Finishing The Fight

The Halo video games will always have a special significance to me. Way back in 2001 I was introduced to Combat Evolved by my cousin when I got my first Xbox and needed games for it. I bought the game and played it straight through that night. I still vividly remember sitting alone in my room at 2am playing through the 343 Guilty Spark mission, the eerie feeling washing over me during the mid-level cut scene when I first encountered the Flood. The next morning I couldn't wait to play it again with my friend Michael. These were the days before Xbox Live, and we made our own fun out of multi-player co-op. We invented games like "Football" and "Warthog tossing" and tweaked games like Halo Hide and Seek or Tag. Everyone else had gotten bored with the game, but not us. Halo was our game.

When Halo 2 was announced, we were beside ourselves with excitement. Michael brought over a magazine one afternoon and explained how the AI soldiers in the game would now be able to drive Warthogs for us. His eyes grew large at the announcement of duel wielding weapons. Every news break about the game was huge. We watched videos online of how we would be able to board enemy vehicles and detach turrets from the ground. Our minds were blown. We theorized on the story and where it would go. We both read the Halo novels The Fall of Reach, The Flood, and First Strike in anticipation for the game. We were the epitome of fan boys. Michael called me late one night, telling me that there was going to be midnight releases for Halo 2! A video game launching at midnight? That was unheard of at the time. No way would we miss it. I told him to call me later that week and we'd plan on which location to go, where we'd play it, etc... But Michael never called. That week, Michael died in a car accident on his way home from work.

I stopped reading the Halo news. I stopped watching the newest videos and details. I even stopped playing Combat Evolved. Without Michael there was no fun to be had in Halo anymore. My other friends didn't find our made up games as amusing as Michael and I did. When I did play Xbox again, I played different games; Madden mostly, just needing a distraction. Then one day I found an old video game magazine Michael had left at my house. The very same magazine that he brought over to show me all the new features Halo 2 would have. I picked it up and leafed through it nostalgically. After a few minutes, I picked up my controller and began a run-through of the campaign on Legendary. Several hours later I finally finished. It was the first solo legendary run I had ever done. Every step of the way I felt like the maps were familiar places, venues in which Michael and I had played together of years. Halo wasn't a reminder of the loss, it was a reminder of the fun times. I couldn't stop playing Halo. Michael wouldn't want that. I was going to be playing this franchise to the bitter end.

November 9th was almost here. I stood amongst strangers in line at GameStop (Maybe it was still EB Games back then, I really can’t remember), waiting for midnight to get my hands on the game that Michael and I had anticipated for so long. Talking to the strangers in line however became an experience itself. They were the first people I had met since Michael that I could talk to excitedly about the game and theories from the novels. The wait was genuinely fun and memorable, and when my number was finally called I didn't feel as though I had been waiting too terribly long. I took my copy of the game home and stared at it for a moment. Holding the game in my hand felt unreal. It was a confusing emotion. I shrugged it off and put the game in the Xbox. The opening sequence began and I was in awe. Everything seemed cinematic and grand in scale. The scene wrapped up. I was now standing at the blast doors with a BR in hand, waiting for the Covenant to blast through. I paused the game. A wave of emotions crashed over me. Sadness that Michael wasn't here to experience this with me; Excitement that the game we had longed for was finally here; and as cliché and cheesy as it may sound, I felt like I wasn't alone. I un-paused the game and proceeded to unleash holy hell on those covenant bastards for the next several hours. When Breaking Benjamin (One of Michael's favorite bands) came on during the climactic battle between the different sides of the covenant, a smile hit my face that I couldn't remove. The game was perfect, all the way down to the cliffhanger ending, a concept that Michael and I had both loved about the second Matrix movie. I sat in silence after it was all over. That cliffhanger...Halo 3 was coming, but Michael wouldn't be here to geek out with over all of the news.

I wouldn't be alone in my Halo geekdom for too long. I got swept up into the world of Xbox Live. I logged countless hours on Halo 2, making friends with random people along the way. Playing Halo 3 I ran into a friend from high school and we began playing together quite often. We even got so close with some people that we played with online that when they decided to transfer colleges, they chose UNF so that we could all live in the same city and actually hang out. Then came Halo Reach. One night I caught a Facebook status of my friend Shaun from high school wondering if anyone wanted to play Halo Reach, and I responded. It had been years since him and I had even talked and we barely knew each other, but here I was playing with him, his wife Lauren and their friends, Heather, Jamil, Kevin, and Kevin (Fez). Since that time I've grown close to every one of them. I lived with Shaun and Lauren for over a year since then and to this day share a family plan on my phone service with them. Heather and I share a few nerdy interests in the form of TV shows that the rest of our group doesn't watch, Kevin and I play Destiny together nearly every night, Fez and I bond over our love of UFC, and Jamil shares my nerdy passion of the Halo novels and all things Halo cannon just as Michael once had.

Halo may be "just a video game" but it has been the catalyst of a lot of significant parts of my life outside of video games. It's crazy to me how something simple like that can be so significant. Halo has become a tradition for me. Every time a new Halo game comes out, I get it at midnight. I schedule my vacations accordingly. I don't join my friends right away on release night. Instead I play the campaign alone first. I play it straight through, just as I did with every Halo game before. And when it's over, I sit in silence for a minute and remember Michael, and how much he loved this game before it ever became the huge franchise that it is today. I enjoy the games enough for both of us. Then I join my friends and begin to terrorize the War Games, and I teabag annoying players for Michael, because Michael thought tea bagging was hilarious. I will forever be a fan of Bungie and of 343 Studios for their work on these games and all the memories I have because of them. I will forever be an advocate of embracing the things you enjoy and your love for them. For those who see video games as an anti-social experience, locked away inside your house, alone in front of a TV: I present the counter argument that video games are an amazingly interactive social experience. Through video games I have made friends on opposite ends of the country, and even a few in other countries. I play games constantly with friends who are too far away to see in person on a regular basis. For me personally, I relive old memories with lost friends through video games. To me that is priceless, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything.

Born again (Frank Turner at Underbelly)

Thursday night is an unusual night for a concert to me, and Underbelly was a new venue to experience. The chances of me missing a Frank Turner show however were non-existent. It's not often your favorite artist from the UK comes to Jacksonville, Florida for a show ten minutes up the road from your house. I made my way across the bridge to start what promised to be the most fun you could have on a Thursday.  Underbelly is directly off of a busy downtown street. Its tucked between a pizza joint and what I'm pretty sure is a closed down building, used strictly as a canvas for artwork on the boarded up windows. At the top of the building there is shrubbery growing from between the cracks of the bricks. I'm sure this wasn't allowed intentionally, yet the grimy wild plant life sets a pleasing contrast to the concrete and steel surroundings of the downtown city streets. On a normal sunny day you could look in any direction and see buildings towering over your head, but this evening there is an abundance of fog and mist in the air, and the Jacksonville skyline is nowhere to be found. If I told you to imagine the early 90s in Seattle, a line of people propped against the wall of a dive bar waiting to see Nirvana back during the birth of grunge; This is the scene you’d come up with. My upbringing in the Sunshine State had deprived me of this sort of atmosphere for any shows in the past, but tonight I finally got it and it felt oddly fitting.  

The weather was the only thing that was dreary. The crowd is energetic and excited to be there. Everyone is social and the small talk passes the time well. Talking to random people in line I learn I'm not as big of a fan as I thought. That...or I am living my life all wrong. The majority of these people have been following Frank Turner from show to show since he flew into the states. One group followed him from Boston, another from Greensboro. The cute girl in line next to me came down from the Carolinas, the black X's on her hands still not completely faded, refusing to wash off from the last show.  The ones I'm most envious of however are the group that is following him on a cruise to the Bahamas. What I wouldn't give to be able to drop it all and travel the globe with a band, going on cruises and traveling city to city and experiencing this on a nightly basis. I can't help but think that these people have life all figured out. This crowd had already given me the Almost Famous vibe, but the parallel was cemented in my head when a young guy excitedly approached the venue with his friends quoting the movie. "It's all happening!" Suddenly I have visions of Frank on someone's rooftop shouting "I am a golden God!" though I don't think that's entirely his style. 

I met Frank earlier in the day. He's my kind of rockstar. He moseyed on down the road with a dog-eared book in hand. He quite clearly had been reading it everywhere he went. He casually walked right past his tour bus and over to me and another fan. We were the only two at the venue at that point and he greeted us warmly. After he departed back to the bus I couldn't help but wonder what book he was reading. "From the Gulag to the Killing Fields" edited by Paul Hollander" he told me later that evening when I asked him on Twitter for the title once the rest of the crowd started wondering as well. Earlier in the day when we spoke I asked about his own book and he admitted to me that he didn't even own a copy of it himself, so none available to be sold tonight. I'm told that despite the lack of a U.S. release of the book at this point, I can find it for my Kindle at Amazon.ca. This will have to do until I can get my hands on a hard copy. Given his propensity for writing, his apparent thirst for knowledge, and his general outlook on life I can't help but have high expectations for the book. Frank has the demeanor of a man who has shed every ounce of bullshit from his life and spends every second of his time simply being happy. Why wouldn't he? That's the life of a rockstar isn't it?

Back to the evening, we're finally let into the venue. The atmosphere inside Underbelly is fantastic. Everyone is really relaxed and friendly. The walls are all brick, decorated by hand paintings of completely random things. A psychedelic Ewok adorns the wall by the merch stand. An emergency backup light is disguised by a painting of a frog. (The eyes are the lights, clever). A projection screen plays a strange and seemingly random video on the wall behind the bar. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it seems fitting. I would later find out that the video was simply Netflix, silently playing a movie called "The Painting". As I mentioned, it works for the atmosphere. Chandeliers and lanterns up high provide dim lighting, setting the mellow mood. The style of the venue is hard to describe, if I had to give it a shot I'd call it industrial southern punk. The bar offers an assortment of mixed drinks, and craft and locally brewed beers. I give the bartender the benefit of the doubt and have him choose my drink. He slides me a beer of which I've already forgotten the name, but it makes you understand the argument for craft beers over the usual suspects. I'm a fan, even if I can never order it again thanks to my bad memory. 

Perhaps my favorite part of the hour between doors and the start of the show is the mingling. It's an eclectic group, from so many different walks of life parts of the country or beyond, and yet we all share an unspoken connection. I can't quite place it; it's a mindset maybe, a common mentality or demeanor. Whatever it is, I feel comfortable around these strangers. I've noticed many amazing tattoos and struck up conversation about them. The nerdery in this place suits me well. A girl sharing a post with me shows off her new tattoo, still wrapped with plastic. It's a half sleeve devoted to Star Wars. The rebel logo atop her bicep flirts with her shoulder, while a mural of sorts with C3PO and R2-D2 rests at the forefront. Another girl shows off her Flash tattoo and her friend The X-Men logo. Others show me a variety of things from Dracula to dream catchers, doves to dandelions; each with their own story. In retrospect it's a shame that Frank didn't play his song "Tattoos" it'd likely have went over incredibly well here. As the first band begins to wrap up their sound check, myself and the masses move collectively closer to the stage. It's that time. 

The opening act is a local band by the name of The Weighted Hands. I had never heard of them, but they quickly made a fan out of me. They kicked off the show with a punk/folk rock sound that instantly brought the crowd into the show in a way that I've never seen before from an opening act. A 5 five piece rock outfit complete with a violinist and an occasional harmonica thrown into the mix. They have a humble stage presence. Maybe it's because this is their hometown, but they seem as though they climbed out of the crowd and started playing. No one seemed to know them, yet everyone danced along, and by the 3rd chorus of their last song the fans were singing along. It only took two songs before I knew I'd be buying their CD after the show. The wonderful thing about finding a local band that you really dig is that they'll be doing shows in your area more than anywhere else. I know this won't be the last time I see them perform. I've already marked the date for their next show in my calendar. 

Following The Weighted Hands was an artist by the name of Billy the Kid, a soulful female punk rocker that exudes charisma and an irresistible charm. By the end of the first song I'm impressed, infatuated even. She speaks between her songs with the presence of a stand-up comedian, making it impossible not to smile as she transitions from song to song. By the end of her set I'm more than infatuated, hell, I might be in love. She speaks of being from Canada. Whatever harm Justin Bieber has done to Canada's music scene, Billy makes up for tenfold. Not only was I sure to buy all of her CDs after the show, I made it a point to meet her personally and see if she's every bit the person that she is the performer. She doesn't disappoint. It turns out she's a painter as well and a bit of a philanthropist. Artists like Billy help to quell my inner cynic. She has a hell of an inspirational story behind her; she's the poster child for following your dreams no matter the obstacles.  I don’t have the luxury of knowing if I’ll see her again soon like I did with the first band, but I certainly hope to see her many more times.  

 

It's typically at this point of a show that the night feels it's longest. You're waiting for the headlining act to take the stage, everyone is positioning for a better spot near the stage, people are cranky, and fans are ready to fight for a spot close to the stage. This isn't the case tonight. Never in the hundreds of shows that I've been too have I seen this large of a crowd all getting along so well. We all sing along with what seems to be a Fleetwood Mac best-of album playing between sets. We dance and sway and laugh and joke. The vibe is an unconquerable happiness and intensity bubbling up with anticipation for the final act. The lights go dark and we erupt. Frank takes the stage and 20 seconds later the entire crowd is bouncing, swaying, swinging, and dancing. Wherever you were standing before the song started, it's safe to say you're somewhere else by the end of it. It's a friendly frenzy. The song was written for just this occasion: "A few precious hours in a space of our own, And when the band comes on, the only thing I really know: I wanna dance." Everyone in attendance seemed as though they were home, it was a sense of community like I've never seen or felt before in a crowd of that size, Frank included. As happy as everyone is to be at the show, Frank seems just as happy to be performing. 

I've long had a love for live music. There is something visceral about the whole experience. You feel the bass thump in your chest, the ground rumbles beneath your feet. Your body runs hot no matter the temperature. You don’t just hear the music, you feel it. The person next to you is a complete stranger, yet somehow life has brought you both to this exact place at this exact time as you sing along together like old friends. The artists who wrote the songs you love are standing 10 feet away, singing directly to you.  You feel a sense of freedom amongst hundreds or thousands of people that you rarely even feel when you're alone. You sing at the top of your lungs, your fists pump to the beat. You dance, without thinking, even when you know that you are a terrible, rhythmless dancer.  It's a high without the drugs. It’s the feeling people describe when they talk of religious experiences. This is the sound that has the power to raise a temple and tear it down. Rock and Roll is my religion and this show was my baptism. This euphoric rush that a good rock show gives you, it is an experience that I’d search for from dive bars to big music festivals. That’s the beauty of Rock and Roll, of any type of music really… The right lyric, the right chord, the right beat, it can grab hold of you and take you somewhere else entirely. That feeling could turn up anywhere. You might find it from a band at a big music festival. You might find it from the street performer strumming an acoustic guitar outside of the gas station. Maybe you’ll find it from a random stranger in the car next to you belting out their favorite song at the red light. You might even find it from trio of acts, from three different countries, sharing a stage on a foggy Thursday night in downtown Jacksonville, Florida.