My first year of grad school, which I started in the fall of 2005, may have been the year in which my life changed the most pivotally. That fall I got really into going to concerts, something I'd never really done before, and then during the spring semester I met and became friends with Cara. Obviously those were two things that would have enormous effects on the rest of my life. But Cara was actually not the first person I met that year of school who would have a big influence on my life.
As a first year graduate student, that fall I was assigned to be a teaching assistant for the first time. I was in charge of a lab section for one of the large undergrad biology lecture courses. I was terribly nervous about this, which to anyone who has known me for most of my life should not come as a surprise. Most of my duties were checking in with the students as they worked on the labs and then grading their lab reports, but I did have to give a brief talk about each lab in front of the assembled group of two dozen or so undergrads. When I was younger I got incredibly anxious about public speaking. (I'm glad to say that's no longer true.) So that TA assignment, looking back, was a pretty important life experience.
One of the most important parts of the experience, though, had nothing to do with my TA duties, but rather involved meeting and getting to know the undergraduate (a senior, I think) woman who was the assistant TA (yes, I notice the redundancy in that phrase) for my lab section, who I'll refer to as D. It's important to note that I was incredibly shy, especially about girls, and had never dated anyone. When I had crushes on girls the result was that I found them too intimidating to talk to. The biggest crush I'd had on a girl I actually knew somewhat well as a person, rather than as a pretty girl who I'd steal glances at from afar and never try to have a conversation with, was on someone who I knew online via a Star Wars message board and chatted with on ICQ in high school and never met in person.
Now, with D, I was put in a position where I had no choice but to talk, in person, to a cute girl. Of course, we had to go over our TA assignments with each other, but we also talked about other things. It turned out that she, like me, was very into indie music, and liked a lot of bands that I liked. A cute girl, who seemed to find me semi-interesting as a person, and who had a similar interest in music???
I quickly developed a very intense crush on D. Now, although I was not actually in any sort of position of authority over her, I realized that with her being my assistant TA, trying to date her would not have been a good idea. Also, as I was disappointed to learn at some point during our conversations, she had a boyfriend. I remember thinking about whether, if she hadn't had a boyfriend, I'd have tried to ask her out after the semester was over, which would have been extremely anxiety inducing, no doubt. But she did have a boyfriend so the point was moot. Nevertheless, I had a very intense crush.
And this brings me to where the title of this post comes from: Spot Night. Almost every week during the school year, on Wednesday night, the Spot, a student bar beneath the north side dining hall at Case, played host to a free concert. This had been a thing during my undergrad years as well, but during my undergrad years I wasn't much for going out and doing things, other than running cross country and track. I had been to two Spot Nights as an undergrad. One was a band called Roshambeaux, one member of which had been one of my high school cross country teammates. The other was Andrew WK, a show I went to because I thought it was freaking hilarious that Andrew WK was playing a show at the Spot, and yeah, it was a lot of fun. But those shows didn't spur in me an interest in going to more concerts in general.
During our conversations about music, D mentioned to me that she was one of the people on the undergraduate student-run University Program Board who were responsible for booking bands to play at Spot Night, and she told me that I should come check out some shows there. Naturally, I did, and naturally, at first my primary motivation for doing so was getting to see D. But it turned out that Spot Night was a totally awesome thing that would become a significant part of my life for many years to come.
I'm sure that with my growing interest in indie music and concert going, I'd eventually have gotten clued in to the awesomeness of Spot Night and started going even without the suggestion from D, but I don't know how long it would have been before that happened. (Also, one significant show that I definitely would not have gone to if not for an invite from D was the National and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at the Beachland that September; getting to see the National "before they got big" is a memory I'm glad to have.) I saw so many great shows at the Spot over the years but as it turned out, the two most significant both took place during the spring of 2006, as they were my introductions to two artists whose music would come to play huge roles in my and Cara's lives. Andrew Bird was already becoming a well known indie musician, although not nearly at the levels of fame he's since reached, and I remember his show at the Spot being perhaps the most crowded I've ever seen the place. He performed solo that night, and I was in awe at his looping, whistling, violin playing wizardry. I went away from that show a definite fan. A year later came Cara's introduction to Andrew Bird at a show we attended together in Columbus, and he became her most favorite musician of all. Would she and I still have gotten into Andrew Bird some other way if he hadn't played that show at the Spot? There's a good chance of it, but I'll never know for sure. A Northern Chorus, on the other hand, I very likely never would have heard of if they hadn't played a show at the Spot that spring. That show wasn't nearly as crowded as the Andrew Bird show, but to me it was even better. I remember standing in the middle of the floor in front of the stage and just basking in these waves of aural beauty that were washing over me - the swelling strings, the intricate guitar parts, the stirring vocals... I also remember after the show talking to D and telling her how much I'd liked it and that I kind of wanted to buy a CD but I thought $15 for a CD was a little steep, so I didn't buy one that night, which is very funny to me in retrospect because I now have a constant desire to shovel huge amounts of my disposable income into the pockets of musicians I like. A Northern Chorus became one of my very favorite bands, their album Bitter Hands Resign is in my all time top five, and their farewell show in June 2008 that Cara and I attended together remains my favorite show that I've ever seen.
I didn't see D much after the fall semester ended and not at all after that school year (and have no idea where she is now). I got over the very intense crush I'd had on her. In March I met Cara in person and rapidly became close friends with her although it wasn't until November that we started dating. In a way, looking back, it almost seems like my very intense crush on D, someone else I became friends with and made a connection with over a similar interest in music, was a sort of preview of the feelings I developed toward Cara.
Going to Spot Night on Wednesday nights was something I'd do most weeks during the school year for years to come. I lived in an apartment that was a short walk away so it became my little weekly ritual to head over to the Spot, grab some of their very cheap wings for dinner, and settle in to enjoy some music. I continued to attend Spot Nights all the way through my last year of grad school, which I finally completed in 2014. By the end, there, going to shows with audiences mostly made up of undergrads definitely made me feel my age, but hey, that didn't stop me from enjoying the music! It really is amazing looking back on all the bands that I got to see for free. Here's a list, just going off of memory, of bands that I saw at the Spot during grad school, ranging from local bands to some touring artists who would later go on to achieve massive fame, and including some artists I was already fans of as well as many who I got into as a result of their playing at the Spot (feel free to skip past if you don't feel like reading a long list of band names):
Andrew Bird, A Northern Chorus, Dreamend, Infinite Number of Sounds, The Never, The Acorn, Jupiter One, Ra Ra Riot, Goodmorning Valentine, To Be A High Powered Executive, Afternoon Naps, The Dreadful Yawns, The Commonwealth, The Morning Benders, MGMT, Passion Pit, St. Lucia, Lucius, Magic Man, The Colourist, Ben Kweller, The Watson Twins, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, Tokyo Police Club, Head of Femur, Picastro, Cloud Nothings (a memorable show because a fire alarm went off in the middle of it), Tristen, Plushgun, Woods, Real Estate, Dr. Dog, Like Bells, Ha Ha Tonka... and I'm sure there are a lot I'm leaving out.
(MGMT and Passion Pit deserve special mention because, although not among my very most favorite Spot Nights, they are two bands who would go on to achieve huge levels of success, but when they played the Spot they were both very little known and didn't even have unusually large crowds for a Spot Night - the students on UPB who booked those shows were way ahead of the curve! Years later in 2013 Passion Pit returned to Case for the annual fall concert and played to a huge crowd at the Veale Convocation Center.)
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Spot Night was one of my very most favorite parts of being a Case student. In the years since I finished school I've learned that the weekly Spot Night shows have ceased to be a thing, which makes me sad. But I'm very grateful to have had those shows as part of my life for so many years and kudos to the students on UPB who did such a great job picking out and booking artists and helping create so many great memories!
