There’s a famous lyric sang by Bob Marley and the Wailers on their classic tune “Trenchtown Rock,” it goes like “one good thing bout music, when it hits, you feel no pain.” This sentiment, since bastardized by Drake and a host of other noxious pretenders attempting to ape Tuff Gong, has lost some of its power in recent times. All too often, we as a generation choose music from a performer better seen than heard, devoid of all artistic, melodic, and original qualities, distilled into the same lowest-common-denominator primordial soup of noise we hear on the radio.
This past week, the biggest concert event in our proximity seemed to be headlined by some fellows calling themselves The Florida-Georgia Line, who apparently play country music. Now, since my IQ is over 75 and I can feed myself from a spoon without drooling, I don’t have much time for country music. However, I am interested in the fact that the O’Connell Center (the UF basketball arena and indoor stadium) was filled to the brim for two young men with about as much talent as a “Big Bang Theory” writer’s toenail.
Concerts in stadiums are cool and everything – buying a ticket for you and your girl will likely do you no harm in the bedroom department – but they always leave me cold. Anticipation for the event often leads to disappointment afterwards. The seats are always shitty, the acoustics are never ideal, and the headliner (being that this is Gainesville and not Madison Square Garden) is quite prone to phoning it in. It’s easy to see why some folks have become disillusioned with our society’s music.
Never fear, my friends, all is not lost. You simply have to open your eyes to what is beyond the zeitgeist.
Last Wednesday, the night before Halloween, a few mates and I went to High Dive, a downtown gig venue, to watch Fortunate Youth and Tribal Seeds. Even devoted reggae followers are unlikely to have heard of Fortunate Youth; googling them yields only a MySpace page and a few band photos that must be been taken by the bassist’s cousin. Tribal Seeds, while more well-known (they have toured with The Wailers, Rebelution, and Slightly Stoopid, to name a few), are still very much under-the-radar despite having been active for almost a decade. Prior to Wednesday, I had never heard of Fortunate Youth and had heard only a couple of Tribal Seeds songs. Afterwards…well, put it this way.
I was not disappointed.
We got to High Dive just before Fortunate Youth took the stage. This may be retrospective analysis, but even though all I could hear was Atmosphere on the stereo, I could already tell I was about to enjoy the best show I had seen all year. Allow me to compare High Dive to the O’Connell Center in one sweeping statement: The O’Connell Center is the sort of place where people who don’t like music go to concerts; High Dive is the sort of place where people who love music go to concerts.
At capacity, I suppose High Dive could hold around 300 people. When Tribal Seeds hit the stage at around 11.30, the room was half-full; when I got there a little before 10, there was around 60-70 people milling about. That sort of intimacy can be awkward in the wrong place, like an outdoor mall for instance. For High Dive, it was perfect. If a stoned film school grad was to spend three years painstakingly creating a magnum opus about the travails of a struggling steel drums player who grows up to be Phil Collins, THIS would be the setting for the opening scene where we find Phil Collins starting from the middle. Band t-shirts adorn the wall alongside chalked graffiti and portraits of the Rastaman. Giant Christmas lights are strung up along the ceiling, their garish light illuminating yet not overpowering a dim, somewhat sightless state of vision. The bar, stocked with plentiful supplies of Bud Light wells and Pabst Blue Ribbons, is as far from the stage as possible. Smoking is not only permitted but encouraged. High Dive is not a denizen for the laughably sexualized mating ritual we endure at downtown clubs, nor is it a homage to minimalist rooms dirtied with filthy shoes, sweat, and pathetically weak drinks like midtown bars. No, High Dive is a place for music. Is that so hard to appreciate?
Fortunate Youth is a seven-piece band hailing from the South Bay area of California. Its charismatic lead singer, Dan Kelly, had the crowd in the palm of his hand, singing with a voice of the islands one would not expect from a white man who looked as though he would be right at home behind a head shop counter. Songs like the mockingly introspective “Till the End” were performed with just the right sense of mirth, where the wonderfully retro “Jah Music” had the crowd roaring to every marijuana reference and each time the melody paid homage to reggae geniuses of times past. This band is not young (I would put the average age around 35) but they perform with the hunger of youth, the passion of the naïve, and the spirit of the islands. For a while, I was transported to childhood vacations long ago, sitting on a golden Caribbean beach by myself, building sandcastles and laughing when the tide broke them down, bobbing my little head to a local three-piece band strumming old Peter Tosh records. Fortunate Youth took me to places outside that great room. What better tribute can I give a band?
Via: kuakephotography.com
Tribal Seeds, a six-piece from San Diego, is more of a straight reggae band than Fortunate Youth, who lean more towards ska. Lead vocalist/guitar/songwriter Steven Jacobo reminds me a little of Damien Marley, although Jacobo sounded much better live, his vocals soaring higher than Damien can dream of now. All of the band, save for Jacobo, play multiple instruments, which you appreciate far more when you’re standing right there. During a performance of The Harvest, Jose Rodriguez – nominally a keyboardist – reached underneath his instrument and pulled out a trombone, belting out the end of the song while his band-mate took his place at the keys. Such synchronicity, such chemistry, such harmony of sound can only be fully understood after spending months with a band, but seeing it just once, scratching the surface of the thousands of hours of work that goes into every performance…wow.. And while Tribal Seeds didn’t take me to the islands, they certainly took me places I would never have visited without their performance. Tip of the hat to you all, sirs.
I’m not a very New Age person, to the eternal dismay of my roommate Giuliano, with whom I enjoy several spirited debates on the power of feelings, of instinct, of the soul. Despite my no-nonsense, investment banker view of the world, I believe in the power of shared experience taking us to new levels. Just as dropping shrooms with your best friends is infinitely better than alone in a dark room (…I’d imagine), experiencing this concert with all of my fellow reggae lovers took us all to planes of reality far beyond where we could have been with nothing but a pair of headphones and The Economist. In my inebriated state (I had enjoyed several $2 PBRs by the end of the show, as well as some puffs of a strange-smelling cigarette that a dreadlocked young man insisted I try) it was though I could see the vibes that my fellow concertgoers were giving off. Some were red, some were green, some were golden, some were gray. But during the show, everyone’s vibe seemed to intermingle, allowing us to touch a small slice of nirvana as one. We were all together, hands raised, separate but together, united by the shared love of the music being played for us. The show ended at some time early in the morning and the crowd left High Dive. By happenstance, I looked several people in the eye as we were ushered out. I didn’t say anything, nor did they, but we all knew that we had gone somewhere special together.
I spent a lot of time trying to find the right words for what I just described to you; the feeling when a crowd of humanity shares a collective experience greater than the individual. That small show, that little thing I heard about from a flyer on the street, was as good a night as any I have enjoyed this year. I can only urge you to seek out these shows at these venues – not these cookie-cutter stadiums with their cookie-cutter acts, but these holes in the wall with their performers of hunger and true artistry. That’s where you’ll find the bliss that only music can lead you to.
Photo courtesy of: FortunateMusic
