Crafting Memories - Final Fantasy and the Mountain Goats

Music is about memories. It's about the Summer night in Chicago I spent sneaking my brother backstage at the Pitchfork Music Festival. We drank a bucketful of Chicago's finest Goose Island Pale Ale and made friends with John Darinelle and Peter Hughes, otherwise known as The Mountain Goats. It's about my girlfriend Cara. Her cell phone's ringtone is a Final Fantasy tune, the first I'd ever heard. I remember so many mundane workday drives because of the music on the stereo. I can’t listen to some albums without thinking of ex-girlfriends or college or (even worse) ex-girlfriends from college. It might seem like I graduated from Duh University when I say this, but these memories bring us closer to the artists, their songs suddenly—irrevocably—private and personal and ultimately special in a way that they couldn't possibly anticipate.

This can make live shows traumatic. It's one thing to have an illusory personal connection with the music coming out of our speakers. It's quite another to see your favorite band cheating on you with hundreds of others in a single room, as I did on November 15th at the Music Box at the Henry Fonda Theatre, where fans crowded the main floor to see Final Fantasy and The Mountain Goats. Both bands craft emotionally honest music: Final Fantasy does it with violin melodies built track-by-track; The Mountain Goats do it with lyrics intricate and heartfelt enough for fans to break out the liner notes. And, both bands are experts at coloring the past, sharing memories. It’s enough to buy their records. But why see them live? Why compete with all the other fans standing shoulder-to-shoulder trying to make a connection? To create new memories, of course. A Toronto native, Pallett generously complimented Los Angeles and our public transit system. “Do you even realize what you have?" he asked. We did. Accompanied only by a drummer who lacked a full drum kit, he then beautifully conducted an orchestra of two. Later, Darinelle delivered his lyrics with the same enthusiasm he must have had when he wrote them years ago.

Final Fantasy didn't play Cara's ringtone. And I didn't get to slip into drunkenness with The Mountain Goats again. I'm sure the people in the crowd have memories the bands didn't re-enact in concert, either. They did the next best thing.

Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog_post.aspx?id=22207&blogid=1592&blogid=1592