At thirteen years old, while most of my classmates were prepping for a wild Friday night of shoplifting from the local mall, I was tearing apart my closet, in search of the perfect outfit to wear to my first "real" concert. Don't get me wrong - I had spent my whole life around live music. Dingy venues had become such a source of familiarity that I would skip math class to smoke Marlboro Reds in the bathroom... partially because I hated math, and partially to find some comfort in the seediness. It was my reality, and everything else was just filler. Except this time I wasn't bypassing security because I was "the lead singer's daughter." This time I wasn't some psuedo-spawn making sure not to break character from the sound booth. I was going as myself, whoever that was, and sitting in the South Florida heat for hours before showtime, in hopes of grabbing the spot most likely to blow out my ear drums.
It was the summer of 2001, and the band was called Our Lady Peace. I had heard a few of their hits on the radio, but hadn't done enough research to familiarize myself with the new CD they were promoting, Spiritual Machines. In all honesty, the club was within walking distance of a house I did anything and everything to get out of, and that combined with liking a few songs was more than enough to have me running to the ticket booth (which by the way, was still a thing in those days.)
I found a friend naive enough to accompany me on the big night, and off we went. The name of the place was Orbit, and we were the first ones there. I don't remember much of our conversation, other than being called crazy, being asked how I convinced her to come with me, and various passersby telling us we had no life. What I do remember is none of that mattering once the music started.
I wish I could recall who the opening band was, but I don't have so much as a guess. As soon as OLP played their first note though, I was mesmerized in ways I didn't know existed. In fact, from that moment on, nothing else existed the entire night. I had never heard a band sound as good, if not better, than they did on the radio, and I resonated on a level that I just couldn't place.
After they got the crowd going with a few of their hits, they slowed things down with a song off of their new album, called "Are You Sad." In the midst of my already present awe at there being other souls that understood, my friend turned to me and mouthed the words, "it sounds just like you." It was the first time in my entire life that I cried tears out of anything other than, ironically, sadness.
Needless to say, I was one of the thousands of teenagers that came from a broken home, and this intangible yet unbreakable bond is the story of how Our Lady Peace became my favorite band.
At fourteen I got their name tattooed on my shoulder, despite unsolicited criticism and certainty that I was too young to know what I actually liked. At 18, I got the words "In repair" inscribed on my wrist, the title of their fourth track on Spiritual Machines. In my mid-twenties, I got my first ever hand tattoo, "Starseed" (off of their first album) across my knuckles. At thirty five, my only regret has been not telling everyone with something to say to shove their opinion up their ass.
Consider this post a public service announcement.
Here I am now, typing these words, a week after shooting their show at Irving Plaza in New York City. And yes, I cried. I felt alive. Revived. I could go on and on with sentiments that wouldn't justify. Although memory hasn't failed me completely, and I'm at least as well versed in chronology as the average person, I have yet to understand how I got this lucky. I still see the child in me, alone in the crowd, until she wasn't alone at all, begging the question... how do you live after the dream?
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