I've been writing about music for SFist and a few other publications for about a year now, so I get a steady influx of music-related emails and packages each week. When I was still freelancing, self-employed and looking for a day job, I had plenty of time to open these emails and packages as they arrived. But ever since I found a day job, I've been slacking on opening things in a timely manner. Nowadays I let them collect for 4-5 days and then spend an hour or two at a time going through them.
This morning I finally opened an email entitled "30 Seconds To Mars" from a publicist friend of mine. Since I write a weekly concerts column for SFist, I do a reasonable job keeping on top of which artists are coming to town. I hadn't seen any notice of this band coming to SF, and there wasn't a show date in the email's subject, so I figured it wasn't urgent to open the email when I got it on Tuesday.
I opened it this morning, five days later, to read:
"30 Seconds to Mars will be coming to San Francisco to perform on 9/25 – in case you are unfamiliar, they are a great rock band (not lying) who are fronted by none other than Jared Leto. If you’re interested in attending and covering – please let me know and I’ll hook you up. Also, I can get you an interview if you’d like."
Since today is Sunday, the day of the show, there was no way for me to take her up on the offer at this point. But if I'd read this email at any point last week, I could have interviewed Jordan Catalano.
Bewildered at how I could have missed the fact that this show was coming to town, I raced to the band's website to find out where they were playing. Much to my dismay, I discovered that they are opening for Audioslave.
Given my obsession with the television show "My So-Called Life" and the human being Chris Cornell, I'm heeding this as a wake-up call that I need to find some balance in my life. Because if I'm too busy to meet Jared Leto and see Chris Cornell sing for free*, then I don't even recognize myself anymore**.
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* I wouldn't pay to see 30 Seconds To Mars, nor do I own any of their records, but I would have accepted free tickets to see them.
** I fully realize that admitting that I would want to interview Jared Leto's band and that I love Audioslave outs me as being completely uncool. But you already knew that.
*** This is me riffing on Ben's blog post footnotes ™.
