Obviously this blog is called Local Music Nation, so my first thought when the lovely Miss Amanda Bard asked me to guest as a writer was to write about local music. With the global takeover of the World Wide Web, the universe has shrunk to fit into an icon on our desktop. You can touch a few keys and have information from pretty much anywhere come flying through the digital expanse of space and time to your phone, laptop, mac or preferred electronic device. Do we even understand how crazy awesome this is? This is straight up magical. We could impress Gandalf and Dumbledore with this kind of wizardry. In order to listen to new music from deepest darkest Delaware or Denmark, all we have to do is log on to a search engine and start looking. We have signals that travel up to space, ping some satellite floating around up there and bounce the signal back down to us so that we don’t have to wait even a few seconds to hear a brand new song by a brand new band. This is a miracle in the holiest sense of science and technology and it happens millions of times a day. However, this is the opposite of local music because, while sit immersed in our overwhelming vast online catalog of endless possibilities, down the street there is a great local band busting its balls on stage trying to stir up some kind of following. Although I wouldn’t discourage following some band from Delaware, as a culture we should open up our ears to what is being home grown, like going to the farmer’s market for your tomatoes.
Local music allows you to connect to your community. I would have never met Amanda or Kristen if it weren’t for a mutual love of a local band. In fact, most of my good friends are friends because of our interaction at a local show. Just like buying that tomato from your local farmer, buying tickets and drinks from your local music venue stimulates your local economy. Instead of paying three hundred dollars for Coachella, (where you will become a sunburned, sweaty, dirty, smelly mess) spend that money on tickets for thirty different local shows and make new friends and become a local legend. It’s always exciting when an out of town band rolls through town and you get to catch a live show that you may only get to see every once in a blue moon. Local bands play more at home. This means more shows, more happiness, more dancing, more fun, and overall a longer life expectancy. Okay, I may be lying about the life expectancy thing, but it means better quality of life for sure. This past January I was able to see one of my favorite bands live five times. This is amazing.
It’s really okay to leave your house. I promise, the world is scary, but it’s exciting and in full resolution all the time. Your DVR will record The Walking Dead and if it doesn’t then you can watch it online or on demand or streaming or pirated or something new that they invented in the last thirty seconds. When time passes in real life, it doesn’t repeat itself. Go out and experience it. You will never be lovelier than you are now. Listen to music as it’s being played, be connected to a song in a way that doesn’t exist outside of live performance. Shout, “I AM ALRIGHT!” over and over again with two hundred other people and be part of something real and tangible. Then eat a California burrito at 4 a.m., cause that’s being alive. Take a chance, venture out your front door and you may find something worth your while. Plus the internet is stealing our mind grapes.