By CNTributor JM Cook
Hipster #1: Man, I remember seeing Arcade Fire back in 2006 at a church in Brooklyn. It was life-changing.
Hipster #2: For real? I remember seeing Animal Collective in a ‘04 at a high school gymnasium in Somerville, Mass. Way before they were big.
Hipster #1: Nice nice. I saw Beach House play at a haunted graveyard in South Carolina in 2008. It was so intense.
Hipster #2: Aw man, that sounds great. Were you there for Interpol in 2001? In that abandoned warehouse in Columbus, Ohio? There must have been 10 of us + the band, that’s it. So intimate.
Hipster #1: Ohhh yeah, I posted flyers for that show, but had to go see Neutral Milk Hotel play in Cleveland at a condemned mental institution that night.
Hipster #2: Wowww not bad. Did you ever hear about the Sleigh Bells show in 2009? The one atop the ashes of a recently burned down two-story ranch house in Tampa? They think it was arson. The band played for like eight hours. So effing rad.
Hipster #1: I did! I actually lit that fire and @ messaged the band on Twitter to say it’d be a “pretty dope place for a show.” Were you around for Lorde’s first show? Was in — shit, 1996 I think? — in Devonport, New Zealand. I was studying abroad there and happened into Navy Hospital and bam — improptu show with newborn Lorde. Just me, her folks and the doctors. Her voice was tighter back then.
Hipster #2: My memory is foggy, but I -think- I was studying to be a midwife there and delivered her. You know what, it was Lorde. She was better in the ultrasounds, lemme tell you.