Growing up a young black kid in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I often had to juggle different music tastes; I had to listen to Biggie and Pac to fit in with black kids at school (only a struggle at that age since my mother listened to the same music and I wasn't trying to have the same tastes as my parent) and I listened to Weezer to fit in with white kids (another struggle, because my dark secret is that my favorite Weezer album is Make Believe).
Luckily, that all changed on August 5, 2003 when The O.C. debuted. The show instantly became a television sensation that everyone was talking about, regardless of race or even age, there were quite a few teachers at school who watched it too. It caught fire the way that Empire has now and Scandal and Lost did in the past.
One of the best things about The O.C. was how it used indie music instead of Top 40, so it introduced fans to bands like Imogen Heap, Modest Mouse, and most importantly — Death Cab for Cutie.
The first Death Cab song I ever heard was "A Movie Script Ending," in the seventh episode of The O.C.'s first season, "The Escape."
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Summer (Rachel Bilson) described the song as "one guitar and a lot of complaining." Seth (Adam Brody) warned her, "Do not insult Death Cab!" The episode sparked a love affair with Death Cab's 2001 album The Photo Album. I was free to listen to the album without the judgement of my teenage peers, because it was music from The O.C., so of course everyone was already listening to it.
The band appeared in the series the next year in the second season episode "The O.C. Confidential."
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They performed songs from the album Transatlanticism and ironically, Seth, the band's biggest fan on the series, missed their performance. I felt oddly like Seth, never managing to see Death Cab for years. Eventually, I grew out of listening to them regularly and the idea of seeing them live also passed.
That is, until they released their new album Kintsugi this week and performed new and classic tracks in a performance at the iHeartRadio Theater in Los Angeles.
I enlisted my friend Chris to attend the concert with me and we were stuck in Los Angeles traffic, so there was the fear that much like Seth did on the show, I'd end up missing the concert. But we made it just as they started with "The New Year," the opening track from Transatlanticism.
The iHeartRadio Theater is small and intimate, much like The Bait Shop, the club on The O.C. where Seth got a job as a janitor in order to see The Walkmen perform live. Granted, seeing Death Cab performance in a dive bar in Newport Beach would've made it feel exactly like it did when I saw them perform on television; but I think they've evolved beyond those kinds of venues.
Hearing "Soul Meets Body" live for the first time transported me back to their 2005 performance on The O.C.
For the most part, all I could think about was the fact that Death Cab was on The O.C. and my thoughts kept wandering out of the concert. "Soul Meets Body" pulled me in and I was able to fully appreciate hearing their new song "No Room in Frame" performed live.
They closed the performance with "Transatlanticism."
