so yea
12/03/2005 07:29 a.m.
 

 this is still pretty rough i think but i had to get it somewhere and i think theres a vast room for improvement. so editing to be done eventually. keeping that in mind here you go...

                I’m edgy at best, sitting in the confines of the Subaru station wagon as the traffic on New Jersey’s Garden State parkway is at a literal standstill. Looking at the clock and back to the sea of red tail lights ahead of me I remark “well I guess we missed Hopesfall.” The trip was down to northern Jersey, a place called the Birch Hill nightclub, to see Hopesfall, and Coheed and Cambria. The only thing that makes me crazy on the road, besides people who talk on cell phones (and their utter obliviousness to the entire world), is traffic. To me I’m better off not going somewhere or walking if I know I’m going to be in traffic, is just one of those things that irks me. About 3 hours later on a normally 1 and a half hour trip, we pull into the darkened lot.

                 The old Birch Hill place, now since gone (demolished to make room for age restricted housing), was a small club that jumps out at you in almost the middle of nowhere as you drive down the highway. You’d pull off the Garden State (exit 25 right before the Express/Local split) drive for 3 miles and before you know it out of the woods you see a partially run down sign with strange names and dates on them. You have under 2 seconds to recognize this as your stop, and pull onto the dirt gravel road following the not-so throngs of fans embarked on the same journey. It’s a wonder sometime how this place even existed as it did for as long as it did, with the space availability that it had. Think of your bedroom, now imagine your closet is the stage. Now sell 200 tickets and get a band or two to play there. We get there well before the main act, but well after we had wanted. As we’re walking in handing out tickets over and making our way past the merch tables, something odd manages to find its way into my ears, something unexpected to say the least. When you go to a show with Hopesfall, and Coheed in the lineup there’s a certain expectation you have for other opening bands. So when you see this thin quirky young jewish looking man singing his acoustic songs as if it were an episode of VH1 Storytellers you are usually at least a little intrigued. His name I found out later was Jonah Matranga. He was doing his solo project called Onelindrawing, he’s also been a part of the band Far, New End Original, and currently working with a lovely group called Gratitude.

              I’ve only been lucky enough to catch his live act in person twice in my life so far, and each time I was not to be disappointed, each show had their own set of memorable circumstances, and happenings and from what I hear from others come to be a sort of regularity among fans. There are by far two very standout moments in the times I’ve seen him play live that will always stay with me and I don’t think I will ever stop sharing the stories. The first of which occurring during that faithful Birch Hill show, he was introducing the next song upon which a young teen girl had requested earlier on upon meeting him that evening. “She asked me if I could play the song about the girl with the seashells song.” The song being Bitte Ein Kuss and the line she was referencing was Her hips her hips are like seashells/And I can hear the ocean when I listen. He then goes a bit further say how it was to say the least a bit of a dirty feeling “well its kinda weird having a young girl ask me to play that song because of that line…well because…um well that part is about me going down on a girl.” Also during this song, I believe though I could very well be wrong, happened something I will most definitely forget. As I said before with the lineup for that night there is sort of an expectation, so quite a few of the members of the audience were getting a bit unruly and wanting things to get on to what they wanted to see. A hearty anonymous “you suck” shout came from the right of the room, and without missing a beat he stops, mid-song, and replies. “oh well sure yeah… that may be true, but you may not be here to hear me but no one came to hear you.” Score one for the home team.

                      Stage presence is one of those things that I think people have come to forget about, either that or its one of those little known things that people miss when they are at a live show. To me that can almost make or break a show. Someone who goes up there and just plays the songs you know and like, yes that’s great but you can get that just by sitting at home and listening to the album on cd or iTunes or whatever. Then there are those groups that just completely go beyond what they accomplish on the recording by what they put up every night during their set. I’m talking about energy level, emotion put into the songs, how you can see that at almost any given time these people are just pouring themselves into what they are doing to give you a good show. There are bands/groups/artists etc that can do it, to an extent, but there are very few that do it so incredibly well that the images of that show will forever be ingrained into your mind. I can count on my one hand how many I know of to me do this every time I see them. One is Thursday, and if you’ve ever been to one of their shows you will completely understand me. Two is Sparta, I got to see them that same Asbury Park weekend on the same stage and it was by far unforgettable. Three is Jonah, and the one song where I completely just how much of a force he can be on stage was during the song Stay. Now if you’ve never heard the song do yourself a favor and pick up the album The Volunteers, its track five right after Superhero. It’s a very slow, very mellow and soft song, with these hints of something attempting to bubble to the surface and explode. About halfway through his set, he sets his guitar to the side and explains how the song came to be and decided to “do it a bit of karaoke style tonight.” The notes come across and out just like everyone is expecting them too but then as the song is just falling into its groove and hading towards its home stretch it changes. Not the music or words or who sings it, but how its sung changes. His voice takes that hint of bubbling and forces it to the surface, into this singing scream (which is at best how I can describe this though the effect is flooring) that slams home the song in a way that the album version never could. After hearing what I heard that afternoon my hair was on end, and my brain still attempting to grasp onto what I had just heard. Stay has been one of my favorite songs on that album and still is to this day, yet now when I listen to it I feel like there is something missing, almost as if something is wrong, almost is as if its incomplete somehow.

                  You see its things like that, that separate a good or decent performer from a great one. The albility to completely change your outlook on one of your most favorite of pieces. Playing, singing or doing something that you already love but making it completely new at the same time. Doing things like that making people not only happy that they got out to see the show but walking away with something so much more than that. They walk away with stories and experiences that they will never forget and want to share with friends and family time and time again until they are so sick of the same stupid story for the one millionth time. But that same stupid story will have those people come out time and time again, hoping for even more stories to add to their repatuire, and even if they don't get something to remember forever they keep enjoying themselves over and over. I've gone to a lot of shows and I've been unfortunate a few times and missed acts I've really wanted to see, but I will never complain about missing Hopesfall in my life.