Posts by Katie Cook

It’s no secret that Ryan Adams has received his fair share of criticism – from both the media and listeners alike – over the length of his career. I’ve heard so many of the same, overused adjectives thrown his way that they’ve now become clichés to avoid. But, for the sake of argument, let’s review: prolific, eccentric, egotistical, volatile…just to name a few. I mean, didn’t Adams once kick an audience member out of a show after that supposed fan taunted him with a “Summer of ’69” song request? Or is that an urban legend?

A few days before I went to my first Mason Jennings concert at the now defunct Mississippi Nights, my mom came to visit me in Saint Louis. We had lunch at the famous Blueberry Hill, and we may or may not have had a few too many Bloody Marys with our hamburgers and fries. I knew that Jennings was playing an in-store set later that day up the street at Vintage Vinyl, and I dragged my mother along to check it out.

One late spring day during my sophomore year of college, four or five months after my grandma passed away from a not-so-lengthy bout with lung cancer, I walked out of the English building and onto the quad. At the base of the concrete stairs, I saw a pile of pink dogwood blossoms shed by the nearby trees intermixed with a plentiful smattering of cigarette butts. I had been living in a hyperaware state for quite some time by then, but the juxtaposition of the ugly and the beautiful, sitting there on the ground, stunned me.

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury describes a dystopian society that has completely eliminated books, inspirations for free thought. Newspapers, films, and albums have also been shunned. Guilty pleasure television has taken over as the preferred recreational activity. After a life-altering incident, the protagonist, Guy Montag, realizes that something worth experiencing must lie inside books, and he begins a quest to discover the magic that has long been outlawed.

Throughout my 28 years on earth, I haven’t often wished for the opportunity to switch places with another person. I’ve been relatively content with my God-given goods, never really obsessing over my anatomical deficiencies or intellectual shortcomings. However, that all changed one night when I went to a Ray LaMontagne concert in St. Louis.

A few years ago, my long distance friend and fellow music-obsessed freak set me up on an aural blind date. Considering that Andy had introduced me to and received frank feedback from me on a number of potential gentleman suitors (Joseph Arthur, Mason Jennings, Jesse Malin) by that point in time, he had a right to be confident – alright, overly confident – that this blind date would result in a long lasting relationship.