Another stream.

It's 12:30 AM, and i have to be awake in 6 hours, but i have so many fragments of thought going on in my head and i feel it necessary to get them out as quickly as possible so I can just move on.

I want to an Allman Brothers Band/Widespread Panic concert today. Earlier this month, I went to a Coldplay/Elbow concert, and as I was watching Widespread Panic, I started comparing the two concerts to each other. I figured out some stark contrasts and similarities. The similarities lied in the people there. At both concerts, the demographics were surprisingly similar. Although the people were older at the concert I just went to, there was weed being smoked and many, many stupid people getting drunk at both. But I guess there's no avoiding that at concerts in the first place. The contrasts are far, far more prominent though. The secondary contrast in mind is that I went with my parents to the Allman Brothers concert (I wouldn't expect my friends to go to something like an Allman Brothers concert, nor would I, but my dad got tickets and I figured I'd go for the heck of it), while I went with my brother and his wife to the Coldplay concert. So initially, I enjoyed being at the Coldplay concert more than the Allman Brothers concert based on who I was with. I felt out of place and embarrassed being with my parents at the Allman Brothers, but in place and awesome being with my brother, who has always been sort of an idol of coolness to me. The primary contrast lied in the music. Naturally, the Allman Brothers play southern rock/blues, and Coldplay play arena rock, so these two are very different to begin with. But digging deeper, I realized something that made me (at least briefly) rethink my music taste altogether. The Allman Brothers played music, and they meant what they were fucking playing. There was pain or joy in every single note. You won't see that at a Coldplay concert. Coldplay never branches out into the improvisational. When they weren't doing that brief acoustic set in the lawn seating from which I was 20 feet away or doing a funky minimalistic remake of God Put A Smile Upon Your Face, the songs they played sounded IDENTICAL to the albums they were on. So why go to a concert to hear the exact same shit that you can hear in better quality on headphones? What distracts you from this sameness are the visuals. There was something different going on for every single song that Coldplay played, whether it was hundreds of yellow bouncy balls being flung all across the audience during Yellow, or the billions of tons of confetti showering down during Lovers in Japan. Not only the visuals, but the crowd participation. Every single song, everyone was shouting the words. Which I guess made the experience semi-electric, but doesn't change the fact that Coldplay is no different live than in studio. The Allman Brothers had a little bit of the visual distraction element themselves, and a little bit of that crowd participation, but they didn't need it. Because even if you didn't know the words (I didn't know the words to pretty much any songs, except for tidbits of Midnight Rambler), you were immersed in the music. They took you places, because each song would have a couple of verses and just meander into a guitar solo, or a bass solo, or a drum solo, or a breakdown. I was intrigued for the whole 2.5 hour set for this reason. There was dynamic and pure passion in what they were doing. They (the allman brothers, that is) ended with Mountain Jam, which was absolutely beautiful. I remember wanting to get the live version off iTunes a while ago, but couldn't download it. So I had never heard it until tonight. It opens with a timpani that keeps repeating throughout the first movement of the song, and the guitar slowly fades in, and the song just builds and falls and builds and then collapses into a cover of Smokestack Lightning, which then collapses into a drum solo, and then rebuilds into a reprise of Mountain Jam, timpani and all. the whole process took a good 40-45 minutes, and I don't think I blinked once. for 40 years, this band has been around, so they're all old, but they sound just as good as they did 40 years ago. Their music is timeless.

So, although i thought i'd NEVER say this... Allman Brothers > Coldplay. end of.

Like my dad and I did on the road trip, we made a big circle starting at the end of our street going to and coming back from the concert. We took a left to get to the concert, and came back on the right. I love doing that. There's something so surreal about it, like we just went around the world and ended up in the exact same spot.

As my mind was wandering as the Allman Brothers were playing (it's not that they were boring me, their music just managed to get me on all these streams-of-consciousness), I started thinking of my dog, of all things. What she was doing locked up in my room for the 8 hours that we were gone. We were hoping to be back by 10 PM (we left at 4) but ended up getting back at midnight. I feel bad. It's not that we've neglected her, but she leads a pretty boring life. She lays down all day, with the occasional playing around and barking when we go up and downstairs or when neighbors pass, but that's the extent of her 'fun'. Animals in the wild lead better lives than domesticated animals, because they can actually see the world, outside of a house and the vet and the kennel. So I pictured being in her shoes (or... paws) briefly, doing nothing, waiting for her owners to get home from wherever they might have gone, wondering when or if they'll be back, being generally confused but also thinking about nothing, staring blankly around the room, face down, trying to understand why and how and where she is. because what do dogs even think about?

I have to be up in a few hours to run. it's a speed workout. so goodnight. D:

it's gonna go
speedworkout at 7:30
wrock practice at 10:00
and then granite state challenge practice at noon (high school quiz show i'm gonna be on. schools compete against other schools for bragging rights and $1000 towards their school. just found out i'm the captain of the team today, which i'm really really excited about. ^_^)

but i'm not a fucking morning person.

~-~