Atlanta’s Coca-Cola Roxy concert hall can devour the poor, unsuspecting musician without hesitation. Unfortunately, I witnessed this transgression with my own eyes against one of my favorite singers, Snail Mail, on Nov. 14. Perhaps I should’ve realized sooner the type of concert, or shall I say concerts, I was getting myself into: five different music performances were lined up back-to-back in one-hour increments. I figured there was overlap, and some would be openers. Oh boy, was I wrong.
Coca-Cola Roxy provides an experience akin to musical wine-tasting on some days. Truthfully speaking, each performance lasts around 40 minutes with all the time it takes to set up each stage and the performance itself starting late. The music is over before it even starts. What’s awfully flawed about this system is it presents an impossible time frame for a musician to grab an audience and give them the experience of a full-length concert.
I cannot imagine performing under such constraints and, should anything go wrong, watching your own show flop. This was the fate of dear old Snail Mail. The crowd, likely only there for a single artist in the list like I was for her, seemed rather uninterested in her music.
One crowd member passed out stone cold onto the ground by the second song. Unbeknownst to any security, an honorable but haphazard team of three other crowd members assembled to drag the poor soul out. It was no surprise the spectacle diverted much attention — a sizable hole in the pit permeated around ground zero for some time.
The mastermind and singer behind Snail Mail, Lindsay Jordan, then suffered injustices at the hands of the venue. The venue’s audio system gave bad feedback in her ears, often during songs, during which she mentioned the discomfort and asked the staff to fix it. To top it off, Snail Mail was also handed an out-of-tune guitar. Even the guitar amp decided to give up midway.
“I’m just gonna do an a cappella rendition for the rest of this,” she joked.
What an awful night. I would have honestly cried on the spot out of frustration if I were up on that stage, dealing with mishaps left and right.
Snail Mail invested a few final efforts into salvaging what was left of her microscopic time slot. Even then, her sheer displeasure and stress overshadowed the performance. If anything else, I felt stressed for her. As much as her response was valid, performers’ behavior onstage can impact the audience’s reception. Pity and disappointment were not emotions I wanted to feel after Snail Mail wrapped up her show, especially as a fan.
Now I digress to a whole other experience in its own right: Turnstile. Because of this band, I’m inclined to say that Coca-Cola Roxy demands the kind of performance where the performers jump in head-first. Some people actually jumped. Crowd-surfers, I mean. This was a punk rock show — a 40-minute, itty-bitty little moment where everyone took every ticking second to go absolutely nuts.
In hindsight, I should’ve known that most of the folks in the crowd were there for Turnstile. The deal is sealed as soon as you walk into Coca-Cola Roxy’s doors and look to your left, past the coat reception to the artists’ merch tables. If “SOLD OUT” is sharpied on highlighter orange slips and stuck on multiple merch items in multiple sizes, then you just found the crowd-pleaser for the night. Or it could also be that their shirts look wicked cool, but that’s less of a guarantee. Turnstile had that going for them too.
Even though I was itching to leave after Snail Mail’s blunder, part of me wanted to stay for Turnstile just so I could have a reason to buy a shirt, the other part coerced by my friend into staying at least until after the band’s first song. She had no idea who or what or when or why about Turnstile and neither did I. A few days prior to the concert, I listened to the first 30 seconds or so of the band’s most popular song, “BLACKOUT.” I couldn’t make it any farther without pausing with the whole-hearted belief that I was too weak to handle such music. There is no other way to describe how it sounded besides a high-speed drum-bashing, electric-guitar-smashing, borderline screamo session. A live rendition would certainly blast the skin off my body and leave me as a pile of bones.
Or so I thought. Turnstile opened with a gentle interlude before unleashing strobe lights onto us.
Next thing I know, someone is ripping out some gritty guitar playing, and everyone is bobbing their bodies waist-up to the beat. It became increasingly evident that this was the main show for the night. However, the punk rock show sensation was entirely unfamiliar to me; I had only heard about the common etiquette, or rather antics, that happen in such an event. I was right to move to the back of the crowd, as shortly thereafter, all sorts of items were flying through the air: bottles, jackets, shoes, the like. A few legs belonging to crowd-surfers stuck straight into the air. It was impossible to contain my incredulity; I started laughing and grinning like an idiot. Then, I started bobbing with the rest of the pit. The movement itself was quite hypnotic; I can see why people enjoy live punk rock. It’s made to be experienced in the flesh.
Turnstile made every second of their performance precious and ran with it. I wholeheartedly commend the band for bringing so much energy that even someone so musically virginal like me could have some fun. Truly, they were the dark horse of my night.
If there’s anything to take away from these concerts, it’s that Coca-Cola Roxy does not do musicians justice on an individual level. The venue should give a separate space and night to each performance if everyone, including the performers themselves, wants to get the most out of the experience.
