Discovering New Music. . .
Going to see live music can be a spiritual experience. Some of my favorite nights out have been in smaller venues seeing an artist that I’ve never seen live before or never even heard of until that night. Every now and then I come across a person who goes out to see music all the time but they only go to see the “Headliner” for the night. They won’t bother to go check out an opening act. They claim to be huge music fans but they won’t take that risk. Spend the extra hour of their life on the chance of catching some new, something they’ve never heard before. It’ll surprise me every time I come across these people.
I guess today it’s so easy to find new music with the proliferation of streaming music like Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, and others. But until you see a band live in concert, you haven’t really experienced them. I remember years ago talking to a friend who was one of these people who won’t go see the opening act. He was a big reggae music fan and also liked rock and jamband stuff. He was going to see the band moe. And I told him to check out the opening act, John Brown’s Body because they were an awesome reggae band that I thought he’d really enjoy. He was already going to the show; all he had to do was show up a little early and check out some of their set. Of course he didn’t see them that night. Years later, John Brown’s Body was headlining a show somewhere and he went to go see them. He loved the show and was really bummed that he missed out on two years of getting to experience the band live.
One of my earlier, memories of going to see an unknown band was a show at this little bar in upstate NY called the Rhinecliff Hotel with a buddy of mine to just see whoever was playing that night. We didn’t know the name of the band, where they were from, what they sounded like. We just went because. The Rhinecliff was an old hotel (only a couple of rooms) that kind of became a boarding house of sorts. There was a bar on the ground floor, a room with a pool table in it and a back room that had a concrete floor, one brick wall and three other concrete walls. There was no stage, no pa, and lighting for the room consisted of a single light bulb in the center of the ceiling.
The band that night was a band from NYC called Marmalade. It was something like an 8 or 9 piece funk band with a rippin’ female lead guitarist (who later went on to play lead guitar for Natalie Merchant). They played some of the funkiest, sweatiest, nastiest funk I’ve ever heard. It was unbelievable. I grooved for hours. We took a complete risk, driving out to the bar and paying the cover for a band we knew nothing about and it turned out to be one of the best musical nights I had ever experienced.
Since coming to Boston (approximately 20 years ago now) I’ve had countless nights of seeing great new music. Every time a new (to me) band blows me away, it takes me back to that night at the Rhinecliff, getting down to the funk of Marmalade. So go see some live music. Take a chance and see someone you’ve never heard of, get there early and check out the opener, you never know when you might come across your new favorite band.
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