On A More Serious Note

In 2011, I left a small New England college with a bachelor’s degree, a fresh job offer, and the startling unease of exiting the rhythmic lull of the American educational system. For the first time, much of my assumed knowledge about life was put to the test, and I took the first big step out of a decent-but-sheltered upbringing. In those final few years of school, my appetite for new music skyrocketed due in part to the exploding music blog culture of the late 2000s. Since childhood, music was a refuge, but without the burden of working towards an engineering degree, I had more time to write and record my own material as well as discover new artists. One discovery from this time was Valleys, a band from Montréal, and the closest stop on their upcoming Fall tour was Great Scott. I had recently moved to Portsmouth, NH, but Boston wasn’t too far of a drive. Despite having grown up around the city, most visits had consisted of class trips to the museums or weekend outings with family and friends, so I figured it was a good opportunity to explore it on my own terms. I drove down to Allston on the night of the show, probably improvised a parking spot, and made my way to the venue.

Stepping in under the tattered green awning, I found myself elbow to elbow with all of the musicians at the merch tables, and it immediately felt as if I had walked in the wrong door. This band that I had mildly idolized was suddenly right there in front of me amongst some other bands. (I didn't know yet, but those “other bands,” P.S. I Love You and Suuns, would soon become two of my all-time favorites.) Nothing can match the unique energy of that night, even in the hundreds of concerts attended since. Valleys opened the show and I stood nearly alone at the front, hearing their songs live for the first time. Nearly 10 years later, I still remember how it felt to be close enough to watch them play the notes that I had memorized from their 2009 LP ‘Sometimes Water Kills People,’ to then be immersed in the metronomic precision of Suuns, and melt into the arena-worthy riffs of P.S. I Love You. I even remember drinking a Heineken with the keyboard player of Valleys once their set was over. (Why the hell did I ever order a Heineken?)

That show single handedly kick-started my addiction to live music. It’s responsible for an ongoing obsession with saving ticket stubs. It gave me a new way of discovering artists other than from behind a computer screen: by showing up and hearing what people have to say through their work instead of sifting through dispassionate album reviews. Up until that point, my experience with live shows was mostly confined to friends’ high school emo bands in church basements or sitting miles up the lawn at the dreaded Great Woods/Tweeter/Comcast/Xfinity/whateverthefuck Center in Mansfield. Before that night, it was inconceivable to me that someone could get a chance to talk to a band they look up to, yet here I was between sets, out on the front porch chatting it up with the guitarist trying to contain my excitement while he was just trying to enjoy a cigarette. I probably didn't manage to blurt out more than a few sentences knowing my social ineptitude back then, but it didn’t matter. The rush of the entire experience fueled the drive back home until I rolled into the driveway at 2 AM.

Eventually, in 2014, I would move to Boston, and in the subsequent years would keep going back to Great Scott. I would ride my bike to see my favorite bands and again ride home in the quiet hours of the morning. I would look for events by venue rather than exclusively by band. I would start branching out and photographing shows (one of my first Allston Pudding shoots was for Tiny Ruins at Great Scott). Against the advice of that age-old philosophy, I kept meeting my heroes. Because goddamnit, if you were going to do that anywhere it was at Great Scott, and there was a good chance you wouldn’t be disappointed. That’s a testament to the kinds of people that it brought in: likeminded listeners that sought to delve into the unknown through the performance of artists who were either grateful to have been given the stage or excited to have been invited back. Practically everyone in the room was on the same page. They were “in this together” before that was even a thing. I never did get to know the staff, but an establishment like that doesn’t simply exist while indifferent to its patrons. My sole memory of an interaction was when I called ahead to ask about their photography policy. The voice on the other end stifled a chuckle. He said there was no policy and to just bring whatever camera I wanted to.

So here we are, staring down its permanent closure after 44 years in an indefinite span of social distancing. The tired phrase "when things go back to normal" rings in our heads, but for many, the closing of Great Scott means a complete upending of what normal is. The official statement, while heartfelt, leaves a lot to the imagination. Some say it was a decision on the landlord’s part to terminate the lease, but maybe Boston as a whole has fostered an environment that makes it impossible to recover from such an economic shift. As of this writing, a hopeful petition is going around to have the decision reversed. I’m still hesitant to even speak of Great Scott in the past tense. In my 5 years living in Boston, I got the chance to perform on several of its stages; Great Scott was never one of them. Hopefully that doesn’t remain true. I’m sure there are countless others out there that have had the same thought.

I can only speak to what Great Scott meant to me, and maybe some of my closest friends that shared the same experiences there. As a newcomer to the neighborhood, going to shows cracked that “hard shell” that people talk about in the company of Bostonians. Walking in the front door was like diving directly into converging undercurrents of culture and counterculture simultaneously, not just realized by the international acts that came through but local ones too. As much as we can assume art is a reflection of the modern human condition, Great Scott did a hell of a job listening to the voices that harnessed and unleashed that energy. Without places like that, it all just gets smoothed over in a homogenous slurry of banks, chains, and condos. It's simplistic to say that music can change the world, but it certainly has the capacity to change an individual, and fostering environments that catalyze that phenomenon within a group of people has a substantial ripple effect. As a photographer, Great Scott provided the technical challenge of being one of the most charmingly dim venues I have ever seen. Maybe this served to enhance the listener’s auditory perception, or maybe it was to hide that the checkered ode to ska music they turned into a floor was looking a bit scruffy. As a musician, I got to see and hear bands at their best amongst a churning sea of fellow show-goers. At the very least, it provided a bucket list show of my favorite band in my favorite venue (Pile) among some other random memories:

-Leaning over a headliner’s merch table and trying to converse over the din of a soundcheck, accidentally cracking one of their display CDs (sorry, Screaming Females).

-Attending the loudest show I have ever been to, White Denim (who decided to play two consecutive nights at G.S. instead of one in a venue twice the size).

-Being dumbfounded by Priests for the first time on the Don Giovanni tour.

-Optimistically showing up to a sold-out Hop Along show, just being content to listen to the whole thing through the side door with a friend.

Thinking back on that first show in 2011, another thing that stuck with me was that one of the band members asked if I had a place for them to crash for the night. Although at the time it was a logistical impossibility, it made me realize just how much of a commitment these bands were making for their craft and how little the creature comforts mattered in comparison. I still reflect on how important that grit is in the context of an increasingly complacent and distracted world. No matter the outcome of this whole thing, that's what I hope people take from this. There will always be an unstoppable drive to create new music and an institution to take in the makers of it, even if a 1-star Google review pins it as "Just a dive bar with live entertainment."