Last month I traveled to Atlanta to see what was supposed to have been Ryan Adams and The Cardinals final show, which took place at the Fabulous Fox Theatre. (It was amazing, the theatre is beyond grand, and no, I don’t think Adams is done for good…maybe for a bit, but not for good).
While I was there, I saw something that I have NEVER seen in our area, and it made me envious.
Everywhere you go in Atlanta, or I guess I should say, everywhere I went in Atlanta, there was a fervor that was palpable about Atlanta’s hometown boys Mastodon. In grocery stores I saw local publications featuring Mastodon. On the streets I saw posters and flyers. In record stores I saw huge displays of CDs. Even in a weirdo toy store, I saw a Mastodon merch display that took up an incredibly significant portion of real estate. It got to the point that when I walked past a church, I was almost expecting to see Mastodon posters in the windows (sorry to say, there weren’t any).
It dawned on me, that it’s been a LONG DAMN TIME since the Front Range has had that — a band that everyone gave a shit about, even if it wasn’t their style of music. Maybe it’s because we’re spoiled here with a lot of really good acts, but when was the last time you remember our whole region really getting behind a hometown band?
Yeah, we’ve had big successes in the past. Most recently, we’ve seen acts like Flobots and 3OH!3 blow up in a huge way, but even still, we haven’t for years, seen a rally like what I saw in Atlanta.
That’s a little bit embarrassing.
Now granted there are a million different pieces of different puzzles (not to mention a boat load of cash) that came together to show off Mastodon the way I saw it, but why aren’t those puzzle solvers doing that here in Colorado?
We have, and will continue to be, an important stop along the way on national tours, but if we can’t rally our own region to get behind our local musicians, what chance to do we have at ever being a prime market that every band is dying to play in?
I’ll tell you, I’m not a musician and I want to play in Atlanta, after seeing their love. We got a bunch of hippies around here, can’t we muster some love for our peeps?
See you at the shows.
Editor’s Note: In last month’s Marquee, a photo of Hot Rize by Tim Timberlake was not correctly credited. The Marquee regrets the error.