So I Went to A Hardcore Concert
A bit of backstory: Jackson (my husband) met his best friend Drew when they were randomly assigned as roommates freshman year at Vanderbilt in 2011. They are somehow very different and very similar at the exact same time. We’ve spent countless hours together over the years and we love Drew very much. A few years ago, Drew moved to Atlanta to work in the film industry. While there, he connected with a really rad girl named Allyson. Now they’re married! They came to town for the Coheed and Cambria concert and invited us to join them since it was Drew’s 29th birthday. They knew full well that it wasn’t our typical music, but also could count on us to be down for a new experience and to get to see a bit of their world as they’re both fans and this was their third time seeing the band live.
The show was at Municipal Auditorium, which I must say was incredibly well air conditioned for hosting over a thousand people in the dead of July heat in the South. (We usually describe outside in the summer here as feeling like being inside of a mouth. Ew. But accurate).
We snagged dinner at the new 5th and Broadway project’s Assembly Food Hall, which I can happily recommend even as a Nashvillian whose relationship status with downtown is “It’s Complicated.” We walked from there to the show and prepared our ears for blasting. Pro tip: if you forget your earplugs on the counter like I did ( * face palm *) then you can always stuff some toilet paper in your ears. It ain’t glamorous but it’ll get the job done and your cilia will thank you later.
If you’ve been to a live show with me, you might know that I tend to write during shows. Yep. I don’t know why, but the muse has inconvenient timing.
While I haven’t written any song pieces yet (which is what I usually do), I was very inspired by the experience of being out of my musical element and thinking about what it meant to listen in this arena. Here are my (hot) take aways:
This is a rock opera. Serious classical structure underlies much of hardcore and metal instrumentation. Walk the Moon is just the poppy end of this spectrum. They’re somehow vocally similar to the lead singer of Band of Horses. But also see: Phil Collins? The lead guitarist and singer has some of the most beautiful hair I’ve seen. Very fitting for his industry / genre. The audience parts sounded like me trying to hum the anthem of Game of Thrones from memory (it would be a mostly accurate struggle). We then sonically took a hard left into Beach-Boys-covered-by-Fall-Out-Boy territory. For aforementioned hair and opera reasons, I recommend Coheed and Cambria to fans of Les Mis.
The whole experience reminded me of youth group. Jackson described it as being similar to going to Catholic mass for the first time and not knowing the words to songs or what to expect from the rituals. The average person here is Drew, who I know went to youth group. There were songs that swayed in 6/8. There was more in-time clapping than the Baptist center down the street on any Sunday. Really giving mega churches’ Easter Sunday production a run for their money. The house lights were still up, the floor is linoleum, everyone here is a nerd (that’s a compliment): Like, was a school assembly in there. Again like CCM, the songs are organized around a central narrative and have unnecessary Nth repetitions of a chorus or refrain just so its followers can experience the joy of singing along.
There was an alien balloon that I have a suspicious theory about: the same company that must do most of the balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade must have had a turkey body leftover whenever the production designer for Coheed and Cambria. Balloon person was like “Yeah we totally have an alien for you” and then promptly added some tentacles to the turkey body and recolored it. I mean, props. But it if you’d seen the show, you would 100% be on board with my theory. Side note: They paid a lot for CGI. But also, not enough.
This is true at all shows: There’s nothing like the face of the panicked stage hand who is running up between songs to secure a microphone stand.
We had a great time and I would definitely go back. It might not be the kind of music I listen to on a day-to-day basis, but the show was nothing short of fantastic and a true culturally immersive experience.
How have you gotten out of your musical comfort zone lately?
xo,
em
