May 16th, 2007
Manhattan: The New Greenville
That’s right, embedded video. This place is looking more like a for-real blog everyday. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether that’s a good thing or not. While you’re doing so, let me tell you how surreal it was to watch this clip.
Late Night with Conan O’Brien was the official show of my college experience. During those prime years (you know, when you’ve made friends and you know the campus and you’re able to really start enjoying it) everyone got really invested in their respective areas of study (those being painting, design, and illustration, mostly). We spent hours upon hours in the art building, toiling away in our studio spaces. When it was time to call it a night, we would walk to someone’s dorm room or apartment to hang out. Conan O’Brien would be on TV.
The lead singer of this band, Scott Avett, went to the ECU School of Art. He was a painting major several of years ahead of us. I didn’t know him personally, just spoke to him a few times in passing. Still, at every crappy eight-band show, senior exhibition, or get together involving a keg, he and his brother played. Then he graduated and they decided to start writing their own songs and touring.
For the past few years, whenever anyone would try to tell me about “this new band they just heard called The Avett Brothers.” I would to tell them all that. Usually in one frantic breath. Recently, though, I’ve stopped. And I’m not going to sit here and claim that it’s because I don’t want to be “that guy.” (The one who has some meaningless connection to some minor celebrity, and won’t shut up about it.) Truthfully, I’ll be “that guy” all day long. It’s also not because I’m some obsessive, weirdo fan that’s keeping it to himself because he doesn’t want anyone else to even think about them, because then they might start to like them, and they won’t like them for the right reasons. (Actually, it may be that, a little.) Mainly, it’s because, if I recited the previous paragraph everytime this band came up, that’s all I’d be doing right now. These guys have blown up.
Anyway, I had to share that clip, because, though I know it’s real, it just feels like a funny dream I had after a house party, anywhere from 1999 to 2001.
Man, college, right?
Musically, I think the Avett Brothers do a lot of things very well, though they do have weak points. Still, I will never stop liking them. Not just because they’re a part of my college memories, but because (in my mind, anyway) I came from the same place they did. I hung out in the same setting with the same people, went to the same classes, etc.
I know, coming from an art school that was located in rural North Carolina (also known as “Nowhere”) — and had major insecurity issues about it — that they heard the “you’re going to sell-out and do work you don’t really want to do and/or move to a legitimate big city like New York” rants that still haunt me today. They made a go of music, of course, rather than design or painting, but point is: they didn’t feel the need to do those things.
I’ve followed these guys for years and their formula just seems to be: create what you want to create, and work very hard (take a look at their tour schedule). To see them get recognition for this is not only encouraging for me, but it actually makes me feel a little better about humanity.
And that’s powerful stuff.
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