That's Unheard Of!

The biological and psychological communities have long been in consensus that the sense of smell is the one with the strongest link to memory.

These researchers have clearly never seen Sparrows Swarm and Sing drag violin bows across xylophones and hit ceiling beams with PVC pipes in a 120-degree Ohio basement in August.

I don’t particularly remember the smells from that evening, but I’m sure they weren’t pleasant.

For the live music lover, comparing the steam rising from a freshly baked apple pie to a truly righteous rock show is tantamount to blasphemy, science be damned.

For each of the hundreds of shows I’ve attended, I can tell you who I went with, who the opening acts were and what beer the lead singer was drinking.

Okay, I might be exaggerating on that last one.

Still, I’m a dude with a pretty normal memory, and I can put myself back in the moment of every concert I’ve ever seen.

It’s true that music can trigger strong memories (ever wonder why so many nursery school lessons are delivered in singsong?), but a great show taps into something that is somehow even more primal than that.

Somehow, learning the alphabet doesn’t resonate quite as strongly with me as having my ribs horribly bruised by zealous Flogging Molly fans.

Great live music also has the unique ability to change the metaphysical properties of
recorded music.

A concert forever links a band’s songs to the way they were performed onstage. A good show can make an album better. A bad one makes it worse.

Last fall alone, Titus Andronicus’ “The Monitor” became one of my favorite albums of all time while The War on Drugs’ “Slave Ambient” revealed itself as a huge disappointment.

This was all tied to the relative strength of those bands’ live shows, and even though I know the audio files on my computer didn’t magically transmogrify, it sure felt like it on those respective mornings after.

More crucial than all that, though, is a concert’s ability to transform music that was once only abstractly relatable into something deeply personal.
 
Only the most exceptional of studio albums carry this property intrinsically, but nearly every good live show can do it.

Tegan and Sara’s “Call It Off” and Fucked Up’s “Lights Go Up” will never sound like they did before I met the girls I saw them live with, or like they did before those relationships went sour.

Coheed and Cambria’s “No World for Tomorrow” will forever be the only song that ever inspired me to crowd surf.

Iron Maiden’s “Aces High” will always represent the moment I first came face-to-face with my heroes after an ill-advised seven-hour drive to Toronto.

The music that was important to me when I was a high school kid going to every show in Dayton, Ohio., I could find will always feel as important as it did then.

Mouth of the Architect’s “No One Wished to Settle Here” is still my “fuck this town” anthem. Kenoma’s “1913” is its foil, a song that makes me want to raise the Dayton flag high.

Men As Trees’ “Come Outside and Warm Yourself by the Wolf’s Sun” introduced me to the writhing, fourth-wall-breaking punk rock frontman, and each of that band’s subsequent records and Dayton appearances had me buying into their DIY
ethos more.

Still, one show stands head and shoulders above the rest as a high water mark in my concert consciousness.

On Aug. 19, 2006, Boston’s mighty (and now sadly defunct) Sparrows Swarm and Sing took over the tiny basement of a photography studio in my hometown and turned it into a massive sonic playground, and in so doing changed the very fiber of my being.

Everything the band did that night was unlike anything I had seen before, and by the end of the night, I was fully indoctrinated not only in experimental music as a concept, but especially in live music as a transformative power.

Today, Sparrows Swarm and Sing’s “O’ Shenandoah, Mighty Death Will Find Me” remains a very good record, but the pervasive memory of seeing it played live by six nomads who love music as much as I do is something that will likely be rivaled only by the experience of seeing my first child born.

And if my kid isn’t born caterwauling about the Missouri River and playing a beat-up cello, it won’t even be a contest.