The songs you are faintly embarrassed to love are generally the ones doing the most work. Too shiny, too much, obviously engineered to get exactly this reaction, and it works anyway. A night built around that catalogue is not really a tribute, it is a permission structure. Four hundred people have all privately decided to stop being cool about it at the same time and in the same room, and the result is closer to a release valve than a club night. What makes these work is how specific the crowd is. Everybody there found these songs during roughly the same two years of their life, usually alone, usually at a moment they would rather not describe, and the recognition in the room is doing most of the emotional work. Nobody is performing. The acts named on the flyer are not playing; the point is the floor. Send this to the one friend who still pretends they are indifferent.
The songs you are faintly embarrassed to love are generally the ones doing the most work. Too shiny, too much, obviously engineered to get exactly this reaction, and it works anyway. A night built around that catalogue is not really a tribute, it is a permission structure. Four hundred people have all privately decided to stop being cool about it at the same time and in the same room, and the result is closer to a release valve than a club night. What makes these work is how specific the crowd is. Everybody there found these songs during roughly the same two years of their life, usually alone, usually at a moment they would rather not describe, and the recognition in the room is doing most of the emotional work. Nobody is performing. The acts named on the flyer are not playing; the point is the floor. Send this to the one friend who still pretends they are indifferent.
The songs you are faintly embarrassed to love are generally the ones doing the most work. Too shiny, too much, obviously engineered to get exactly this reaction, and it works anyway. A night built around that catalogue is not really a tribute, it is a permission structure. Four hundred people have all privately decided to stop being cool about it at the same time and in the same room, and the result is closer to a release valve than a club night. What makes these work is how specific the crowd is. Everybody there found these songs during roughly the same two years of their life, usually alone, usually at a moment they would rather not describe, and the recognition in the room is doing most of the emotional work. Nobody is performing. The acts named on the flyer are not playing; the point is the floor. Send this to the one friend who still pretends they are indifferent.