Local art needs your support

By Editor | February 23, 2017 |

Tom Pinney

If you’ve ever been in a car with me, you know one thing for sure about my musical tastes: I’m not the world’s biggest fan of rap music.

I will listen to just about anything, and I have a pretty eclectic taste in music, but rap and I just disagree with each other.

I don’t know what it is about rap. I’m just not a big fan of it.

I know what you’re thinking: But Tom, you like heavy metal. And I do, but I also understand why people don’t like it as much as I do.

With metal, I get raw emotion. I get outstanding guitar solos on two different levels, some that shred the track to pieces and others that tell a story more than the words in the song ever could.

Others just hear a bunch of screaming. I get that.

Right about now, you’re looking back at the title and asking yourself, what does local art have to do with this? I’m getting there, don’t be impatient.

The point with metal, for me, is that I hear it and feel every emotion that I did when I first started listening to it. Which means: Story time, boys and girls!

It was 2004, and I, in my adolescent angst, needed something different from my music. I was in the midst of the massive punk-emo revolution in rock music, but while I enjoyed emo music, it just wasn’t doing everything for me.

Don’t get me wrong; when “Helena” by My Chemical Romance came on my MP3 player (yes, kids, there were music players between the Walkman and the iPod), I sang along full voice. Hawthorne Heights, Simple Plan, and Evanescence were my jam.

But something was missing. I couldn’t pinpoint it, but I knew it wasn’t there.

I was talking to my older brother, one of the rare times he and I weren’t going at it in an all out battle of his brawn against my brains – I never won those battles – and he suggested that I listen to a song called “My Throat is an Open Grave” from Demon Hunter’s self-titled album released in 2002. I resisted at first, but then he hit play.

Bam. There it was. More than just a song about angst for angst’s sake, the song mixed an electronic orchestra with driving guitars, a hammering drum line, and the silky, yet edgy voice of Ryan Clark singing lyrics that were about rebirth.

Further, noticeably absent was the four-chord standard. Demon Hunter played with the key in a way that punk didn’t want to, and what resulted was beautiful.

And just like that, I found my favorite band in the world. And that love hasn’t changed; to this day, I will preorder a Demon Hunter album having heard nothing of it because it’s Demon Hunter and I know I’m going to love it.

If you don’t believe me, my calendar has March 31 marked, highlighted, and starred, because Demon Hunter’s eighth album, Outlive, comes out that day. And, knowing my luck with the postal service, I will probably receive it before that date, because I have always received preordered albums at least one day early.

And, knowing my luck in general, I probably just jinxed myself, and my preorder will get lost in transit.

The point is, I will always remember metal as helping me find something I didn’t know I was missing, while rap was the music I was trying to get away from.

Rap was what my bullies listened to. Rap was always associated with pain and suffering for me. It took me awhile to find a rapper I liked, and even then I couldn’t listen to it that much because it just wasn’t my thing.

I say all this to set up my main point. I went to a rap show last week, and I loved every second of it.

Did I relate to the lyrics? Not that much. Did I particularly love the music? I mean, I liked it, but that’s not why I enjoyed the show.

There I was, surrounded by a small crowd of people bumping to the beats and jiving with the words, occasionally snapping a picture or two trying to catch the rappers in a good front page worthy pose for the story I was writing, and once again, I felt something I had never felt before: passion.

I watched as Max, the kid hailing from right here in Maryville, closed his eyes and soaked in the love from the crowd. The kid has a record deal and is on his first national co-headlining tour, and here he was, in rural Missouri, opening that tour in the place where he first started rapping.

And though the performers were excited that an audience showed up, I was disappointed because it wasn’t as big as it should’ve been.

Yes, it was a Wednesday night, and yes, it was at a bar, and yes, maybe rap isn’t your cup of tea.

But I had gotten to work at around 8 that morning and traveled to three different board of education meetings around the county that day. I didn’t even have to cover the show, I wanted to go to show support, despite the fact that I had just rolled back into town from Barnard, and not only had I not been home all day, but I hadn’t had a lunch break either.

I had every reason not to go to this show, but I went because Max is more than just a rapper. He’s a hometown kid. And his passion showed in every word, every line, every rhyme.

I’ve said this before, I know I have, but you might as well get used to me saying it because it bears repeating. We need to support local artists, or we will lose them.

This Friday and Saturday, Spectrum is performing their annual spring revue. I’m going to be there for one of the performances because I need to be in order to cover it.

But my attitude walking into the Lee and Nina Schneider Center for the Performing Arts will be one of joy, because I’m going to watch Spectrum get on stage and show everyone in attendance the end result of their passion and hard work.

It’s $5 per person, and though I know that’s hard for some people, if you can make it, go. Spectrum is saying goodbye to 12 seniors this year, and they need to know that their community supports their endeavors.

I want to see that place packed, because the arts are what makes America great.

And the amount of talent we have here is what makes Maryville awesome.

Tom Pinney is a news reporter for the Maryville Daily Forum