Flashback Music Series...Maroon 5

Flashback Music Series, the Grand Finale.


March 2005. Maroon 5 at the Gwinnett Arena.

We close out the Flashback Music Series on #AnitaWrites concerts from 2005 with my personal favorite, Maroon 5 (Adam Levine and his fine self!😜😜)

When I got the tickets I was so excited that I'd finally get to see Adam Levine perform live. I had resisted for the longest time becoming a Maroon 5 fan. I thought they were overrated and just plain overplayed on the radio. You couldn't put the radio on for a steady 5 song stream without your ears being abused by, "This Love" or "She Will be Loved." They were thought to be the next best thing to pop music group scene after the boy band phase had died down, and America could not get enough of them. It also helped that their lead singer Adam Levine was like ravenous sex on a swivel stick and their videos were so sexually charged, they knew just the right buttons to press to keep fans, ahem, young girls, intrinsically tweaked.  

Normally, this type of music is classified under "white people" music. No offense, that's just what it is, even when I listen to it with my friends, they wonder, who are these "white people" musicians you are listening to. So, I tried and tried not to get into Maroon 5. It wasn't the first single, "Harder to Breathe" that was played to death by VH1, under "artists to watch" and it was not the second one, "This Love" that was loved and then hated, once my radio station put it on some kind of constant spin. It was not the sexy video for "She will be Loved". Actually, it was the 4th single, "Sunday Morning" and hearing it played live by Maroon 5 at the American Music Awards that did me in, that was it and the rest, as they say, is history. I just fell, hopelessly. I got their acoustic EP, which rocked and it kept me warm through the winter of December 2004.Adam Levine sure does sound awesome over acoustic guitar, he actually has a lot of soul too (for a white man), you could tell he's been influenced by Stevie Wonder and the old school R&B acts and it didn't hurt that he looked so intense, like an intense younger version of Keanu. Phew!!

 

Sunday Morning is one of those songs that puts me in a good mood all the time. I've liked it ever since and I have heard (and own) several different versions of that same song: acoustic, live band arrangement, demo version, remastered, album arrangement, I still love the song. Something about it just makes me feel like it's going to be okay. I am glad I got into their music. Sometimes when I'm contemplative, I think of some part of their music, as Adam Levine says, "Things just gets so crazy, Living life gets hard to do," and I think, you know what, it's gonna be alright, cos I'm not the only one feeling this way. 

Here I am. March 2005. Itching to finally get to see Adam and the music that had gotten me through that winter live. When I got the tickets I was incredibly excited thinking, this is so awesome. Unfortunately, when the concert eventually happened I was unemployed and going through the “senseless” phase - you know, the phase where you can't understand why life is dealing you this bitter blow, yea, that phase. I was hopelessly immersed in this phase and then, it was time for my much-awaited highly anticipated Maroon 5 concert, all I could think was, "How could life be so mean, what is the point in looking forward to anything anymore? What is the frigging point?" Really, it makes no sense. I just really didn’t have the time and heart to take in the awesomeness of the concert.

I went to the concert only after I confirmed from the reviews that Sunday Morning would be featured and indeed it was. It sounded the same, they didn't rework it. But hearing it live is just like this piece of happiness you wish you could bottle up and play over and over when that sad mood hits to lift you up. It's just phenomenal. Their set pieces were very simple. No frills, no pyro, just lights that match the mood of the music, and no banter between the songs. And they didn't sing many songs. But the good thing is they sang "Sunday Morning." 

Live music has that exhilarating escapism, like a release, every time you hear the artists say, "everybody scream," you just scream at the top of your lungs and let go of all your worries/anxiety/stupidities/adulties, it's better than any yoga class or sex! But there I was almost afraid to scream because I knew at the back of my mind, that my unemployed problem still existed and at the time hurt more than I thought was possible. I remember sitting in the parking lot waiting for the parking lot to clear up, watching all the campers, food trucks, radio station trucks, cars with groups - mothers with their precocious teenage daughters, college students, sorority sisters - just filled with excited, squealing group of people, teenagers, parents, fans alike and there I was...sitting in my car alone, so alone, never felt more alone, encased with my thoughts and my unemployed state. 

Sob story aside. The good news is I got to see Maroon 5 again in a couple of years and it felt a lot better. And, I got a job a couple of months later. Even better news, is I have learned that I would live life regardless of the existing set of circumstances because in the end, all these problems eventually blow over and if you don't enjoy them then you would have missed out on a great life experience you may not get to relive.