Belly Collection

(I'm using this Challenge as an opportunity to write something for my newborn; this is a playlist built by mom and dad, curated for the judges, but presented just for you. Hi, Greyson!

The music is attached throughout the essay via direct links to the coolest available versions of the songs--enjoy!)

Music is one of the things that brought your mom and I together. We worked at a shitheel restaurant where the Sonos radio stations were a saving grace; this was purely a commodity to us, though. We didn’t understand the value of music (and the vibration of sound) until she took a test and found out we were having you.

There was suddenly a third wheel in our life, a cherished little family member that we couldn’t see, touch, or speak to. Sound became our only mode of external communication: every song, melody, and tone took on whole new meanings in our lives.

It became clear as day how we needed to spend the last six months of pregnancy; attending every live show that rolled through Phoenix. A mission I considered acceptable at any cost.

This is all the music you felt before you heard it. You’ll never believe how much fun we had.

Enter Shikari

I saw these guys in 2010 at the Marquee Theatre, a legendary venue in the Phoenix music scene. They opened for the rest of the bands that I actually knew: Silverstein, August Burns Red, A Day to Remember. Enter Shikari took the stage and robbed that night of its thunder. To this day, I have never seen a group with such energy. A post-hardcore band out of England, they’ve always reminded me of an electrified Rage Against the Machine.

Soaring vocals, unrelenting techno rhythms, accented with legit rock guitar, bass, and a drummer. Everyone is creating their own chaos on stage that comes together in a jumping harmony. They have a sound for any taste.

They’d just delivered their experimental, and frankly jaw-dropping album Common Dreads, which I used as an online handle for years. Forum nick, chatroom name, World of Warcraft Guild: everything was Common Dreads.

Fastforward

4th October 2022

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible had been released for a couple years, but COVID put all tours in the grave. A foreign act? You could for-get it. International travel of that scale was severed to the point of tension through the pandemic. Your mom and I actually got vaccinated specifically so we could attend concerts and comedy shows the second tickets were available.

We told grandma we did it for the health of the family.

That was over by the summer of 2022. Slowly, steadily, and with stable pricing, tours began to hit the headlines. I got the email for Enter Shikari and didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger; I hadn’t seen them in twelve years, and now my family was coming with me.

A dream come true, little boy!

This marked the first concert for your mom and I, and neither of us knew what to expect. We’re sober, older than we’ve ever been, and one of us in the first trimester.

They played at the Rebel Lounge, a venue very near and dear to my heart. A small, intimate stage with enough room for maybe 100 gyrating bodies. This would be the closest I’d ever be to a band this big.

Still, I moved with the rhythmic fury of a dancing warrior. Your mom still hasn’t seen me thrash quite like I did that night; stomping and jumping so high that I cleared everyone around me.

Rou and Chris of the band eventually came out into the crowd, but not in any conventional manner. Chris wandered with his bass guitar atop a bridge of speakers until he plopped down on the bartop. That’s where he played for a few songs, strolling up and down the counter.

Rou’s journey was far more dangerous. He grabbed the low I-beam supports and hooked his heels into the ceiling, then proceeded to shimmy out over the crowd, upside down, while he sang probably their most popular tune to date: Sorry You’re Not A Winner.

We all fucking won that night.

Eventually his legs gave out and Rou swung down right in front of your mom and I. This rapidly turned into the kind of show I used to watch on Youtube and daydream about in college. Rou fucking Reynolds is screaming and your dad is busting his hardest move in front of the guy who taught him how to dance--not through any kind of lesson, but by creating sounds that forced me to move for over a decade.

I slapped him on the shoulder when he went back to the stage.

To call it surreal is an understatement. It still gives me chills, but the coolest part is that you were actually there.

Vundabar

Sometime in 2017

This sludge pop trio became my favorite band in recent years by complete accident; listening to Pandora shuffle one night while I slept, this unmistakable melody ripped me out of my mind, my body, and eventually my sleep. Like the undead, it brought me upright with rigor mortis, searching blindly for my phone.

I favorited the track, went back to sleep, and changed my own destiny for good.

I listened to them every day until the day you were born.

1st November 2022

Vundabar was opening for a band called Mother Mother, a grunge Euro-trash outfit that I’d never heard of. Up until this show Vundabar had always been the headliner at some underbelly venue, usually The Rebel Lounge, but now found themselves on stage at the Arizona Financial Theatre, which holds about 5,000 more attendees.

This stands as their largest tour to date, and your mom and I dragged you along for the show.

Vundabar was my party music for many years. I’d lure every friend and coworker I could to their shows wherein we’d all get blackout drunk and dance into the early desert light.

This show was different. For everyone. Instead of headlining for a bunch of derelict punks, Vundabar got to experience opening up for a much younger crowd. A sea of teenagers ebbed around us, kids that took my place as I aged and got sober. It was exciting in a way, like some kind of twisted morale had been passed on to the youth.

We rendezvoused with some friends of ours and filed onto the dance floor.

The energy was new and refreshing; the same ska-adjacent pop trio, but different songs and a totally different setting. Again, being sober also made for an eye opening night.

Your mom was the best part, though. Like myself at the Enter Shikari show, Jenny started to dance like her life depended on it. The music cascaded between tracks we listened to everyday, songs I’d shown your mom that became overnight favorites. She moved with an effortless rhythm like she’d been at this show all her life. If you end up with any dance ability, I’ll assume it was given to you that night.

When I say she shuffled better than anyone out there, I mean it.

The crowd around us moved, but only the four of us seemed to know all the words. We danced and formed our own little circle pit that others quickly recognized was not to be trifled with. Anyone that came sailing into our folds was snatched up and catapulted right back into the crowd.

This way your mom could dance without any worry. She was five months pregnant at this point and I felt a little irresponsible making our pilgrimage.

Looking back, we wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I’d never seen a more beautiful sight: your mom grooving back and forth, breathless, but ready for every breakdown.

Vundabar was the band that prompted us to get vaccinated. I’d bought tickets to their tour back in 2020 and 2021, but both legs had been canceled because of COVID. I considered this a reunion of sorts, as I never missed a show when they rolled through. Now three years later, and after having just dropped Good Old, I got to finally hear them jam again.

Brandon has a high, unique voice that is unmistakable, if anything else. His singing style reminds me of Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins; strange, unorthodox, but lends to the music in such a way that the band wouldn’t be complete without it. The range slides up and down to fit the multitude of sounds they offer.

The drumwork is what stapled Vundabar to my mind, though. Drew “MasDrewpiece” McDonald is a godsend for percussionists, carrying a toolbelt that’d make any musician blush. One part slop, one part razor technicality, Drew is like a ska, pop, and jazz drummer all crammed into one adorable little weirdo. His fills coast from smooth to funky to what sounds like machine gun fire.

Other times he pounds on the kit so hard you’d think he was in a metal band.

The unique adaptability is astounding, and each album comes to offer new insight into cutting edge indie sounds. These guys played vital roles in my descent into substance abuse and my climb back into sobriety.

Eidola

I discovered this group sometime between 2012 and 2014 when I was in college. A highly technical post-hardcore outfit from of Utah, they dropped a now legendary album entitled Degeneraterra. This production marked a perfect collection of music for me: balanced and progressive in every sense of the word. It wasn’t experimental, but a seamless perfection.

Contra was the first song I heard and the drumming is still on a constant loop in my head.

Degeneraterra had such an impact on me, I took a Sharpie marker on a road trip from Arizona to Missouri in 2015, and tagged every surface I could with different lyrics and one liners. It wasn’t just music these guys had created, but a philosophy and sense of lifestyle. Eidola ignites purpose within their listeners.

It’s the metaphysical nature of their music--no one else creates what they do. The dribbling water of a guitar, layered over the cosmic guidance of the drumwork, finally punctuated with the transcendental lyrics they insist are “shapeless, formless, incomplete… yet limitless”.

They hadn’t really made it yet when I first discovered them, so tours through Arizona were few and far between. The couple of times they did pass through, I was either already committed to another event or simply had to work.

That was until last November. Eidola announced a headlining tour, and the whole thing kicked off in my birth city of Mesa, Arizona.

11th November 2022

They took over The Nile Theatre in the downtown district, another local venue of mythic proportions. The place is actually so big and committed to music that they have dual stages, one literally underground, that is essentially a revolving door for smaller bands. It’s an unbelievably unique piece of Arizona.

Your mom and I worked with a girl named Alisha, and sometimes we’d bring her to these shows. She came to Enter Shikari and wanted to see Eidola, but ended up canceling at the last minute. We ended up giving her extra ticket to a random fan on the street and made the guy’s year--it’d been sold out for months.

This was definitely the most grownup show we’d been to; a lot of professional, well dressed couples lingering in shadowed bar corners. Clouds of punks drifted from wall to wall, ready to go to war. There was a divide in the room we’d never seen before, something akin to a musical class system.

Your mom and I found a neutral place between the bar and the stage, what I call middle ground, and watched the first band take the stage.

The setlist was a long lineup: Body Thief, Royal Coda, and Rain City Drive. We’d never listened to any of the bands aside from Eidola, so really didn’t know what to expect. What started as a mystery rapidly turned into one of the best concerts of our lives.

Body Thief opened up the show with a really fun, melodic, upbeat progressive-hardcore sound. The bass player had an eye catching energy that really made the show for me. It was also a perfect blend of funk to get the room loose and moving.

The bass player remained on stage between equipment swaps; he played for both Body Thief and Royal Coda, so I was invested in the next band. Another member of Royal Coda is a guitarist named Segio Medina, who is a small celebrity in his own right. The guy is so technical he’s almost a household name, and he plays prog metal.

You and I are actually listening to him right now; your mom’s at work and I just took you to the doctor for your first shot ever. You cried for exactly one second, then went back to smiling and trying to talk to me.

Anyway, Royal Coda stole the entire show. They became one of your mom’s favorite bands in less than a song and she plays them almost daily. They brought a raw energy that showcased a lot of power not just in their sound, but their presence. Sergio and that funky bass player put on a show like I didn’t know was possible; running around the stage like they’d been set on fire.

They had more of a punk vibe for their set, and not so much the looping gnosis of Eidola. It proved a perfect counterbalance before the main attraction.

Sergio Medina stayed on stage this time during the equipment transfer; he played in both Royal Coda and Eidola. The band lineups were incestious in a way, but really kept the energy and momentum of the show going.

Watching Eidola come out with your mom was surreal, but finally hearing ten years of my life’s soundtrack live almost brought me to tears. We slow grooved by the wall and let the crowd go ballistic; moshing, wrestling, and some kid literally doing backflips. It turned into a rowdy pit and I had to play security for mom whenever it got too close.

After the show closed, Andrew Wells came out into the crowd. He's the frontman for Eidola and a huge inspiration for some of my writing. I was lucky enough to be the first to shake his hand and get a long awaited embrace.

They played a lot of their new stuff, which I wasn’t as familiar with, but it had the same energy. They did manage to play a longtime favorite of mine, which is the closing tune to this letter and collection.

This has been such a fun essay to compose; when I started writing it two weeks ago, we actually lived in a different house. Your mom and I bought a home in a bigger town with a little help from grandma and grandpa, and we moved everything we own right in the middle of this challenge. You, the cat, a safe full of guns--you name it, I hauled it up three flights of stairs.

Just like these concerts, it’s all worth it, little boy. It’s incredible that I got to write you this and you were with me pretty much the whole time. You’re sleeping now, so I’ll just write it here:

I love you more than words can express and I’m eternally fortunate to be your dad. It’s exciting to think of what music you’ll get in and out of, what bands you’ll drop everything to go see. These are milestones that are worth the effort. Experiences alongside the artists that influence your values and judgments is the memory of a lifetime; your mom and I will tell you all about it.

We’re so glad you came along--hope you love the tunes, kiddo.