I'm ashamed of last night's post.
Sometimes, blogging pics from a show just doesn’t feel right nor genuine. There’s certainly nothing than can replace being there - feeling the sweat of a night and filling your ears with the entirety of a music. It’s probably too easy to simply snap a pic and quick send it up without commentary to say ‘hey, I’m there y’all.’ While that’ll do most times, last night’s Youth Lagoon performance was so big, so monumental, so rife with emotion, I felt the need to write more about it.
Trevor Powers was playing at a sold-out, packed wall-to-wall Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco - his first of a long tour. I suppose I feel a bit disingenuous to simply leave you with a lame photo and not the full story.
Soon after my baby was born, I bought his The Year of Hibernation album on wax. Typically the vinyl I own gets played in my living room in the evenings, but being a guy who likes to go out a lot to shows, etc, I hadn’t spent enough time just chilling out doing so until this summer when I had a wee lil’ bundle of cooing and giggling joy in my lap smiling up at me with upmost wonder. Now that’s all I do.
YL has been on constant rotation, building up an associated palette of sound with this music - a soundtrack to my life that’s being sewn ever deeply into little Elena’s mind. I can’t help but think back on my own childhood and recalling the power of the music my parents played for me. How I’ll never escape Lionel Richie or Neil Diamond or the Beatles. In years from now, Elena is going to pick up that record and just smile - she’ll play it in her college dorm for her friends and tell them how it reminds her of her dad. She’ll play it alone in her room when she’s sad and it’ll make her want to call me and just chat and see how I’m doing. We’ll play it together on a Sunday morning one day when she’s visiting me on the holidays and we’ll talk about old times. And I’ll take her to see Trevor’s comeback tour and I’ll tell her again about this night, this performance that I wish she could have seen and experienced with me.
I thought about all of this as I sat on the edge of the stage last night, cross legged, looking up as Trevor absolutely mesmerized the room, bathed in blood-red light and nervously bantering between songs. I closed my eyes and bowed my head in reverence and thought of my daughter and my fiance Erin who is just as infatuated with the album as I am and who’s sharing this common thread with me in her own right. I thought about how this moment, this time, would pass so quickly and I’d be happy to let it go. But equally overjoyed at the permanent stamp it was making on my own memory bank. I’m ashamed that I snapped that pic as a shoddy, digital replacement to what will likely be a meaty and vivid memory of a time in my life. I’m reminded that it’s far better to let go and immerse into the experience.
I’m just so stoked and happy that my hobby gets to be enjoyed this richly. I’m a lucky son-of-a-bitch. And guys, please go see Trevor when he comes to your town. Have your own experience, but do it with all your attention. It’ll be worth every delicious second.
Really happy to have read this. Thanks Mark.
