it was inspired by something that was out of the ordinary, and I’m not sure that I love it musically.

“Touch Me”, “Peace Frog”, and “Hello, I Love You” all to me like they really are at their time. “Touch Me” is the bridge between “Hello, I Love You” and the bigger band blues that I prefer from The Doors. During this time, Led Zeppelin bringing in orchestral musicians for songs on Led Zeppelin IV (1971) like Stairway to Heaven and the Beatles using large amounts of instrumentation for A Day In the Life recorded two years before The Doors, so this big use of horns and strings and bringing in other musicians to play sections is very much in the style of when they wrote this song. The lyrics of “Peace Frog” is really what ties it to the period. It comes in after Woodstock and in the continuing quest for peace and love. Musically though, it returns to a sound closer to “Alabama Song (Whiskey Song)” but definitely more on the rock side due to the change in the guitar sound.

the living are Concert Review

Silversun Pickups at Brooklyn Steel

Everyone could tell he was in pain, but it was as if the cheering of the crowd and the adrenaline of performing were pumping painkillers through his veins, pushing him through the end of the encore. Guitarist and vocalist Brian Aubert finally caved and unwrapped his soft cast, tossing it aside he continued to play through the last song and a half of the show on November 17th at Brooklyn Steel.

When then stage crew came out after opener, Minus the Bear, and tore down their enormous tapestry to reveal the grey sheet scrawled with “Silversun Pickups,” I felt my heart rise to my throat. The stage was barren save for the instruments, some speakers, and a few extra lights—deceptively simple for a band with such dynamic music.

The venue was packed from stage to bar with couples in their mid-twenties, hipsters, recent college grads, punk girls, and middle-aged men still rocking their 9-to-5 button downs. The eclectic audience mirrored the members of the band. Brian had a torn shirt sleeve to accommodate his cast; bassist and vocalist Nikki Monniger was in a tailored dress and sparkly penny-loafers, doing the politest head-banging I’ve ever seen; drummer Chris Guanlao was the human embodiment of Animal from The Muppets, and keyboardist Joe Lester looked…normal. Despite their aesthetic differences, their chemistry as a group is undeniable.

Throughout the whole show, hits off past albums past (“Well Thought Out Twinkles”, “Kissing Families”, “Lazy Eye”, and others) were met with plentiful

Photography by Pamela Wang

crowd participation under a rain of colored light. The crowd favorite seemed to be “Panic Switch”.

Before starting the song, Aubert addressed the audience with a monologue on how the world should be “more fucking fun”. In the musical breakdown of “Panic Switch”, Aubert gave the crowd some instruction. “Alright. So what’s going to happen is I’m going to whisper some words into the mic and all your guys have to do is listen, and then a little bit later I’m going to need you to scream them.

I’m not going to tell you when. You are smart people. You’ll figure it out.” The crowd had already been singing at the top of their lungs, so there was no surprise when everyone ignored Aubert’s request. Usually tears and emotions are anticipated after a slow song, but I had an uncontrollable wave of emotion rush over me at the end of their performance of “Panic Switch.”

I grew up listening to the Silversun Pickups: from hearing “Lazy Eye” as an 8-year-old kid to playing a cover of it in my high school, girl band. Seeing them in concert, while also being only a few feet away from the stage, was thrilling. The lighting display and energy of the music was incendiary, and the rush from the bass and pounding drums rattled my heart in my chest. All these elements working in tandem made this show unforgettable.

ok, i guess...

Up Coming Shows Barclays Center

Place for New Music

Lorde - April 4 Kygo - May 11 Depeche Mode - June 6 Paramore with Foster The People - June 26 Sam Smith - June 27 Bruno Mars with Cardi B - October 4 & 5 Elton John - March 8 & 9

Madison Square Garden Billy Joel - April 13, May 23, & June 2 Bon Jovi - May 9 & 10 Kendrick Lamar w/ SZA & Schoolboy Q - May 29 Journey and Def Leppard - June 13 Hall and Oates with Train - June 14 Imagine Dragons - June 19 Sam Smith - June 30

Brooklyn Steel Cigarettes After Sex - April 7 The War on Drugs - April 8 Franz Ferdinand - April 15 & 16 Matt and Kim - April 28 Marian Hill - May 11 Shakey Graves - May 17 Bishop Briggs - May 22 The Kooks - May 23

HOME TAPING / WED. 8-10

Special Thanks In My Time of Dying Playlists by Host Ava Scott from Fall Season on WPIR Groves High School Scriptor Review on Billie Holiday

by Ava Scott Respect Your Youngers. For publishing the article by Ava Scott and Pamela Wang