Appearance vs. Imagination
by Amanda DeLuise
There is something oddly dissatisfying about seeing a band live for the first time. I don't mean your favorite band, either, or a band that you see on television or in magazines all of the time. I'm talking about those bands that you've never seen before. They're the bands where you got a mix from an old friend who then burned you the complete discography and you fall in love with listening to them.
You don't fall in love with them based on looks or popularity, but strictly the music. So what happens when they go on tour and come into your town for a night and you await anxiously for them to take the stage and then the moment finally comes and...
Wait, that's what they look like?
This exact predicament happened to me just last week when I went to see Okkervil River. I first learned of Okkervil River about a year and a half ago when a dear friend gave me the song "A King and Queen." It quickly became the most listened to song on my iPod. I had no interest in learning about the band (where they came from, how many people they consisted of, etc.), all I wanted was more music. So I bummed a few CDs from friends and took a promotional copy of their newest album from where I work.
Okkervil wasn't my new favorite band, but I found myself listening to them a lot because of the lead singer's voice. It was absolutely magnificent and beautiful and reminded me of all of my favorite singers at the same time. This was the problem. Since I thought his voice was that of a god, I pictured him in my head as the most perfect person I could imagine. To me, Will Sheff (I learned his name during the show thanks to the woman behind me who kept screaming it in my ear) was built like Bruce Wayne, looked like Peter Parker and had glasses like Clark Kent - in my imagination.
Unfortunately none of this was true. When Will Sheff came on stage he looked like your average guy with rimless glasses, long shaggy hair and a pink tie who would sit next to you in calculus and answer every single question right without even doing the work. Not that any of these are bad things, but they're unexpected things that kept me distracted throughout the entire show.
I felt that the show was somewhat ruined by my inability to enjoy Will Sheff's person, and everytime someone asked me how the band was I would say "They were okay. They're much better on the album."
I don't know if this is necessarily true, because Okkervil River put on quite a good show, but I understood why I said this. It's much like watching a movie based on a book after you’ve already read the book. You've already formulated in your head the most perfect pictures of the characters and what you get in real life is a completely different image that is no where near as satisfying.
Disappointed at my own shallowness, I began Google Image searching every band in my iTunes library just to make sure I'd still like them if I ever had the opportunity to see them live.
