Introduction

I suppose that the best jumping off point for this thing would be to explain who I am and what I plan to accomplish here. So let’s get all that shit out of the way first:

My name’s Jay and I’m a sophomore at Vassar College. Don’t know what I’m doing with my life entirely, but a day will come for that. In the meantime, I’m busy immersing myself in the world of independent music — I’m an occasional contributor for the up-and-coming music website Beats Per Minute, music director for WVKR, and a person who really (read: really) enjoys going to concerts.

I suppose that I like concertgoing as much as I do because music is a very communal experience from my perspective; while I love studio recordings as much as the next guy, there’s something incredible about the togetherness in either spacing out or thrashing about while an act puts on an amazing live performance. And I feel like these moments go criminally undocumented in the discourse surrounding independent music. You can always go back to an album, but you can never completely relive a concert.

So why not write all about it afterwards, whether it was good, bad, or even just alright?

That’s what I’ll be doing here.

In the days leading up to each concert, I’ll be posting tracks and a few words about the acts. After I see the concert, I’ll post a review. If I get the ball rolling enough on this project, I’ll take pictures and maybe even do some interviews. For now, I’m starting off small.

Let’s see how this works out.

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Note: the name of this blog comes from where I’ll be seeing most of these performances, the bar-turned-DIY-venue on my school’s campus that many simply refer to as “The Mug.”