People are eating up nostalgia right now. That was obvious this last Saturday night when my band Low Standards (along with some other talented musicians) played a show to roughly 700 people. It was a specialty one-off kind of show that we do from time to time where we play tribute sets to specific bands. This time we chose Linkin Park, Blink-182, My Chemical Romance and Weezer. It was a dream lineup for anybody like me who grew up loving music in the 90s and 2000s.
The last time we did this kind of show, it sold out almost immediately. So this time we chose a larger venue, the Sanctuary Events Center in Fargo, North Dakota. It's literally an old church downtown that they converted into a sweet music venue. It was a good call going with the big old church because we nearly sold that out, too.
People ask me a lot why I still play in a band whose gigs are mostly in the midwest when I live in Florida. Sure it's a lot of travel back and forth, and because of that I don't really make a lot of money off of it. This show reminded me of why it's totally worth it, though. The natural high I felt on stage performing all of my favorite songs to a huge crowd of people who were singing them right back? Man, that's the good stuff. Throw in a couple beers and I literally couldn't think of something I'd rather do. So why would I voluntarily give that up? Not happening.
The whole night was wild. My favorite set to play was probably My Chemical Romance. I wasn't even that into MCR growing up, but apparently everyone else was. The crowd was super passionate and sang the loudest for that set. Although it was pretty sick to play Linkin Park songs while a huge mosh pit was happening.