500.

In 2014 I started my famous concert-tracking spreadsheet. I needed something to record the shows I was going to because I had a goal of going to 52 concerts that year – it was a target that I set on a whim after reading a music journalist’s post about having gone to over 100 concerts in 2013.

Later on in 2014 I decided to start this little blog as a way of processing and sharing my thoughts and experiences on this hobby of mine that certainly wasn’t new, but, seeing as I ended up going to 103 shows that year, certainly intensified quite a bit.

Almost 8 years later, I hit my 500th show since I started tracking. It’s a milestone that is fairly arbitrary and yet I’ve been aware that it was coming since the beginning of 2020. I almost certainly would have hit it that year except, you know, 2020.

500 just feels significant to me because it sounds like a lot. It is a lot. Especially when you consider that a single day at a music festival only counts as one show on my spreadsheet for the sole reason that I just can’t be bothered to sit at my computer in a post-festival haze and try and deconstruct how many stages my friends and I ran around to. So really, I’ve seen a lot of musical performances over the last 8 years. A lot a lot.

Number 500 was Billie Eilish at Madison Square Garden in February, an incredible show which, interestingly, was the show I was supposed to go to on March 15, 2020, right before the world shut down.

If you’ve been a friend of mine for any number of years (I was going to say “reader” instead of “friend” but let’s be honest, about 99% of visits here over the years were people I know, thanks to all 4ish of you that used to read my posts, y’all are the real ones) you might recall that I used to write here more often. Never on a regular schedule, but certainly more often than I do now, which is something close to, but not quite, never. This blog and my 500 shows are separate entities and yet wholly intertwined. Though my goal of 52 shows in 2014 existed before the blog did, I can’t imagine going to all of those concerts over the years without having this cozy little space to talk about them afterward. As someone who has always enjoyed casual writing (and one time received $300 for a story that got published in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, my crowning literary achievement!!!), I found that music regularly served as my writing inspiration. Some of the best blog posts I never published were composed in my head during concerts, only to have disappeared into the ether once my fingers tried to recreate them when I got home. On the flip side, my writing also served as inspiration to engage with music consumption in new, more intentional ways. The concerts and this blog made each other better like one of those symbiotic animal relationships you learn about on National Geographic, where some parasite attaches itself to a larger animal but the parasite actually benefits the animal somehow and everyone wins. I’m not sure whether my blog or my concert attendance are the parasite here and clearly this metaphor has gotten away from me but if you’re reading this I’ve chosen to not edit it out.

Even before the pandemic my concert attendance was slowing down, and with it, so were blog posts. I often feel like this blog has run its course, but I guess it’s okay to accept it for what it is – a tool that I can still rely on even if I very rarely choose to.

So – why am I choosing to write a post celebrating, 2 months belatedly, my 500th show? What have I learned? What have I gained? What am I thinking about for the next 500 (kidding, but only kind of)?

Well, first and foremost are the people. I’ve made friends while waiting in line to get into shows, on the bus to music festivals, camping next to people at festivals, in the parking lot of shows trying to get an Uber to the afterparty, on Meetup.com for concerts and in various Facebook groups. I’ve been to their weddings, visited them across the country and internationally, and, of course, I’ve been to more shows and festivals with those people later on. I’ve been squished up towards the front of the crowd where there was barely room to move and I’ve stood way in the back where we had plenty of room to dance like nobody’s watching. I’ve hugged them when our favorite songs come on and stood silently in awe and sadness with them when a long-awaited set was over. The people I’ve met over the last 8 years are some of the best ones.

In addition to gaining some amazing people I’ve also just had a ridiculous amount of fun. Sure, some concerts fall short for various reasons, but most don’t. I’ve danced a lot and yelled a lot of lyrics into the air and all the while felt like something in my soul was on a delightful kind of fire. Sure, I’ve had drinks spilled on me and there has been catastrophic rain and one time I was sold a fake concert ticket. But I will take all those losses, because everything in life comes with drawbacks and for so long being a Concert Person was such a core part of my being that it was inevitable that occasionally it would suck.

I’m not sure I’ve actually said anything this far into this post, so instead of trying to reflect any further I’ll link to some posts from over the years. Some are outdated now but…whatever.

My very first blog post

Music festivals suck but are worth it

Artist Spotlight: Gramatik

The time I made a “which EDM sub-genre are you?” infographic which later went mildly viral to the point where some of my favorite producers were tweeting their responses to it and I truly do not mind that no one attributed it to me because that was awesome

How to watch a band blow up (on my love of Odesza)

On art and artistry and Flying Lotus

Let’s talk about Dave Matthews Band

I miss live music (written April 2020)

I still miss live music (written December 2020)

So I’ve hit 500 shows. Now what? I’m 38 years old, I go to bed early and concert tickets in a post-covid world are ridiculously expensive. When I go to shows now I often look around and realize that I’m old enough to have been a [young!] mom to some of the kids there. And yet, I still love live music. I also still love recorded music, although I will admit that I consume new music much less often these days, preferring to stick to the artists I already know and love. I love my year-end Spotify wrapped, I still feel the highs and lows of music festival lineup drops and I live for the moments when I get so excited about a song that I just listen to it on repeat. I have 14 shows planned so far for 2022, with the hopes that more will come.

Will I reach 1000 shows? It seems doubtful, but that’s fine. I’m celebrating the first 500 and all the memories they brought me. And I look forward to the next ones, whether it’s 500 or even just 5.

_{(But I hope it’s more than 5!)}

_{Took this picture at a Pretty Lights show in 2013 and it’s the only header photo this blog has ever had}

2021 Live Music Recap!

2021 was certainly not the live music year that 2019 or any prior year was, but it was a vast improvement on 2020. I went to a whopping 19 shows, including a 4-day music festival (which counts as 4 shows), and only 2 of the 19 shows were virtual ones!

While I may not be ready to put together the full slate of annual concert statistics that I usually do, I can at least share a few data points.

In 2021 there were 2 artists that I saw more than once: Glass Animals and Marc Rebillet, both of whom I saw twice.

I went to 2 new music venues in New York: Brooklyn Made, and the Skyline Drive-In.

I went to 5 free shows: 2 of them were actually free, and 3 were free because I was stationed close enough to listen from outside without having to actually pay.

My favorite sets of 2021 were, in chronological order:

1. Rebirth Brass Band in Kansas City, MO
2. Foo Fighters in Milwaukee, WI
3. Weezer/Green Day at Citi Field
4. Kesha at the Stone Pony
5. Remember Jones at Sea. Hear. Now Festival
6. CloZee at Firefly
7. Glass Animals at Firefly
8. Machine Gun Kelly at Firefly

In 2020 I had 5 music-related goals, none of which I accomplished, so I just renewed them for 2021. How did I do?

Go to one new music festival
No, but I did go to 2 music festivals, so I’m okay with this.

Write one real blog post a month
HAHA. Nope.

Visit at least one new NYC music venue
Yes!

Go to Colorado for a Red Rocks show
Yes!!!! I went to Above & Beyond in October.

Buy a ticket to see an artist I don’t know much about
I went to Jade Cicada at the end of November, solely because a friend from out of town came to NYC for it. I think the idea behind this goal is that I was “supposed” to buy a ticket to a show just because I was inspired to check out a newish-to-me artist, but whatever, buying a ticket to a show so that I see a friend I hadn’t seen in 2 years is an equally good reason.

And, out of laziness and also because I like this set of goals, I am renewing these goals for 2022. I already know I’m not going to write a blog post every month and I may not even write a blog post ANY month, but whatever, shoot for the moon and even if you miss you’ll land among the stars, as some corny motivational poster out there says.

With omicron running rampant here in New York, the 2022 live music forecast doesn’t look great just yet, although I do have tickets to see Rezz in March and to see the Foo Fighters in July, but anything can happen. And by that I mean, hopefully the thing that happens is that we emerge from this pandemic and live music resumes in full force.

Firefly: The Music

Here I am again, recapping a festival I went to over 2 months ago. We talked all about the logistics of Delaware’s Firefly Festival, so now let’s get to the music.

Hippie Sabotage
I think what I wrote in my post-festival notes really sums it up – “I was sad to love Hippie Sabotage because they supposedly are giant assholes but whatever.”

Billie Eilish
Ohhh Billie was so good. I was surprised at how peppy she was considering that her music is pretty brooding, but she was really turning on the teen pop star charm in an unexpected way. I didn’t stay for her full set because I was trying to catch the last half of Marc Rebillet, which I will discuss…now.

Marc Rebillet
I love Marc Rebillet so much, but I did not love this experience. I think I just had expectations of his set that were completely off-base – what I wanted was to hear his hilarious songs that I know and love, but what I got was all improv (and some yelling, and a lot of cartoony butts on the screen behind him). He’s incredibly talented and the beats he was laying down were great, but it just wasn’t what I wanted. By the time I realized that the set wasn’t going to be what I was hoping for, it was too late to run back to Billie. I fully regret leaving her set and it just goes to show that even the most seasoned festival vets will make mistakes sometimes.

Glass Animals
I’ve listened to Glass Animals for a few years now, but became borderline obsessed with them in the summer of 2020 when they released their “Dreamland” album. I was fortunate to catch them in Brooklyn about a month before Firefly, but this did not in any way dilute their Firefly set for me. Lead singer Dave was jumpy and quirky as ever and their music just sounds so incredible live. I love Glass Animals and you should too.

Rezz
I love Rezz, with her heavy, dark soundscapes and her swirly LED glasses. Unfortunately her set was super late and I could only stay for about 20 minutes before sleep beckoned. But at least I have tickets to see her in March.

CloZee
CLOZEE!! I had been dying to catch a CloZee set for a long time and ohhh boy did she come through. Her music sounds like you’re in a cool yet chill rave jungle but her live set went pretty hard in a way that I did not anticipate but that I completely loved. One of my favorite songs of hers is the “Baiana” remix linked below, and I didn’t think she would play it but then, like manna from heaven, it came in at the very end of her set. As the song built up in intensity, I leaned over to my friend and said, “this song is about to go OFF.” And it did.

Khruangbin
I’ve tried listening to Khruangbin at home a few times, and I’ve always found their music weird and experimental in a way that I really couldn’t latch onto. A friend of mine was once raving about the Khruangbin live experience and I asked, “Do they have cool visuals? They seem like they would,” to which he replied, “No, not really.” So I was even less inclined to want to see them live than I had been. AND YET. We somehow ended up at their set and I loved it so, so much. They did these kooky covers and something about it just really clicked for me. I will continue to never listen to Khruangbin’s music at home (case in point – I am not at all enjoying the song I linked below) but I would 100% go see a show of theirs again.

Robert Delong
Robert Delong was supposed to play on Thursday night, but severe rain delayed the first day of the festival and so his set was cut and transitioned into an acoustic set at the Budweiser Seltzer booth on Sunday. RD is one of the most criminally underrated musicians around (for more info, read the post I linked to at the beginning of this paragraph!) and for someone whose live performance usually includes an insane amount of gear, the acoustic set was…also great! What a treat.

Machine Gun Kelly
I first saw MGK in 2015 when I had no idea who he was and I found his on stage persona so bonkers and off-putting that I thought it was a joke (it wasn’t). I never listened to him after that, until earlier in 2021 when he released a really delightful pop punk album?? His Firefly set was so much fun, and while he still had kind of a jerky attitude on stage, it was more of a…benevolent, humorous dickheadery than in 2015 when he was just flat out obnoxious. I have no idea if he knows that he’s funny because it may not be intentional but either way, I both danced and laughed and that’s the marker of a great live music experience.

Lizzo
Do I even need to recap Lizzo? Of course it was wonderful. The only negative part was that she started late and we couldn’t stay for her whole set because we were driving home that night. So I felt a little robbed because I got less Lizzo than I wanted but hey, the quality was fantastic even if the quantity was lacking.

There were so, so many more amazing sets from Firefly that I didn’t recap because, let’s face it, I’m a Bad Blogger these days so it’s pretty incredible that I even wrote up the bare minimum for these posts to begin with. Ha.

2022 festival lineups are already dropping (follow along on Twitter as I occasionally, whenever I feel like it, grade them) and Covid cases are rising so who even knows what next summer will look like. But if there’s one thing that gives music fans life during cold, sad winters, it’s the thought of next summer’s festival season.

Firefly: The Experience

Homemade Firefly shirt courtesy of 2013. I’m glad I saved that shirt through those 8 years.

Well well well. It has been a nice 11 months since my last post and I was fully convinced that ding dong the blog is dead. Yet here we are, belatedly recapping a festival I went to over 2 months ago. I guess I just couldn’t let the magic of festival overanalysis die just yet.

Firefly, in Dover, DE, is a festival I had been to once before, back in the pre-blog days of 2013, so while this was my second go-round it is my first recap of this event. Let’s get to it.

Check-In/Security
In 2013 my friend and I sat in our car, 1 mile away from the entrance, for a solid 7 hours without moving. I am pleased to report that this year the entry process was much smoother, for 2 main reasons:

1. 2013 was the second year of Firefly and they hadn’t quite gotten their logistical act together yet
2. In 2013 we were in regular camping, and this year my friends and I did glamping, which means we had a separate entrance from the main one so there was less traffic to contend with

For what it’s worth, there was a terrible storm at the Firefly site while we were driving down that caused them to close down all entrances for a few hours. We were totally unaware of this (the closure, not the storm) and everything was back to running smoothly by the time we arrived to the extent where we had no idea they had closed everything down except I read it on social media afterwards. Impressive, for sure.

Crowd
This was your pretty standard all-genres festival crowd. Certainly skewed young as pretty much all festivals do, but otherwise it was pretty diverse and chill.

Fun Stuff
Firefly had the usual slate of activities – silent disco, a hammock hangout, art installations – and some fun additions like a Pride Parade (which I didn’t see) and a Supper Club where you could attend themed brunches or dinners (I tried to get my group to go to the drag brunch and it didn’t end up happening, but in the end the Supper Club was in full view from the festival grounds so we caught a few minutes of the drag show anyway). There was supposed to be yoga at the festival somewhere and I had brought my mat because I love me some early AM festival yoga, but I could not for the life of me figure out when or where it would have been.

The sponsored booths at Firefly were, on average, much more interactive than at other festivals, which is always nice because it’s fun when the festival corporate overlords actually engage with you and don’t just slap their name on a stage and call it quits. At times this was obnoxious, as a few sponsor booths had dance parties with loud music that actually interfered with the music coming from the stages (note to Firefly: prevent this), but otherwise there were fun giveaways and photo opps, and the Bud Light Seltzer booth had acoustic sessions from some of the artists which was awesome – more on that in the next post with music recaps, if I ever get around to writing it.

Water
While there were plenty of refill stations on the festival grounds, we were never able to locate a refill station near where we were camped, which was a solid 20 minutes away from the festival grounds. It wasn’t a huge issue because we had brought big jugs of water for our campsite and it wasn’t so hot that we needed an above average amount of water, but…not having immediate access to water is a huge problem. To be fair, after the first day of not finding a refill station near us we stopped looking and just waited until we went into the festival to fill our bottles but…come on. All festivals should make water locations plentiful and very, very obvious. You can never provide attendees with too much water or too much information about how to get it. This is a hill I am prepared to die on.

Layout
Firefly was big but not THAT big, which is perfect. According to what I read on Reddit, Firefly capacity was greatly reduced in 2021 (around 50,000 people down from its usual 80,000, if I remember correctly) and as such, the layout was condensed accordingly. I have no idea if I’ll ever make it back there but I really loved it as is and wouldn’t want to see the festival with more people OR more space.

Transportation
We drove from New Jersey, which takes 3 hours. There was supposed to be a shuttle from our camping area to the festival grounds, which we never found any evidence of, but much like the water stations, we never really looked all that hard for it. I’m convinced it didn’t actually exist though because even if we never tried to take it, wouldn’t we have at least seen it?

Price
The price of a ticket is pretty good for 4 full days of music (although the first day didn’t end up starting until around 8pm because of the storm, but that’s besides the point). My group paid extra for glamping, which was both worth it and not worth it. Being able to sleep on a cot instead of on the ground was incredible for our ancient (in festival years, anyway) backs, and having an A/C unit, electricity, and fancier bathrooms and showers was excellent. But as mentioned previously, there was no access to water as far as we could tell, absolutely no food vendors near us at all, and while the bedding provided is probably more than appropriate for a mid-June event, it was nowhere near sufficient for late September and I had to sleep in multiple layers of clothing. Whoever ran the glamping also set up the tents kind of half-assedly and tons of water got in which soaked our beds, and they weren’t really equipped to handle that either because we asked for replacement bedding for all 4 beds and were given 2 flat sheets and a mattress pad.

In general, I’m also of the opinion that glamping and VIP should be tied together, like they are at Electric Forest. I understand that each festival has its own unique limitations and Firefly, which is at the site of a Nascar race track, certainly has them as well, but if you pay for glamping you shouldn’t still be a 20 minute walk from the festival site. One cool bonus though was that our glamping site was actually in the center of the track, and to get there I had to drive on the track for a little which was cool and weird. It was..very slanty.

Bathrooms
I have a theory, which I’ve shared before on this blog, that every festival has unintentionally secret port-a-potties that are very much underutilized for whatever reason and you just need to find them. Firefly was so long ago at this point that I sort of think I found them but I honestly just don’t remember all that well. What I DO remember was that at one point an entire chunk of port-a-potties were all disgustingly overflowing and it was vile and I refused to use them. And coming from someone who has seen the absolute worst that port-a-potties can offer, I have an incredibly high port-a-pottie tolerance and if I won’t use one you know it’s bad. As I said earlier, the fancy trailer bathrooms we had by our campsite were super nice and we were #blessed to have them

Stuff I Sacrificed to the Festival Gods
Though I don’t think I lost or broke any of my belongings at Firefly, yet again it’s just been too damn long since the festival ended and so I don’t really remember. This, my friends, is why we don’t wait more than 2 months to do our event recaps.

Up next (hopefully) is the recap of all the amazing music!

Artist Spotlight: The Avalanches

Over the last few years I’ve often come across this statistic that said something to the effect of, “If you aren’t listening to a certain band or type of music by the time you’re in your 30s, you have almost no chance of listening to that band or music.” (This article seems to place the age cutoff at 30, though other sources place it at somewhat older). A combination of a stronger focus on nostalgia and our brains’ naturally reduced tendency to be receptive to new things is responsible for this. While I think of myself as somewhat of an outlier because my taste in music made a very drastic shift starting in the months before I turned 30 and continued for a few years after, I’ve definitely noticed that I consume far less new music now, at the ripe old age of 37, than I did even 2 or 3 years ago.

This is a very long-winded leadup to talking about Australian duo The Avalanches, who I only started listening to in December, but it’s been pretty much 6 straight weeks of listening to the same 3 albums over and over and over. I’m grateful to my friend Cody for telling me about their late-2020 album drop and highly recommend that any music fans older than 30-whatever get themselves a younger friend to keep you in the loop about these types of things.

If you read The Avalanches’ wikipedia page, the first 2 genres associated with them are “plunderphonics” and “sampledelia,” which just goes to show that the universe of music genre labels makes absolutely no sense and often tells you nothing about anything. The Avalanches make sample-based music (is this “sampledelia”??) that I would describe as disco with a side of hip-hop.

The Avalanches first album, “Since I Left You,” came out in 2000, and it was a long 16 years before their second album, “Wildflower.” I, of course, was blissfully unaware of this gap. When album #3, “We Will Always Love You,” dropped last month and Cody told me about it, I said, “wait…was this the band you told me about a few years ago where there was some ridiculously long time between their first and second albums?” It was, and while I have no idea why I didn’t actually listen to them in 2016, I’m glad I finally got on board.

The thing I’ve most enjoyed while listening to hours and hours of The Avalanches over the last 6 weeks has been the moments of sheer delight I’ve experienced over how creative their sampling is. Sample-based music is just what it sounds like – using samples of other songs, usually from vinyl, and chopping them and mixing them up – sometimes adding in new vocals or live instrumentation – to create something entirely new. Like any art form, it can be done simply or complexly (is this a real word? Don’t care!) and my totally untrained, non-expert assessment of The Avalanches is that they are very, very good at what they do. So many times while listening through their discography I’ve thought, “Holy shit I can’t believe they thought to do this.”

Here are a few highlights:

The Noisy Eater. This song gained the highest praise I can offer to music which is that I laughed out of joy while listening to it. The surprise sample of a children’s choir singing “Come Together” by The Beatles absolutely slayed me.

ETOH. The song kind of swirls around until about halfway through it gets into this very groovy electro-funk vibe. This is from their 2000 album but sounds way more current.

Wherever You Go. I was drawn to this song because it has a great beat and a subtle sample of Maghalena, a Brazilian song from the 90s that I love even though I have no idea why I even know it in the first place. When I looked up the “Wherever You Go” video for this blog post, I learned that it also samples the Voyager Golden Record, a compilation of music and sounds coordinated by Carl Sagan in the late ’70s and launched into space via the twin Voyager probes. Because of this, during quarantine The Avalanches managed to record a version of this song with the International Space Station Orchestra, which is…a thing! All of this makes me so happy.

Frankie Sinatra. I don’t even know what to say about this. It’s so weird and I just love it. I deliberately didn’t include the actual music video because it’s so bonkers that I thought it detracted from the song, which is kooky enough on its own.

Frontier Psychiatrist. The first comment on this YouTube video is, “This video is like one of those weirdly upsetting dreams you’d never consider trying to describe to someone” and I could not say it better. The actual song is kind of haunting but I love it.

Did you listen to any of these songs? Do you already know and love The Avalanches? Let me know! Maybe now I can release myself from The Avalanches and listen to…something else?!

This was the first “Artist Spotlight” post I’ve written in over 3 years. Whoops. Hopefully not another 3 years until the next one.

A Sad 2020 “Live” Music Roundup

This picture is from 2015 but I saw the Foo Fighters over the internet this year so…good enough!

If you’ve been following this blog for any period of time you may recall that at the end of each year I put together a series of year-in-review blog posts. One reflects on my music goals from the prior year and sets new goals for the coming year. Another looks at all my concert statistics from the year – most frequented venues, price paid vs. face value of tickets, and so on – as well as some arbitrary awards or yearbook-style superlatives that I choose to bestow upon random shows. And finally, a reflection on the best concerts of the year and some highlights of the post-show comments that I enter into my concert-tracking spreadsheet.

2020 was hardly my most robust year of concert attendance, to say the least, but after choosing to count virtual concerts that I actually paid for toward my overall “live” music count, I’m proud to say that in 2020 I attended a whopping 6 shows. And out of a sense of duty to tradition and/or a desire to depress myself, I’m going to combine my usual year-end slate of posts into one big summary post.

Let’s do a 2020 goals check-in, shall we?

Go to one new music festival
Nope!

Write one real blog post a month
Nope!

Visit at least one new NYC music venue
Nope!

Go to Colorado for a Red Rocks show
Nope!

Buy a ticket to see an artist I don’t know much about
Nope!

Do these goals still stand for 2021? Sure. Will I accomplish them? I have no idea.

So, what shows did I go to last year? There have typically been too many shows to fully list them out in my year-end blog posts but the beauty of going to only 6 shows is that I can do that now! (And for the record, my lists of shows are handily categorized by year in the tabs at the top of the blog). In the list below I’ve bolded the ones that I’m designating as my top 3 of 2020.

Too Many Zooz, Brooklyn Bowl
The Dan Band, Gramercy Theatre
Glass Animals, virtual
Billie Eilish, virtual
Robert Delong, virtual
Foo Fighters, virtual

I’m not going to bother with the usual statistics but worth noting that in both 2018 and 2019 I went to 60 shows each, and that was the lowest it had been since I started tracking in 2014. Brooklyn Bowl has also been my most visited venue since 2016 and technically that’s still sort of true? Unless you count my living room as a venue, in which case 2020 presented a new winner, beating out the competition (Brooklyn Bowl and Gramercy Theatre) by a whopping 400%.

I also love seeing how many shows I get to go to for free each year, usually through winning tickets in a contest, and I did win my pair of Dan Band tickets so I’m happy that I got to go to at least one free show in 2020. I’m happy that I got to go to at least one show in 2020 period, in all honesty. In any case, if you want to see slightly more exciting concert stats, my 2019 roundup post may be more satisfying.

I’m going to skip the awards piece of my 2020 wrap up, but I will offer some general thoughts on the world of virtual concerts. While there are only 4 on my list here because I actually paid to “attend” them, many artists did streams for free this year so I feel like I have a pretty good sense of the world of virtual music.

Overall, I kind of…really enjoyed the virtual concerts?! There was something so nice about just walking over to my couch, in whatever comfy clothes I wanted, and settling in to watch. I didn’t have to navigate crowds or an hour+ long subway ride home late at night. I didn’t have to pay $6 to check my coat or get beer spilled on me. I could sit if I wanted or dance if I wanted** or eat a snack if I wanted. It was lovely.

On the other hand, watching a concert on TV completely strips it of the energy, both from the performer and the crowd around you. It’s not social even if you also have a friend watching at the same time and texting with you about it, as I sometimes did. And sometimes there are technical difficulties. While there are technical difficulties in person too, I never found that it ended up detracting from the experience – the show always continued eventually. Whereas with both Glass Animals and Billie Eilish, the technical difficulties cut the show short.

So there you have it. A recap of 2020, the year that…wasn’t, in many ways. I hope that when I do my 2021 recap I have more to report.

** Just like the Safety Dance – we can dance if we want to!

I still miss live music.

We’re 9 months into this pandemic. 9 months into staying at home, or wearing masks when we don’t. 9 months into needless deaths and collective anxiety and sadness. And, of course, 9 months without live music.

My last post here, called, “I miss live music,” was written in April, not quite a month into this whole thing. One month without concerts seems so premature to be writing a sad blog post about missing live music, but despite how overwhelmingly terrifying April was, back then we were all so naive as to think things would be back to normal by the end of the year. We were young and stupid then.

Overall, I’ve really settled into my Covid routine. It involves never waking up to an alarm (even for work!) and lots of yoga and Netflix. Sometimes a video chat with friends. The closest thing to live music that I have now is occasionally settling in to watch a virtual concert live stream, or maybe YouTube footage of old sets from some of my favorite artists. As much as I love dimming the lights and dancing around my living room in my PJs, watching these old sets from someone’s shaky GoPro always makes me so sad. I see the camera pan the crowds, thousands of people all experiencing something magical together, and in those moments I just miss live music So. Fucking. Much.

I miss the energy of a crowd. When everyone is on the same wavelength and just so happy to be there, boogying to an artist they love or maybe are seeing for the very first time. I miss being with friends, getting excited when the songs you’ve mutually been waiting for come on. I miss those times when you try to push as close as possible to the front (rarer, as I get older), and the times when you hang toward the back so you have the most room to dance.

I miss festivals the most. Waking up at your campsite and everyone checking out the day’s schedule to compare notes on who they want to see that day. I miss daytime sets, when you sit on the grass and enjoy a perfect summer day, saving up your energy for nighttime, and the anticipation that builds for the headliners later on. I miss that moment when it gets dark and everything – from the trees to people’s outfits – begins to illuminate. You gather your posse and maybe you travel together between stages, or maybe you separate for a bit with hopes that you have enough cell phone service to meet up later. Nighttime sets are where people really begin to come alive. There’s shouting and hugging and laughing and so much dancing and somewhere in the crowd there is always someone throwing fistfuls of glowsticks into the air. You talk to the stranger standing next to you and maybe your interaction only lasts 10 minutes but somehow it leaves a mark on you forever. Or maybe that person becomes a friend for life.

The music itself, no matter what it is, it heals you. Even if it makes you feel sad for a time. Dancing is one of the most natural and cathartic things we can do, and seeing a really great show at a festival can sometimes feel like group therapy. Everyone is on their own journey yet everyone is somehow in it together. When you meet people later on and learn you were at the same music festival, you feel a connection with that person even though your experiences may have been completely different.

As each of us goes through life, we should consider ourselves lucky if we feel content most of the time. Content is good. Content means we are settled, we are fine, we may not be overwhelmingly happy but we aren’t overwhelmingly sad or angry or anxious either. To feel joy is, I think, kind of rare. Yet for me and for so many others, live music, and festivals in particular, are a reliable source of joy. Certainly not every time, but absolutely most of the time. What an incredible gift to be able to almost schedule joy into your calendar; to predictably know that there is an evening – or better yet, an entire weekend – when you will be with the best people hearing the best music and not thinking about whatever it may be that’s stressing you out in the rest of your life.

This joy is what’s been missing from 2020. Of course, in the grand scheme of 2020, if the worst thing you experience is a lack of joy then you should consider yourself lucky (and I do, very much so). My family is healthy and I have a job and a roof over my head. I have emerged from the first 9 months of the pandemic relatively unscathed. But while my basic survival needs are very much taken care of at the moment, there’s a definite lack somewhere further up on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Though it starts at Love and Belonging, I truly believe that live music has helped me find fulfillment on the higher levels as well. This is something that, no matter how much I love it, watching eleventy billion episodes of The Great British Bakeoff can never bring me.

While I know things won’t immediately change on January first, 2021 does look to be a promising year. A vaccine is imminent, and there is a light at the end of this Covid tunnel. It seems insane to think that there could be concerts and festivals next year, because after 9 months of avoiding people I can’t wrap my head around willingly going back into being packed shoulder to shoulder with others. But whatever shape it takes, it seems likely that live music will return at some point soon. And even though I’m not quite ready for it yet, I still can’t wait.

I miss live music.

I had big Saturday night plans. I was going to put on a fun outfit (Real pants! A top that wasn’t a hoodie!) and watch night 1 of Pretty Lights’ 2018 Red Rocks performances. I looked forward to it all week.

There’s a low bar for “big Saturday night plans,” these days. A month ago, staying in to watch concert videos on YouTube would not qualify as “plans,” at all.

But we live in a different world now. Staying in is all we can do, and all we should do. All plans are digital, or virtual, or 6 feet apart from anyone else.

The impact coronavirus has had on this little corner of the internet, the place where for 5 and a half years I’ve unloaded my thoughts – infrequently, certainly – on music festivals, my favorite artists, concert logistics, and more, has not been as catastrophic as one might think, because things over here were pretty dead anyway. My live music attendance had been seriously waning even before all of this happened, due to a combination of moving to a less accessible neighborhood and an overall lack of energy or desire for going out on weekends. I went to one concert in January. I went to one concert in February. Since the beginning of 2014, which is when I began tracking my concert attendance, only one other time did I ever attend only one show in an entire month. It was October 2019, and I spent over half that month on vacation.

Despite the slow start to 2020, my live music attendance was due to start picking up steam in March. I had tickets to Billie Eilish, Postmodern Jukebox, and some other small shows. I had a single day ticket to see Missy Elliott at Governors Ball in June, and a 3-day pass for a music festival in Martha’s Vineyard in July. All of these were canceled, of course. My concert tracking spreadsheet, with one tab for shows I already have tickets to and another tab for shows on my radar, reads like a menu of broken appointments, a catalog of events that will never happen.

The timing of my voluntary, partial withdrawal from live music and the coronavirus pandemic was fortuitous. As an introvert who loves her one bedroom apartment, staying home really suits me. Working from home over the last month has been new, but hanging out at home by myself on weekends has not been, though of course I usually prefer my chill weekends without a side of abject terror and anxiety chest pains caused by the state of the world at large. But after one month isolating at home, and two months since my last live music experience, I guess enough was enough and I needed some music back in my life. Hence my big plans to watch a Pretty Lights concert on my TV.

I anticipated a joyous 2+ hours of dancing alone in my living room, one of my favorite hobbies. I wore the owl print kimono I bought for 8 dollars at a street fair years ago and which is one of my outdoor concert wardrobe staples. I had just finished up a 2 hour Zoom chat with my music festival family, 6 of us in different cities triangulated between Peru, Albany and Portland, Oregon. I was primed for a great night.

I did not expect to spend the first 30 minutes of this experience curled in the fetal position on my couch, near tears as I stared at the screen. Sure, this Pretty Lights show was one that started off a little mellowcholy (mellow + melancholy, naturally), but I have seen PL live many times and have never been sad, during any part, ever. But as I took in the sounds and visuals from one of my favorite sets of one of my favorite artists I couldn’t help but think of how foreign it all felt. Remember live music? Remember the joy of summer concerts, the sun on your face during the day and slipping on a sweatshirt when it got a little cool at night? Remember when your friends were real live people and not just heads floating in tiny boxes on your computer screen? Remember when you weren’t constantly barraged with news of the thousands of people dead, the millions losing their jobs and livelihoods, and a seemingly unlimited number of projections scrolling across every device you own of how bleak the future will be? It hasn’t even been that long but last night it felt like centuries had passed since things were “normal.” I was filled with a nebulous nostalgia and sadness and I wondered if maybe I should just turn the video off and put on The Office.

But Pretty Lights is an artist of many moods, and so, as will happen at any good show, the vibe changed. As I heard the first inklings of, “I Can See It In Your Face,” an upbeat song with a great trumpet part that I love normally but especially love hearing live, I had to stand up. And within minutes, I was happy. But not even just happy. Joyful.  Certainly the most joyful I had been during the pandemic, so far. I danced like nobody was watching (because of course, nobody was). I reflected back on being at this show 2 summers ago, dancing with friends and approximately 10,000 other people while the beautiful red rocks of Colorado loomed on either side of us. There was a lightness in the crowd that weekend, a collective euphoria that happens when an artist with a near-cult following emerges from relative silence to play his only shows of the year (and the last live shows he has played, to date) with an incredible band at a majestic, historic venue. And to think that there is a high quality recording of both performances, now available for me to relive the experience. What a time to be alive.

For the remainder of the show I oscillated between emotions and locations. At times I returned to the couch, catatonic. Other times I got back up to dance. I was happy, I was sad, I was hopeful, I was fearful. I used the minutes during one of my least favorite songs to make a cup of tea. I sipped the tea sitting on the couch, as if I were just watching a movie. I sipped the tea while dancing, which is an expert level move I do not recommend for everyone. I ate the nightly orange that has become my isolation ritual and which has come to provide me with an irrational sense of comfort, as if a dose of Vitamin C can protect me from COVID-19. I have so many specific memories connected to individual Pretty Lights songs that from one moment to the next I was never in the same place. I was in New Orleans, with 2 friends who were both seeing Pretty Lights for the first time. I was back in Brooklyn, watching videos on my friend’s laptop from a festival we didn’t even go to, giggling as we tried to imitate his dance moves. As the songs changed, I was in Denver, I was in Atlantic City, I was back in New York.

This ability to transport us, whether across geographies or just between the peaks and valleys of our emotional ranges, is part of what so many of us love about live music. It’s more than just hearing an artist or band play. Music, and particularly dancing, is therapeutic. There’s something primal about moving your body in a way that feels…however you want it to feel. Sometimes that means not moving at all, but often that means jumping and shaking and twisting and and all of this, in a darkened living room by the light of the TV. I miss doing this in person, though.

I miss seeing music with friends. The excited text messages beforehand as you finalize plans, the giddiness as you walk up to the venue or festival gates. I miss the excited hugs that you sometimes exchange when THE SONG you’ve been waiting for comes on (When was the last time I hugged someone? A month ago, I believe, the last time I visited my parents). I miss the feeling of being in a really great crowd, where you have a perfect sight line to the stage and everyone is in a good mood and dancing but not elbowing you in the ribs. I miss when artists insert little twists and turns into their songs to surprise you. I miss the vibration of bass in your chest even though I honestly find this sensation uncomfortable. I miss when we didn’t think twice about the idea of being around so many people. Of being around any people.

So many of my “when this is over…” plans involve music. I think about what festivals I might want to go to in 2021, or whether I’ll make it to Colorado for a Red Rocks show. I wonder when my newsfeed will transition back from coronavirus to concert announcements. I hope it’s relatively soon, though I suspect it will not be. For now, I just hope for the health of family and friends and healthcare workers and other essential workers and of strangers and pretty much everyone. When live music does come back, I don’t know what form it will be in. But I will absolutely be there to welcome it with open arms.

2019 Goals Update, 2020 Goal-Setting

Time to check in with the music goals I set last year and see how I did!

Go to one new music festival
Boston Calling! Outside Lands! Sea Hear Now! Check and check.

Write one real blog post a month
I did well for the first few months of 2019 but majorly fell off. I kept writing festival recaps but for probably the last half of the year that was it. Ah, well. I tried!

Visit at least one new NYC music venue
Industry City, Coney Island Art Walls, Brooklyn Mirage/Avant Gardner. Good job, self!

Go to Colorado for a Red Rocks show
Fail. The mountains still beckon to me.

So, what are my goals for 2020? Honestly, the goals I set for 2019 still stand. I know I likely won’t reach the 1 post a month goal but having that to strive for will likely get a few blog posts out of me when I otherwise might opt to watch TV over writing.

To these 4 goals, I’ll add –

Buy a ticket to see an artist I don’t know much about
I’ve done this a bunch in the past for artists I’ve heard of but don’t listen to either at all or very much – Phish and Tool are 2 that come to mind. I’ve never been disappointed by a band whose reputation for putting on an incredible live show precedes them, so I want to be more intentional about doing that in the future.

Here we go, 2020!

2019, By the Numbers

Every year as I sit to write this post, “It’s the most wonderful tiiiiiime of the year” plays through my head. Which is funny because I hate Christmas music, although the day I pull out the trusty old pivot tables to look at the previous year’s concert stats is certainly a day that gives me the warm and fuzzies.

2019 has come and gone. How did I do?

Surprisingly consistent these last few years even though I feel like I’m getting so much lazier.

When it comes to venues, Brooklyn Bowl wins again! For the 4th year in a row, although 2016 data isn’t pictured here. And congrats to the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ for making this list for the first time. There were 6 venues that I went to 3 times that I didn’t list out. Webster Hall has reopened (woohoo!), there is nothing in the space previously inhabited by Output, and Irving Plaza will supposedly reopen after renovations.

I really crushed it on free shows this year. 30% is a solid number, particularly when 2/3 of those shows were ones that I managed to go to for free even though they weren’t actually free. Good job, self.

I need to do better at paying higher than face value for shows, even though I think 8 of those 9 are because I pay $35 a month for Jukely (the concert subscription service) and sometimes only go to one show that could have a value of, say, $20. But what I’ve learned about my Jukely subscription are 2 things:

1. There is some value in learning about shows through Jukely that I otherwise wouldn’t have known about. I cannot quantify that value but it sometimes makes up for the gap in actual concert ticket value. But even if I don’t get my money’s worth each month, I’m still getting my money’s worth for the year, so..that counts for something (right?).
2. I have Stockholm Syndrome because I always threaten to quit Jukely and never do. SIGH.

Odesza 2 years running! Happy that Gramatik is back on this list – he was on it in 2015 and 2016 but fell off for awhile.

For what it’s worth, during the 26 consecutive days where I went to 0 concerts, I was in Japan for about 19 of them.

Yet again, during the month of October, when I only saw 1 show, I was in Japan for over half of it. So I have an excuse, not that I need one. For my 3-shows-in-one-day day, I went to one in the morning before work (!), and then 2 at night. This was a first for me.

In keeping with tradition, here are some excerpts from my post-show notes of 2019:

“No one around me was standing which sucked but I stood and danced because F all of those idiots.” (Weezer at MSG) (Wow, so aggressive!)

“This was so wholesome.” (BBMAK at Gramercy Theatre)

“The last song was just so GOD and LORD and I was like…what.” (GRiZ at Kings Theatre)

“At their last set I felt like…okay I understand why people like them.” (The Disco Biscuits at Bisco)

“Her music is actually not that good. Mostly trying to reclaim a dead career.” (Iggy Azalea at Bowery  Ballroom)

“DC didn’t play the dog bread song but whatever, I’ll forgive him.” (Denzel Curry at Outside Lands – dog bread song, for reference, is below).

“The music was solid though I don’t think I’ll ever be fully converted to weird bass music.” (Space Jesus at Coney Island)

“Most of the time it was kind of good background type music and then she’d throw in a banger periodically and everyone would go nuts.” (Mija at Elsewhere)

“For the first time in maybe ever, I wish the music had been louder.” (Big Gigantic at Brooklyn Mirage)

“I hate them but this was incredible. Have they gotten better or has my taste in music changed?” (Dispatch at Sea Hear Now)

“Somehow understated but also extra at the same time.” (Gesaffelstein at Kings Theatre)

That’s it for 2019! I don’t have any shows on the horizon for 2020 until March (!) though I’m sure something will come up soon. I doubt I’ll hit 60 shows again this year, although I said that last year so..to be continued!