Summer's Song

We're beyond Memorial Day and, with it, the unofficial start to summer. For me, summer has a more distinct soundtrack than any other season. Yes, over Christmas carols. A lot of that comes from music blasting from cheap stereos at cookouts, playlists at rooftop bars and parties as the notes shimmer through vintage string lights as much as the DC humidity, and all manner of summer concerts and festivals watching my heroes take the stage and thrill thousands.

From a 2015 show where I saw the Foo Fighters rock with Heart, Joan Jett, and more at RFK on Independence Day.

My mom wasn't thrill about me going to rock shows; it was that decadent, hedonistic American culture that kept me out well into the night that she grew up wary of in her native Korea which is probably really informative of why I love rock and roll so much because that's exactly the fucking point. My father, as usual, was relatively ambivalent; he didn't really like live music because of how loud it can all get. That meant I could only go to as many rocks shows as my crappy high school job would allow financially speaking and I usually opted for the big festivals where you could get to see around half a dozen acts over the course of a day.

I don't always celebrate but, when I do, I like to do it with fireworks.

I've already written about my first such show ever on here (which was during the holidays) but the summer shows were always straight up bananas. The tailgates outside what is now Jiffy Lube Live (then, the Nissan Pavilion) were always the stuff of legend and a lot of people just went more for that than the actual concert; the venue actually tried to ban tailgating for a time which predictably did not go over well and was quickly reversed.

The most ambitious summer festival I've ever done was Firefly up in Dover, Delaware. This was years and years after high school (after grad school if you really want to go into specifics) and several friends and I camped out to take in all four days of music under the sun. And there was a hell of a lot of sun that summer. Dover doesn't have the humidity that Virginia/DC does which is welcome but, in that dry heat, all that dirt dries out and gets kicked up in a form of omnipresent dust cloud. So you're breathing all that in the entire long weekend, ending every night in that cramped tent feeling like a chimneysweep with 70% less Mary Poppins. But it was real easy falling asleep every night.

That year had a solid lineup too with Foo Fighters, Outkast (on what would be their final major tour), Arctic Monkeys, Weezer, Childish Gambino, The Lumineers, Third Eye Blind, among others across six stages. But every day was like a marathon run, it's own gauntlet set to a four-on-the-floor rhythm with concessions stands selling overpriced funnel cake and Grotto Pizza. I remember that last night, I was so worn down from basically partying for three days straight in that June heat that I was starting to struggle dead on my feet. As I leaned wearily against a chainlink fence, guzzling the life-giving H2O I got from one of the many water stations, about to clock out early, when I heard effervescently bouncy synths from a stage across the way. It was my gateway to Tegan and Sara. I was back on me feet and got my late in the game second wind.

Summer music can be introspective for those late night drives but, largely, it's supposed to be effervescent; you want to get out there and dance, hopefully with friends. You want to drive around the countryside with the windows down singing along to whatever's blasting out of your sound system. There's an energy that you get from the summer, from the heat, hanging outside and taking in that sunshine. A lot of that idea of musical energy for me started with my favorite band: The Beatles.

I get asked occasionally why I think The Beatles were such a big deal on popular music. Yes, they constantly evolved and revolutionized what popular music could be (Look at the stylistic jump from 1964's A Hard Day's Night to 1966's Revolver to 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to 1969's Abbey Road; you'd be hard pressed to think it was the same band) but Beatlemania existed a years before the band started using the studio as an instrument. It took off because there was natural, runaway energy to it all; the Fab Four looked like they were having a lot of fun, so everyone wanted in on it too.

For me, The Beatles were the first, biggest superheroes I had growing up. They seemed larger than life, they went on wacky adventures but, unlike Superman or Captain America, they actually existed, they actually walked the Earth. So let me close this out with an anecdote bookending the summer of 2016 where I crossed paths with both of the surviving Beatles:

In June, on a lark, I checked the Warner Theater's lineup for the week and saw that Ringo Starr was playing there with his All-Starr Band (Basically half of Toto, along with Todd Rundgren). I scored a seat in the orchestra pit, nine rows back from the stage. It was a religious experience. By the third song (What Goes On off of Rubber Soul), it dawned on me that I was watching a Beatle do the very thing I grew up watching him do and I started fist-pumping enthusiastically.

"Oi, none that of that!" called out Ringo spotting my fist. He flashed his trademark peace sign. "Do this instead!" he nodded and comically shook his fist back at me before jumping into the next song.

I'm gobsmacked. A Beatle noticed me and called me out. For the entirety of the next song, I'm transfixed, speechless, and still sporting a peace sign while the rest of the audience sings and dances around me.

At the end of that summer, my sister gifted me a couple of tickets to see Paul McCartney play what was then the Verizon Center two days before my birthday. That was one of those moments of pure musical magic. We were sitting there watching the man that helped created the soundtrack to our lives play for nearly three hours drawing from his entire career. There was a couple times where Anne and I would kind of exchange looks like "Oh, this is actually fucking happening". It was a weird full circle moment for us.

Summer has the best rhythm of any season. Spring is this weird seasonal transition, more so than autumn which celebrates the end of the heat (autumn is still my favorite). Winter is all indoors which means the energy level is down. Summer is the unabashed celebration. And every celebration needs some music.