What To Listen To...

I'm going to see Kix tonight at The Crazy Donkey out on Long Island. I already explained my fondnesss for Kix a few months ago and considering I haven't seen them play live since 1991, I am very much looking forward to this show. By all accounts I've heard, they still kill it live. Sure, it is a total nostalgia show, but that doesn't mean it can't be good.

I've been involved in an email chain with the group of folks I am heading out to Long Island with to see the show and a few have mentioned how they are spending their day cranking Kix in order to get psyched up for tonight. I've never been a fan of spending an entire day listening to the music of a band or bands that you are going to see in concert that evening. I think maybe I didn't mind it when I was a teenager as I pretty clearly remember listening to a mix tape of all Pantera, Sepultura and Biohazard songs on my way to see said bands sometime in the early 90s, but it is definitely not something I do these days. Most people I know seem to enjoy this practice and will spend all day going through a band's discography (if they have more than one release) in order to pump themselves up for the show. I may listen to the band(s) in the days leading up to the show to reacquaint myself with their songs, but not the day of. If I wasn't pumped up to go see them, then I wouldn't have bought tickets in the first place. The only exceptions to this rule that I can think of in recent memory is tailgating in the parking lot before Iron Maiden and AC/DC concerts where their music was being blasted out of cars I was hanging out at or nearby ones and finding it thoroughly enjoyable. Those two bands also happen to be ones where it is considered acceptable to wear a t-shirt of said band to their show (the whole t-shirt rule is ridiculous, but I'm going to save my rant on that for next week), so there might be a connection there...who knows. All that being said, if the show blows me away, then I definitely wind up listening to the band a lot in the days following.

Anyway, at the end of the day I suppose it is all just a matter of personal preference and whatever gets your rocks off.