The Beths

Watching the Credits

The Beth’s – Watching the Credits

Thanksgiving break is over. I dropped my son off at his college and made my way into the office for the afternoon. That first day back from a holiday is always kind of a shock to the system but today was a little extra.

So it was nice to get home and have it be quiet. It was lovely having my son home and seeing my daughter over the break but it is not like they are far away or I haven’t seen them in months. I like talking with them and hearing about their jobs and classes, friends, etc., but I also like quiet.

I know people who really struggled to find their place once their kids went off to college. That empty nest hit them hard. I think partly because I was not home during after school hours for their whole lives, and as teenagers they would be busy in the evenings with friends, clubs, or homework, I didn’t feel like I was suddenly missing something. Also, after all of those years of working all day, driving for over an hour, then getting home and having to fix dinner and attend to whatever things the kids’ needed in those few remaining hours, I am glad that I no longer need to be constantly on. I can sit quietly and just read a book, or watch something, zone out, whatever I feel like doing. It’s not bad.

I feel like this fall has seen a lot of transitions for my family: son off to college, daughter starting a job, my husband also got a part time gig, so things were shifting around for all of us. I think the new year will be when it all starts to fall into place a bit, fingers crossed.

Expert in a Dying Field

The Beths – Expert in a Dying Field

This past February I was supposed to go see The Beths up in Boston. I’d bought the ticket as soon as I heard they were coming to the US because it’s not every day a band will make the trek from New Zealand. The show sold out and I hatched a plan to make a weekend out of it. Three or so weeks before the show, The Beths added a show at one of my usual venues, closer to home, but as I’d spent the money on the Boston show and had this whole plan, I stuck with my original Boston ticket.

My daughter had a concert she had bought tickets for, also in Boston on the night before the Beths show. The friend she was going to go with wound up having a conflict so I said I would go with her. She had been having a rough start to the semester and I was trying to give her a fun break, get a hotel room and have a girls weekend. But then a big snow storm pushed the Dodie concert my daughter had been waiting and waiting for to the same night as my Beths show. The two venues were probably a distance that you could have walked in the summer but in the snowy, below freezing streets of Boston in February, there wasn’t a viable way to do both. Dodie is my daughter’s favorite so I had to forego The Beths.

I could have probably made it to the closer to me Beths show that happened a couple of days later but by that point I’d already driven well over 500 miles in just two days and I was wiped.

So when I saw The Beths were already coming back, almost exactly a year later, I was torn. Again, just Boston or New York for the options and again, there is actually a perfectly timed hole in the tour dates when they could swing through and play that same venue. But I knew it would sell out! Risk it and end up missing it again or buy the ticket and possibly go twice if they add the date? Argh! Not to mention it will again be February in New England. The whole thing could be upended just like last year.

My Music League friend texted me and said, hey, did you see The Beths are coming back to Boston? She’d gone to that show at our regular place and encouraged me to get a ticket for the upcoming Boston show, she and two other people I know would also be going. So I bit the bullet and got a ticket. Here’s hoping my third chance to see them will be the charm.

Great No One

The Beths – Great No One

During the depths of the pandemic I really fell hard for New Zealand. While we continued to allow morons to make policy based on nothing more than opposition to everything, New Zealanders were enjoying music festivals and normal life without lockdowns or masks, just common sense and a nationwide sense of obligation to their fellow citizens. Imagine!

Now even they have had to contend with the Delta variant and Mittens the cat (one of my other pandemic escapist hobbies, following the adventures of a cat in Wellington) is moving to Auckland so I guess my plans to be an expat there are a bit on hold.

You Wouldn’t Like Me

The Beths – You Wouldn’t Like Me

I feel like I saw The Beths open up for someone once, but seeing as how they’re from New Zealand, I’m probably wrong. Part of the reason I usually try to grab a picture or two from a show is so I can remember who was there, what the vibe was like, and for opening bands, it’s a way to jog my memory when I get home to check them out.

I’m also a huge Shazam fan. I definitely had another song by The Beths in my Shazam history so maybe that’s where I know them from. Either way, worth surfing through YouTube to see more.