Stadium Show

Short Play

Q: What was the Stadium Show like?!?!?!?!

Chase (C): Mmmm….uh….eh….it was really novel, in every sense….

Self-Help-Influencer-Legend (SHIL): “Novel,” bro? Novel?? This isn’t your fucking contemporary literature class in the corn field! Own this shit, boy!! You just crushed in front of 20K people, the biggest crowd you’ve ever played for BY FAR, and you’re really out here talking about “novel”.....SMH

Conservatory Public Relations (CPR): You sound a tad aggravated, SHIL! I don’t think he is necessarily downplaying how cool the experience was. I think he may simply be calling attention to the fact that it brought up a lot of complicated feelings –

Determinist Downer (DD): If there’s anything he should call attention to, it’s the fact of how dammmmn LUCKY he was to be on that stage at all! Do you know how many millions of things had to miraculously go right to put him there? Do you really think he “deserved” this opportunity, SHIL? Do you really think music is a meritocracy? Roll back the tape, look at him smiling while enveloped by that ridiculous fog machine on stage. You think every deserving drummer gets to be clouded in smoke while they play with their best friends in an arena? But it’s fine, keep selling people your life-transformation workshops and miracle supplements….

Chorus of Parents (COP): Did this gig include health insurance?

Doctor of Musicology (DOM): *Pretentious cough to interject* You are all always just thinking about yourselves! You believe your proximity is uniquely illuminating, that it grants you access to something those far away can’t understand. But it’s actually rendering you entirely unable to give an account of what happened, because you’re too blinded by your own biases, your own preoccupations! Don’t you remember what Matthew Rahaim said? “The idea of radical immediacy underlying so many construals of participation surrenders the critical function of ethnomusicology in unveiling oppressive forms of mediation and mimesis…” Where is that critical function??? This whole conversation has been about your own neuroses and insecurities! I barely have a sense of what actually happened at this thing. Let’s start here: how many –

SHIL: *Rolls eyes, shakes head vigorously back and forth* This cat again, rocking his blue corduroy blazer. What mumbo-jumbo did he just spout? We get it, sir! You’re getting a PhD. You know I heard he actually wore that jacket to the rock club on the most recent run? Where’s management? Mendel Records! Why haven’t we outsourced his wardrobe to someone?!? Is there an unpaid intern who can look into this?? He ain’t ever going viral looking like that…except maybe on Bookstagram….

Headlining Rock Stars (HRS): You’re so right, SHIL. That’s why we rolled up with a team of people supporting us. 30 staff members were working on our behalf from the crack of dawn to the curtain call –

CPR: 30! 30! That’s quite a number. In fact, by 2030, that will be more people than are majoring in the humanities at our school….

COP: And to think, we paid for all those music lessons, just so he could go to a school that’s going to become obsolete, just so he could perform for some drunken revelers who partied the day away at the Gasparilla Pirate Festival in Tampa Bay, Florida –

DOM: Interesting – to you, HRS, economic and infrastructural support might be the center of the bullseye, but for other musicians, the size of their support staff wouldn’t mean –

HRS: That’s right, like I said, 30 people, working across lighting, visuals, sound, catering, logistics, load-in, load-out, wheels up, touch down – we keep everything dialed in! We don’t even do our own soundcheck; our techs do that for us. It makes everything so much easier! For this show, Hudson’s band arrived around 11AM and were waiting around the stadium the whole day, whereas we jetted in just before showtime.

DOM: This is completely fascinating – I also heard you had five dressing rooms, HRS, one for each member –

HRS: Of course, you think we’re sharing amenities at this point in our career? This isn’t the DIY van, Doctor! Remind me – do you prefer Doctor or DOM?? Speaking of outfits, SHIL – you should have seen my drip on that arena stage! I even broke out a custom-fitted, monogrammed Tampa Bay Lightning jersey for the encore. People went nuts. This is the attention to detail I’m talking about! You think you can just get on an arena stage and call tunes, read down a lead sheet? These kids in music school think it’s allll about the playing and barely give a thought to the production, the presentation! We had a whole lighting rig, synchronized to the rhythms of every one of our songs; we created lyric videos that rolled on a huge projector screen. People were transfixed! This is why we’re out here flicking sticks and picks to adoring fans while these SadJazzBois ™ are stuck playing for their friends in the same bar over and over again…..

DOM: I have so many questions, HRS, starting with how you amassed the cultural and economic capital to –

CPR: I don’t define “cultural capital” as one’s ability to “flick picks,” DOM!! No, no, no – this is not what we want our students to aspire to. Here at the conservatory, we have a motto: “Learning and Labor,” with an emphasis on labor! Believe me, a lot of it goes into preparing oneself to live the life of a professional musician. All of our graduates put in thousands of hours of hard work, of practice time on their instruments...of course, playing in front of 20,000 people is perhaps one of the most legible forms of professional success to folks who don’t dedicate their lives to music, but that doesn’t make it the most meaningful for those who do…what matters is how the bands played!

DD: Thank you so much for bringing up labor. You do know music practice is just unpaid labor, right? You talk about it with some holier-than-thou mystique. Anyone who has the time to practice thousands of hours means they didn’t need to worry about making money during that time. So yeah, SHIL, C “decided” to practice thousands of hours so he could be ready when an opportunity like this presented itself. But if he had been born in different circumstances, could he have really “decided” that at all? This goes back to what I was saying about luck….

SHIL: It wasn’t just the practicing, DD! You know how C first met Hudson? He was walking down Dean Street three years ago, saw Hudson and Sophie (complete strangers at the time) sitting on their stoop, and decided to say hello. What if he hadn’t said anything? You know how psychopathic it was to approach two random strangers, even in 2023? He could have easily just kept walking. But he didn’t. He chose to be gregarious, to be outgoing. He chose to say hello! As I like to preach at my Esalen workshop, it’s ultimately on us to Say Yes To Life (#SYTL)

DD: Are you still digesting whatever magic ‘shroom was in your tea at Esalen, my friend? You’re only reinforcing my point. People might be scrolling, seeing these videos, thinking C orchestrated his life to be on this huge stadium gig, but it was really so random! He’s only on the gig because, by the grace of God, he was walking down Dean Street at that hour on that day! Do you ever talk about this in the classroom, CPR?? Think of the hundreds of other drummers in NYC who could have crushed this gig! Why weren’t they on the stage?

HRS: Y’all! I don’t care about any of this! And please, don’t get my message twisted. Hudson and his band were great. They played fantastically and the audience was really warm. Yeah, some of the crowd talked throughout the set but that’s almost always the case for openers. When H told the stadium it was his first arena show they absolutely erupted with cheers and support! It was so sweet, actually.

C: If I could jump in here for a second, HRS – thank you for that bottle of top-shelf tequila you left in our dressing room, by the way! – there are two things I definitely remember from the actual performance: one was the beginning of the set, looking out, and feeling a bit like I was in some sort of dream – both in the sense of “this is kind of a dream come true,” but also as in: “what is going on???” I had just never had the experience of looking out and seeing that many faces staring back at me. You have to understand, HRS, that most of the shows I play are for 30, maybe 50 people – with a lot of shows for maybe 5-20 people! Hudson and I were playing for three years at small places across Brooklyn for very few people, little pay, etc. Then all of a sudden, we’re here, presented with the opportunity, and it’s kind of like, alright, are we ready? When we began, I noticed myself feeling a little nervous, like I was playing but couldn’t quite access everything I’m usually able to. But after a song or two that quickly faded and I actually felt really comfortable, like I was just playing with my friends in the basement. And that led to the second thing I remember from the show itself: just smiling, feeling really happy, and being really happy for my friend, that he was having this opportunity.

HRS: Chase! I’m so glad we caught you for a second. We wanted to talk with you more after the show, but, you know, we had to run to catch our private jet back to Nashville….

DOM: Did you say you walked off to your private jet?!?! Again, the asymmetries of power, the fact that you’re jet-setting while these people in NYC are stuck Venmoing the same $50 around….

C: It’s funny you mention that, DOM – the very next day, I flew back to Brooklyn to play at 3’s Brewing with my band in a split bill with Kirsten Maxwell and Polsky West. 3’s is exactly one of those small places you were talking about before, where usually ~30 people come out, each person makes $50, etc. But I found the experience to be just as meaningful as the stadium gig the night before. In fact, during Kirsten’s opening set, I found myself thinking: “am I even a musician??” – she was playing the most gut-wrenchingly beautiful songs, imbued with such honesty, vulnerability, transparency, and feelingfulness. It was as if she had emerged from the womb with a guitar in her hand, singing, like she was just born to do this – it felt that natural, that good, that effortless. At that moment, it didn’t matter that I had played in a stadium the night before, it was like, no, here is the next thing, this is what I’m striving for….

SHIL: Chase! Don’t lose the plot, baby! You can always play at the brewery, but we have to remember that the stadium show marked a real turning point for you all, in terms of the possibility of making a living from playing music you love – wasn’t that always a goal? Otherwise music is more of a hobby, right? We’re not just churning out reels for the aesthetic….

CPR: Off the record, SHIL – between us, please! – you’re right! I’m secretly thrilled that one of our graduates is actually getting paid –

DOM: Supposedly getting paid! Again, it’s often unclear how these things translate –

COP: Yes, can someone please explain to me what the arena health insurance policy –

CPR: like I was saying, we’re just thrilled they’re getting paid to play music! Most of our students end up doing a computer science bootcamp to pay the bills. At the very least, most graduates usually end up having a huge, cringe-worthy existential crisis of some sort –

C: *nods*

CPR: – a needless escalation and pathologization of self-harming behaviors –

C: *mhmm*

CPR: – and hundreds of hours of therapy to sort through the whole mess –

C: It was more like 50, but yes….

CPR: – before they settle into something that feels right. We keep these facts out of our brochures, though. Hey, COP, I’ll give your grandkids a 10% scholarship if you promise not to tell anyone this!

COP: Grandkids! Grandkids! Do you think this gig will maybe make it so these boys can bring us Grandkids?!?

DOM: The nuclear family is an oppressive apparatus, replete with unacknowledged, unpaid labor, and privatized forms of care –