Tyler Abbott

I fulfilled a lifelong dream this week. I saw The Mars Volta in concert.

99% of readers will wonder who The Mars Volta are and why seeing them live was a lifelong dream.

Allow me to explain.

When I was a teenager, I stumbled across the album “Frances the Mute” by The Mars Volta, an eclectic mix of Latin funk, hardcore, emo, and progressive metal. It blew apart my musical paradigm, revealing to me hitherto unknown aural vistas, and helped me widen my musical tastes beyond the narrow particulars of your average suburban white kid. I immediately and obsessively consumed their backlog and gobbled up each new album they released.

But, in 2013, they broke up. I never got the chance to see them when I was young. I was either too broke to afford a ticket or, for two years, living in a foreign country. Plus, their infrequent touring rarely brought them to Utah.

However, during the pandemic, they got back together and last year they released a new album and began touring. On Wednesday, I was able to see them at a venue in SLC. It was both fulfilling and disappointing, a bittersweet glance into the abyss of who I am and who I once was.

Now, how to explain? With a linear narrative?

I arrived at 6:30, having braved rush hour traffic and torrential rains. The doors had just opened and I found a spot only 10 ft from the stage. I was there alone, no one wanted to come with me to this particular show, so…

No, no, no. Linear isn’t right. Nothing ever happens in a linear, neat fashion. Even the apparent linearity of our days is an illusion forced onto us by time.

Maybe a collage of images and ideas is a better way to explore the mental space I found myself in?

The skunk-reek of marijuana and cheap rolling paper, a burnt-down spliff making the rounds near me. The nasal burning aroma of cheap pine-scented perfume to cover up the weed-stink.

Lightheaded, back and neck aching, the music pounding, loud and familiar—the ceremony of experiencing live melodies and rhythms which were carved into my brain by nearly two decades of repeated listening. The audio equivalent of a nostalgic walk down childhood streets.

Ageing hipsters. The clothe and haircuts of the ‘oughts ill-suited to the worn faces and paunchy bodies which they adorned. The realization that I am one of them, the ageing hipster, the no-longer young and the no-longer cool. Then another realization, perhaps more surprising, that I’m ok with this.

At the bar, before the concert, sheepishly buying water and earplugs, tipping 50% to make up for not having bought alcohol. The self-flagellatory joke I make about getting old.

Before the show, waiting. Feeling annoyed by the dudes in their early 20s talking about their own bands and travels, listening with interest to the guys in their 30s discussing how to best care for their lawns. Awestruck at how I’m one of them now, a man who writes strongly-worded, but polite, letters to politicians rather than protesting them in the streets, a man who finds immense pleasure in the tight angles of a freshly edged and mowed lawn.

The 10 second moment during the opening band, called Teri Gender Bender, in which the singer (who is actually named Teri Gender Bender), makes prolonged eye contact with me while she sings. The oddness of being looked at, of being singled out, even just for a moment, in a crowd. The tension that can build in a look between two strangers, and then the dissipation of that tension once the gaze is broken, as if it were never there, a ripple slowly fading on the mind’s surface.

The last ten minutes of the concert, spent near the back because the pain in my neck and shoulders was too much and I needed to stretch. Watching people watch the show from next to the bar, enjoying their joy, letting the liquor-odors lick my nostrils. Delighted by the mild debauch of a weeknight show.  

The drive home, the creeping disappointment, the feeling that, despite having waited so long to see a band whose music I held so dear, it didn’t transport me in the way I expected. Reflecting on the ordinariness of the night, the aches and pain of age, the seedy-smells and ghoulish aging hipsters. The gap between expectation and experience.

The regret that I can’t push these memories back a decade and give them to my teenaged self, who would have experienced them more deeply, more profoundly than 32-year-old me can.

And the relief that I am that 32-year-old man and no longer a teenager.