Staying At The Market Hotel In 30 Years
“Dad, what the fuck are we doing in this part of town?”
God damn my son is annoying, I think. Wait, no, I was like that at his age, I can’t complain; that is karma.
“This was the Market Hotel” I say, completely understanding what those words mean to me and that those words mean nothing to him. “This was the place where every band who was anything played. This was the best place in all of Brooklyn, nah, New York, to see bands.”
“Wait, you mean that place…. VBKBs… what was it called???”, he said, sort of understanding but totally not.
“CBGBs. Yeah, it was our CBGBs.” I said.
Each generation has the place where they could go and be themselves. I look back and see my father in Woodstock (literally, he is in the movie and lived in the town over from Woodstock, NY, check it son!) and see how I am his son, that I seek my own place in counter culture, but at the same time I am able to disconnect myself from it all and look at myself from above.
Hippy is the new Hipster.
What got me on this thread? Simon and Garfunkel. I was drinking at a friends house and we started listening to them. I bought their box set for my mother last Christmas. I’ve always loved their music but never really thought about what it meant, generationally. Then it hit me; all these bands I love and go to see will one day be my Simon and Garfunkel and my kids will be buying me their box sets, not understanding what their music meant to me but just sortta getting that they rocked out and that’s cool.
What was it like, I wonder, to hear Scarborough Fair for the first time? Probably like hearing Arcade Fire, or Elliott Smith, or whatever song that made you realize your existence.
This is what I told a close friend when I saw Radiohead for the first time:
Remember when you told me about when you first saw Nirvana on MTV and it was this total mindfuck/life changing moment? I had that the first time I saw Radiohead on TV. That was my “OMG there is so much more to life” moment. I have never seen them live and over the years having listened to their albums so many times I thought I was burnt out. No. Not. Even. Close. The second Thom York blasted his guitar alive I felt like I was 15 all over again, the whole world against me, no one who understood me, except the music. You don’t know this because you never go to shows with me but I don’t dance. Ever (unless REALLY drunk). I love music but I love it on an intellectual level, not a physical. Radiohead had me dancing, moving my body in ways that I had only ever seen other people move while I watched, puzzled as to how anyone could be moved so much. Well I found out tonight. This was, from beginning to end, one of the most emotional experiences of my life (the last Phish show tops it but only just). My body was killing from standing for 5 hours and having had an ass kick of a work out the day before but once the music started all that disappeared. It was bliss.
The artist doesn’t matter, how they affected you is. I look at how my older friends all remember vividly their first experience with Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, they all have memories that are so tangible and real that you could almost take them as your own. I am too young for that but I’ll always remember the first time I heard The Shins or Arcade Fire or when I went to see Titus Andronicus (seriously, if they don’t take off I’ll buy a hat just to eat it). I will always remember when and where I was and the light and how I was feeling and who I was with and …. well you get the idea. The point is there are just certain bands who touch you on a level that always stays with you, that changes you as a person, and I look at my parents and the music they listen to and although I will never know where they were when they first heard, say, The Who, I will always understand what that experience was like because I’ve been through it.
Mark Twain had a great quote, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he’d learned in seven years.” My father was cognizant enough to tell me that when I was a teenager and damn it if it ain’t come true.
What’s the point of all this? I don’t know, I just put on some Simon and G-Funkel and realized that the fruit don’t fall too far from the tree, and when my dad rocks the music I like because I was aware enough to realize he would like it, it makes me wonder what my kids will be like.
I hope when I get to the point when I stop keeping up with new bands because I have a real life to live that they will keep me straight and up to date with WTF is going on with whatever scene they are into. Will they understand the music I force upon them? Probably not, but maybe it will let them know I care enough to let them into my world and maybe one day they will return the favor.
Yes Dad, this entire post is because you came into my room and said “I love Alaska in Winter“. Thanks for telling me that, “No, that isn’t Pink, none of them is Pink, the band is just called Pink Floyd.” Thanks dad, hope I can be good as you.
[...] they have a show lined up on January 16th at the aforementioned Market Hotel along with Human Host, Blue Leader, The Fakers, and GDFX. Show starts at [...]