Last year, a friend emailed me an article about a musician winning a Grammy with a single line that read, “Remember this absolute trainwreck of a concert?” I knew nothing about this musician before the show, but tickets were cheap and back in 2015, I was still making an effort to be fun.
Though even at my most fun, I worry about being late, so we arrived before the opening act even set foot on the stage. Looking at the glass half full, being among the first people at the venue meant we were able to snag prime standing room close to the stage. However, the proverbial glass was fully empty two hours later when the headliner finally started.
At 11pm. On a weeknight.
We emptied several actual glasses during the long wait and when I made my way to the bar for a refill, I ended up with beer spilled on my head by oblivious dudes standing over six feet tall. I was tired, damp, and sticky and then inexplicably, a New Orleans-style brass band parade wound its way through the crowd.
I truly have no recollection about whether I liked the music or not. I do remember that what should have been a 45 minute set was stretched to two hours with the help of chatty interludes and snarky callouts whenever the musician spotted people leaving early. [Like, dude. People have work in the morning.] My brain filed the night under “chaotic concert experience” and left it at that.
And this past week, I added another experience to that mental file folder.
My local park hosts free, weekly concerts in the summer. A pretty gazebo acts as the stage and neighbors spread out on the grass with picnic blankets and camp chairs. It’s a family friendly experience, though the musical acts are definitely geared to the tastes of the cool parents and not of their energetic offspring. As a result, there’s a fair bit of running amok among the under-10 demographic that cannot be quelled by John Prine covers.
I don’t know whether it was the heat or the mellow music or the fact that there were not one, but two ice cream carts tempting attendees with sugar, but this past week was beyond amok. It was flashbacks to reading Lord of the Flies in high school.
The beginning of the night was just a simmer. With temperatures barely dipping below 90 at 6:30pm, parents were slow to chase after their kids. I get it! I wasn’t in the mood to run either! Determined toddlers repeatedly tried to storm the stage and a kid in a tie-dye shirt made a break for it every time his mom struck up a conversation. A future soccer star annexed part of a picnic blanket for his makeshift pitch, despite the fact that two women were clearly sitting there.
But things didn’t really take a turn until the girls found the branches.
With the summer heat comes summer storms and quite a few tree branches had recently succumbed to high winds. These weren’t some paltry sticks that you might throw for a small dog. These branches were practically the size of the kids and fully leafed out.
The oldest kid was the ringleader and she carried a branch that befit someone of her status. The younger kids were content to carry around their branches like trophies, admiring them and occasionally showing them off to passersby. The ringleader was not.
The signboard that displayed the summer concert series poster was her first victim. She lifted her branch up and just as I thought she was going to whack one of her companions, she pivoted and beat her branch against the sign instead.
Soon the group moved center stage and began recruiting. Extra branches were found and distributed. One generous kid broke off a piece of her three pronged branch to entice another to join. They now outnumbered the band three to one and the musicians didn’t stand a chance.
During extended guitar riffs, the kids layered in their own vocals in the form of loud conversations and a few performative tears. When the DJ laid down a beat, the kids began pounding their branches on the ground (somewhat) in sync. When the songs got more upbeat, the branches turned into guitars. As things mellowed out, there were cartwheel competitions. All this happened right in front of the gazebo, drawing eyes and attention away from the concert in progress.
And then they began marching.
With seemingly no discussion, the kids circled up and began pumping their branches above their heads as they marched to the beat. This was the moment where I checked my escape routes. At least in Lord of the Flies, it took them days (maybe even weeks, it’s been two decades since I read it) without adult supervision before they began their ritual dances. In the park surrounded by their parents, it took less than an hour for this posse of children to prepare to go fight the beast.
Some of you are probably rolling your eyes and thinking, “Alice, it is so obvious that you don’t have kids. This is just what they do!”
Yes, but…
I once was a kid that ran around the neighborhood with sticks and secret hideouts and silly rituals. But when we were at the bandshell for summertime concerts, we skulked off to the shadows of the playground away from adult eyes before we engaged in our weird kid games. It was the confidence of these kids that unsettled me.
Without even breaking a sweat, they managed to turn the band—the reason we were all there—into mere background music for their antics. Early in the set, the musicians were smiling at the kids who tried to scale the steps of the gazebo. By the end, the guitarist was clearing his throat and requiring a few tries to introduce the next song.
I couldn’t tell you anything about the actual songs. On paper, the band is one I should have liked. After hearing them live, I have no clue. I can tell you that half a dozen kids holding leafy branches aloft create a very effective visual shield. And just like the people that clap slightly off tempo, straying from the beat while thumping branches on the ground is a jarring auditory distraction. How the band managed to stay in the groove for a ninety minute performance is beyond me and a testament to their professionalism.
But the main question in my mind is whether this posse of kids will form again at the next concert. Was this a one-off where the muggy heat and chill musical vibes created a power vacuum that the ringleader kid could step into? Would the addition of another kid, perhaps this one with a helicopter parent, throw off the dynamics such that the kids play on the periphery instead of center stage? Were the branches the necessary spark or could this group form without them?
I hadn’t originally planned to attend the entire concert series this summer, but now I have no choice. This is about more than just what music appeals to me—this is the beginning of a sociological study. I just hope I make it to Labor Day in one piece.