Monthly Archives: April 2010

Sometimes a band or an artist will come out of nowhere and totally blow your mind.

Perhaps you’ve heard a song or two and don’t care for the music. Or you’re casual fan, but don’t necessarily think they’re totally spectacular. Or you just assumed you wouldn’t like the music based on genre or preconceived notions.

But then, you have some encounter that changes all that. You hear a song on the radio, or you see a performance, or, I don’t know, you randomly run into the band in a bar one night — whatever the moment, you’re impressed. You’re smiling, maybe a little slack-jawed, and probably using phrases like “frickin’ awesome” or “absolutely unbelievable.”

Because it is sort of unbelievable, to you at least. This band can’t possibly be that band you don’t like. You would never be caught dead with that band‘s music on your iPod. There’s no way that band could do something so cool, be such awesome people, put on such a kick-ass show, whatever. But suddenly you want to tell all your friends to forget what they think about that band and check out this band ASAP.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” or so the saying goes.

Well, don’t judge a band by their place on the record store shelves.

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I would have never given N.E.R.D a chance if free tickets and/or Three Days Grace hadn’t been involved.

I arrived at UB’s Springfest this past Saturday too early or too late for my liking, depending on how you look at it. I’d already missed Lady Danville — who I’d never heard of until UB booked them, was excited to see, and who I’ve since heard won over the crowd, most of which held one or both of those sentiments as well — but I still had to sit through Anberlin and N.E.R.D to get to Three Days Grace.

As my Pharrell-obsessed friend worked her way up front for N.E.R.D, I hung back. I didn’t need to be enveloped in sweat and B.O. just yet.

Their set started out as expected. A zillion (OK, two or three), seemingly-unnecessary backup rappers/posse members crowded the stage in front of the band, and I made jokes to myself and prepared for what was about to assault my poor ears.

And I got what I expected — for a little  bit. Right around the time they started rapping Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” (yes, there are two “r”s, and, yes, I know that off the top of my head; don’t judge me), I almost gave up. Springfest is supposed to be rock, so what were these guys doing there?

But then the mood totally changed. There were mosh pits and crowd-surfing. There were drums, guitars, bass and keyboards. It just so happened the guy singing had a super-smooth, R&B-style voice.

And I found myself grooving to the music without knowing it.

When it comes down to it, N.E.R.D actually is a rock band — not straightforward rock, but funk-rock, pop-rock and/or electronic-rock. They just combine it with hip-hop and R&B, which many rap-rock bands don’t. It gives them an advantage, because they’d fit well on a bill with a band like 3OH!3 and a band like The Roots. And — here’s the cool part — they rarely sample, like many hip-hop/rap/R&B acts do. All those beats, they’re totally theirs. That deserves some serious respect.

They also deserve it for two more things that many bands don’t do (or don’t do well), the first of which is involving the crowd. With rare exceptions, there’s nothing worse than when a band gets on stage and just plays. So when Pharrell not only pulled people on stage, but tried his hardest to get everyone in the arena involved, including the fairly-disinterested crowd in the stands, I started to take him more seriously.

The second thing he did was look out for the fans. Moshing and crowdsurfing can get dangerous, especially when there’s people in the crowd who aren’t out to have fun, but have an intent to injure for one reason or another. Something happened in the front of the crowd near the end of N.E.R.D’s set, and instead of ignoring it and continuing, Pharrell stopped and called out the guy involved, essentially telling him to cut it out, because what he was doing wasn’t cool.

And that’s, without a doubt, one of the coolest thing a band can do.

I am what you might call a “fake” Buffalonian.

I was born in Connecticut, and my family moved here when I was almost six for my mom’s job. Before that, we really didn’t have any ties to the area; my dad went to Buff State and grew up in Rochester, but that’s the closest we go. We certainly don’t have generations of Stefano family members living in South Buffalo, Kaisertown, or wherever it is Germans and/or a conglomeration of Italian and pretty much every other European country would live.

We live in the suburbs — always have, despite my constant pleas, once I entered high school, to move into the city — and I’m probably the family member who’s in Buffalo proper the most. I left the area for school with, I confess, every intention of not returning.

My accent is mostly Buffalo — using “the” before highways, flattening my A’s, etc. — but, having first learned to talk in Connecticut, there’s a slight enough New England tweak to it, even 21 years later, to make my freshman year roommate balk when she heard my “real” Buffalonian boyfriend say “haackey.”

(To which I would say — really, Bostonians making fun of our accents?? But I digress…)

Despite all of this, we (my family and I) consider ourselves Buffalonians. It’s not like five is old enough to really have ties to an area, despite how much I bawled my eyes out when we left. Connecticut/the east coast is a foreign, preppy world that I (not-so-secretly anymore) now thank God I didn’t grow up in. I would be an entirely different person had we stayed in Connecticut.

But the thing is, sometimes I feel like a “fake” Buffalonian because I don’t remember so many of the things that make Buffalo Buffalo. And, with the exception of my dad in certain cases, my family doesn’t either. Clearly, not being alive in the 1970’s, I’m not going to remember how the city looked before the steel mills closed and we put a highway through the East Side, but sometimes I wish I could remember it more, if not through my memories, then through those of my family.

Then, in my Easter Day boredom, I came across Forgotten Buffalo. Of course I’ve heard of the organization before, and I knew they did tours, but what I’ve been most enthralled with for the past couple hours are the pictures they have on the website and Facebook — old buildings, the steel mills alive and operating, hilarious (in that why would you put a roof over Main Street??) plans for the Metro Rail, and many, many more. They’ve built a little collection over there through the best historians you can find — the people who lived it.

I have my own, slightly newer and younger version of those memories — some day I will be telling my children about “this really awesome place called New World Records that I used to spend hours in after school. It’s now that [insert whatever; hopefully still SpOt].” — but I want to know about the more distant ones. The history of this area fascinates me — not so much the stuff they taught us in 4th grade social studies (though that’s interesting in its own way), but the social and cultural stuff that you learn about through family stories that begin with, “There was this club called The Continental…”

So, as you’re perusing the site with a post-Easter dinner ham hangover, tell me your stories. Show me pictures. Give me website links. I want to hear about your favorite old hangouts, closed restaurants and clubs, and all those other memories. Mostly, I want to know — where the heck was the Thruway Mall?? Seriously, Google turned up zilch, and I didn’t even know such a place existed.

But after that’s answered, I want to hear all the good stuff, too.