Indigo Girls: Staring Down the Brilliant Dream
Posted by Troy | Filed under Music
Remember music in the pre-internet world?
A big folder of CDs in the car with a tape adapter and your Discman.
and for those of us outside of any kind of metropolis our musical exposure was limited to what was available on the radio (top 40, oldies, country, CCM) and what was on Mtv (they did actually play music back then).
Which was tough for a kid like me who had a hunger for something outside the mainstream. (Praise the Lord for Nirvana).
So when I left home for college, my entire music library was compiled of Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Mazzy Star, Sugar, The Cranberries along with a little Elvis Presley and for some reason I liked Harry Connick Jr. (I can’t remember why)
I was lucky enough to have some fringe tunes in my library (if not physical, at least in my head) like Hum (I was obsessed with them) and Dinosaur Jr…. but that exposure was mostly limited to one friend’s handful of CDs that he’d commandeered from someone else.
So when I met my hippie-ish wife in 1996 she’d ask me regularly if I liked this or that artist and didn’t I just love “Box of Rain?”
Honestly, I didn’t even know much at all about the Dead or Bob Dylan or The Smiths or Joni Mitchell or Led Zeppelin or The Cure or just about anything else she was into.
When she asked me about her favorite band, The Indigo Girls, I had never even heard of them, but was quite certain that I didn’t like them.
Well I was wrong.
Anyone who likes music and is also a human being would probably enjoy The Indigo Girls.
Maybe if you’re exclusively into death metal or gangsta rap you might not buy their album, but I can almost guarantee you’d still have a blast at their live show.
They’ve got a great reputation for collaborating with tour-mates and fellow festival artists, and their performances are more akin to a giant campfire sing-a-long than a rock concert.
Staring Down the Brilliant Dream
The girls’ songwriting is some of the best you’ll find. It spans the spectrum of emotion in such a way that is so human just about anyone can connect with it on a certain level (and usually on many levels).
Of course it has always been rife with spiritual questions and meandering, as each of them has wrestled to reconcile their Bible-belt roots with their sexuality.
I have to admit that over the years I’ve connected with it in ways they probably didn’t intend and challenged by it in ways they did.
The last time I saw them live, they were preceded by a solo set from Brandi Carlile that instantly transformed her from an artist I kind of liked to one I was totally obsessed with (and transformed me into a blubbering baby). She jumped in with the IG for several songs during their portion of the show… all of which were totally amazing.
But when she joined them during the encore to perform Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”……
*sigh…*
Tags: brandi carlile, indigo girls, live, Music
One Response to “Indigo Girls: Staring Down the Brilliant Dream”
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Sara Says:
July 14th, 2010 at 12:45 pmTroy, I feel like I was talking to Noel (that’s a really good thing!) LA!
