Transcript: HER With Amena Brown Episode 90

Amena Brown:

Hey everybody. Welcome back to this week's episode of HER With Amena Brown. And I've been talking about a lot of firsts, our last few episodes here. And my thoughts about my first concert came to my mind. And this conversation we're about to have today is a little akin to the conversation we had in the episode where I talked about that time I threw away my music, right? Because when you grow up in certain types of church settings, a lot of times your first concert is at church.

And I do have quite a few friends that we all have this story to tell. But once you grow up and you get to be an adult and you're on a date or at a dinner party or at a work function, and people start going around and talking about their first concert and you have insert name of really obscure Christian band to say as your first concert, it makes your life a little weird.

So it's almost like for a lot of us who grew up in sort of conservative Christian environments, you really have two first concerts. You have the first concert you went to that was likely at church, and then you have your first concert that you ever went to that was not at church. And typically when you're at the date, when you're at the dinner party, when you're at the work function, and this question comes up, you never say your church answer.

But it is fun to say it to other people who may have grown up similarly to you. So, shout out to those of you that are listening that totally feel me, that this is also how you grew up. And if you did not grow up this way, then here in lies a window where you can experience what it was like for many of us growing up in church environments.

So my first full length concert that I can remember was a Christian, what I would almost consider to be like a Christian R&B group called Dawkins & Dawkins. And I think they were brothers, I think, but they had a very smooth kind of R&B vibe, very akin to what would've been Jodeci or Dru Hill or Shai of that era in the mid '90s, probably at this point early to mid '90s.

And they came to our church, performed as a duo. And I will give the church I grew up in a lot of props because they really tried to do a lot of things to engage us as young people and to try to, in their own church way, stay up on what was important to us as young folks. And this was the Bad Boy era and the era of Total and there was a very specific kind of R&B sound.

And I think in their own way, they wanted us to know that there were alternatives, I guess, to the music that we would hear on 106 & Park ... I'm showing my age now ... on 106 & Park or on BET's Video Soul back in the day. They wanted us to know there's other music that you can listen to that has some of those same beats and grooves that you like but with a message that we want you to hear, we as the Christian adults want you to hear.

So I totally loved Dawkins & Dawkins as a teenager, I probably bought a couple of their CDs. And then I'm about to tell y'all a wild story that uses some terms from an era that if you didn't grow up in that era, you're going to be like, "What are you saying?"

So back in the day when I was in high school, what I think most people today would call talking, right? So if you're dating someone, the phase before y'all started dating was the phase where y'all were talking, which is sort of this interesting time where you're getting to know each other, but it's very non-committal. No one has decided they want to be exclusive with anyone.

You're just talking, but you're definitely flirting. It is not a platonic scenario. You're definitely flirting. You may definitely be talking late at night or someone you're talking to when your day is over kind of vibes.

So in high school, bless our hearts, we called this macking. It is just wild to think that there was a term that you used so much and so heavily in high school, that now there's only people of a certain age that grew up in certain environments would even remember that term now, but we called it macking then.

And a part of it was the equivalent of what people mean today when they say talking. But I think another part of it was also sort of like if you were macking, you also had a roster of people that you were talking to. So you were never just talking to the one person. And I had a guy friend that I went to church with, but he was a couple of years older than me. And so he would of describe to me what he was doing when he would be macking ... Every time I say it.

He would describe to me what he was doing. And he would basically say, "If you're really going to be a good mack," this was also during the era where pimp was used very, very loosely. That is not a word for various reasons today that I used loosely like that. But when I was in high school, you would also say you were macking, or maybe you would say you were pimping, which has a lot of connotations that bring up a lot of questions.

But anyways, so he would say, "Well, if you're going to be on the phone doing some macking, you need to have some nice soft kind of R&B music in the background to set the mood." Well, the only music I had like that at 14, 15 years old was Dawkins & Dawkins. So I would basically be talking to boys on the phone from school and some from church too, and I would have Dawkins & Dawkins on, but turned down so they couldn't hear Dawkins & Dawkins singing the Scriptures.

And that was how I did my macking at the time, to Christian R&B, that was not about making love but was about coming to Jesus. What a time, what a time. So I did not go to my first concert that I would talk about at a dinner party until probably 10 years after this season of my life. So we've already talked that I had some eras of time where I was in and out of listening to what then I would have considered to be secular music.

So right around 2005, I want to say, I was having a really big awakening in a lot of ways. I realized around 24 years old that I really didn't know how to date. I think I had been on a date in high school, right towards the end of high school. I didn't go on any dates while I was in college. Then I worked in ministry. I wanted to say I worked for a church, but I wasn't getting paid, so I volunteered. I volunteered, but it was enough hours that it could have probably been a job I was doing for the church.

So by the time I got to be 24, I just remember starting to sort of feel like other people my age are doing different things with their time than I'm doing. And I was starting to feel this level of discomfort with myself and in my sexuality too, in a way I think, because I knew that I really was attracted to men, but I also knew that if I got in a situation where a man sort of returned that feeling to me, that he also felt attracted to me, then it was almost like I just reverted back to like I was a teenager and I turned into some sort of ... I went two ways with it.

I either turned into some sort of giggly person who cannot even say words that make sense. Or I turned into what I felt like was my homegirl persona, because I felt comfortable being around men at that time of life when I was the homegirl. And there was no attraction between us or if it was, I could use my homegirl vibe as a cover for us to not get involved in that conversation because that's how uncomfortable it made me.

So around the time that I'm turning 25, I'm realizing that I really want to get out there and date. But my church environment that I was in at the time discouraged us from dating. The church environment I was in at the time felt that dating was only for marriage. That if you were dating casually, you were basically signing up to break other people's hearts and get your heart broken in the process.

So the best thing for you to do was to kind of try to, in some weird way, remain friends with people that you thought you could marry and through friendships, suss them out and at such time as you and that person and other people in the community decide y'all should get married, then y'all go ahead and maybe y'all go out on some dates, but it's pretty serious by the time you go out on a date.

You're pretty close to being engaged. And then you get married pretty quick after that. It was sort the way that a lot of the couples in the church had had their relationships before they got married and was the way that was being proselytized to us as this is what dating needs to be. But then as a lot of us were getting older, many people that were in the church that were married, they had met their person when they were in high school sometimes, or they had met their person when they were in college or college age.

So a lot of them, by the time they were 25, between 25 and 30, they had been married or they had just gotten married or had already been married some years. And so those of us who were getting into our mid to late 20's and into our 30's, we're starting to feel like, "I wonder if they're telling us this method that just actually is false and doesn't work for everyone."

And it was around that time, which I've talked about in some previous episodes that I realized that I was in a church that was a very unhealthy environment and that I needed to leave. And my church experience, even when I was in high school and into college and right up until this time that I turned 25 was a very busy life. It was a life where if I was involved in church, that's really all I had time to do.

I didn't have time to have a separate social life. And truthfully, a lot of the people that I went to church with, would've had a lot of questions. If I had a separate social life and they'd be like, "Well, why does she have that separate social life? Why does she have those people that she's hanging out with that we don't know? What is she hiding?" That was sort of the idea, really, because God should be the center of your life. What they were preaching to us was like, if God should be the center of your life, then so should the church.

And when they said that they really meant with your time. If you're not at your job, you should pretty much be doing something related to the church because that's how we're all putting in our time to do good in the community or whatnot.

So when I realized this church that I was in, that I had been in through my whole college career and into my mid-20's, was this unhealthy place and that I needed to leave and then finally left, it was like I had all this free time. All this free time, free time to ... I mean, now looking back on it, free time to be young, free time to have fun, free time to meet new people. It was just that era of turning 25, just had a lot of openness for me and a lot of learning.

And, oh man, that was probably one of the most fun times in my whole life that I can remember is the moment that I left church. And actually for the first time, I really felt like I was living my life, that I wasn't just living a life out of obligation, but that I was actually doing things that I wanted to do, that I enjoyed doing that were helping me grow and stretching me as a person.

So my whole friend group opened up because I was meeting different people. I got back engaged in the poetry scene and got a chance to grow in that area. I was going to art galleries and writing sometimes, just walking around the art gallery and meeting people and going on dates. So this gives you the context of where my life was when I'm actually going to what was my first concert, which was pretty dope.

So Atlanta has a park called Centennial Olympic Park, which obviously by connotation of the name, you can tell that this park was constructed around 1996 when the Olympics was in Atlanta. And there were a lot of changes done to the city. And so now, the Centennial Park is this really cool place that sometimes you can go to concerts there. My husband and I saw Outkast when they did their last run of events and performances and touring. Outkast did their Outkast ATLast show in Centennial Park. So there are just always wonderful festivals and stuff to do that you can go to at Centennial Olympic Park.

So this particular summer of 2005, Centennial Olympic Park was doing a concert series called On The Bricks. And it was different concert each week for a period of six to eight weeks. And y'all, each concert was $5. So I think I invited, I don't know, I don't remember if I can say I invited everyone. I think this was around the time that Kanye West had released Jesus Walks. And I want to say it was after Kanye West's first album College Dropout had been released.

And for those of us who were in our mid-20's at the time that he released that album, that album was speaking a language to us in this really particular way. Just hearing how in that album, Kanye's trying to break out or break away from these conventions that he was told his life at that era had to be. And it was a certain type of production he was doing at that time that his music is not doing now, but it was very particular to that era.

I remember very specifically, it was my brother that put me on to Kanye West's music because my brother had heard the early versions of Through the Wire, which was a song that Kanye West recorded while his jaw was wired shut after he'd had this near death accident, car accident. So my brother had put me on like, "Yo, it's this MC. You got to hear him." And he was telling me all this stuff. And then I actually heard the song and was like, "Wow."

So there are certain things about that era when everything wasn't streaming that are really wonderful memories I have that I'm glad I have, because those are things that just won't happen the same way now. But back then, when someone was dropping an album, you really didn't have a legit way the day the album came out to be listening to it, if you didn't go to the store that day and buy it.

And I remember I went to the store the day that College Dropout came out and I had a couple of coworkers who were around my same age, because I had just started a job in corporate America at that time. And when you're working a corporate America job that you really kind of hate, Kanye West College Dropout, Kanye West Late Registration, Graduation, these are all in the vibes of someone who is working somewhere that they don't like. These are all songs that really are going to help you make it.

So I remember my coworkers and I, we had a rule at our corporate job. So technically, our lunch was supposed to be from noon to 1:00 PM, but we had observed the other people who had been working for the company longer than us, that they would take longer lunches by leaving a little earlier because basically y'all can give me the feedback if working in corporate is different now than it was in 2005.

But in 2005, especially at the company I was working at, a part of being an employee of a corporate company like that basically meant that you needed to have the appearance that you were working. The appearance of working was many times more important than actually working. And we were watching that. We were considered what, communication specialists, at our job, which basically was a glorified title for being writers. And then above us, we'd have a supervisor and then that supervisor would have a manager, and then there'd be a department manager.

So we were watching all of the people who were in positions above us waste time in different ways than we were, but they were still wasting time. But we also watched them so we could learn the tricks of how they were able to pull off wasting as much time as they did while also keeping up the appearance that they were working. So part of this trick was if lunch ... We were all salaried, none of us were hourly. So it wasn't like you were clocking in and clocking out. It was sort of honor system on your own time.

So if lunch was technically supposed to be 12:00 to 1:00, then the key was by 1:00 PM no later than 1:15 to be at your desk, looking like you're working. At least do that until 2:00 or 2:30 PM. But you could pull off taking a longer lunch if you left at 11:15 or 11:30. And as long as you were walking back in the door at one o'clock putting your bags down and going to look like you were working, you could pull it off. And we did this all the time.

So the day that Kanye West College dropout released, one of my coworkers and I, we went to Walmart because ... And I'm not as much like this now, but I still can be this way sometimes. There's just some music I prefer to listen to the clean version, because I really want to get the gist of it without having to hear too many other words that are really going to be distracting for me to maybe get what could be really important about the rest of the music.

I'm not like this as much now because I like to cuss a lot myself. So it's a lot of expletives for me now, but we'll save that for another episode. Anyways, so my coworker and I went to Walmart because that was the one place you could go to buy the recent CDs that were coming out and you could buy them in clean versions, because at that time, Walmart only sold clean versions of music.

So we went to Walmart, left work at 11:15, picked up our Kanye West CDs, put the CD in the car and started listening to it, went to Wendy's because that was one of our go-to spots, so we could get food. And basically park in the parking lot, eat our food and just listen to the album.

So I knew I wasn't alone. A lot of my friends my age, that by this time I had sort of picked up from different places. A lot of them still from church and then some people that I was meeting in other places, we were all looking forward to this album coming out and it was big conversation among all of us. So when the information was released that there was going to be this concert featuring Kanye West $5, I think I at least started the conversation. And then it turned out that a few pockets of different friend groups connected to me, had all been talking about this and we all decided to do a big meetup.

And the way the concert was set up, it's outside. I don't think you can have chairs. It's either you're standing or you're sitting on a blanket or something. So everybody had different cars filled with people and blankets and towels and whatever, so you could enjoy the concert. My mind wants to say, maybe you could bring a cooler or something. I think you could bring a cooler in. And so you could bring your own drinks or whatever. And a bunch of us met up and piled all in our cars or whatever and drove down there.

And that was my first concert. Number one, that I got to experience to me, my first "real concert" with a group of friends in my mid 20's, when we're all sort at this era in our life where we're at our entry level jobs, trying to figure out so much about our lives, trying to figure out our spirituality, trying to figure out how we express our sexuality, trying to figure out dating and relationships, trying to figure out career or grad school or entrepreneurship or whatever.

We all had so many things that we were trying to figure out. And part of the theme of College Dropout was here's young Kanye West, feeling like he has the potential to make a career of music, but his parents having wanted him to go the way that they did, having wanted him to get his degree and get this certain kind of job and live this certain kind of life and him realizing he wanted to really break a lot of the conventions of that.

And a lot of that theme and message was so poignant among us. And at that time, Jesus Walks was the big single. And I think a lot of us knew the rest of the album somewhat, but really knew that song in particular. And so that song was kind of the centerpiece of his performance.

And he also had a young singer with him, and we had no idea who he was. Now, all these years later, I know that that was a young John Legend who was performing on stage with Kanye West and playing piano. So a lot of all of the singing parts of different hooks and things from Kanye said at that time, John Legend was there. So we actually saw Kanye West and John Legend for $5.

And I just remember when that beginning bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, like beginning of Jesus Walks comes on and everybody stands and watching everybody's hands raised and saying those words together and singing the hook together. I mean, I still remember that as one of the most powerful moments I ever experienced at a show or at a concert.

So yeah, that's my dinner party story. My first "concert" was seeing Kanye West and John Legend in Atlanta, Centennial Olympic Park for $5 in my mid-20's, surrounded by so many friends that were sort of in my same phase of life. And my whisper's actual first concert was definitely a Christian R&B group Dawkins & Dawkins in a church.

So there's that. What were your first concerts? If you grew up like me, do you have two of them and what were they like? And when you think about that era of your life, what was it like when you look back on that? And I still to this day really love live music.

I think getting a chance to see Kanye West and to see Kanye West with friends, I think that's the one thing about going to concerts now that are not separated necessarily into those categories of sacred and secular, but going to concerts where it's music you know, it's music you're familiar with. It becomes this wonderful cultural experience that you get to have your connection to the music. You get to be in conversation with the music in this way that's so wonderful.

So I'm still a big live music fan, even though we are still in the pandemic, I'm happy there are some ways that we can do sort of risk mitigation in a way where we can still experience artists doing live shows and stuff.

So that's me. That's my first concert. Send me a message and tell me what was your first concert. And if you have two like me, I'd love to hear both of your two. And thanks for listening. I hope you go and listen to some really good music after this. Talk to y'all soon.

HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.