My 10 Most Awkward Music Blogging Moments of 2010

Just to preface this, if you don't know me in real life, I love awkward moments and I find myself a part of them all too easily, which is why I have embraced them wholeheartedly, and almost look forward to their regular occurrence. While this first story is not music/blogger related, the rest are. This is just a testament to my character. One time in Paris, after drinking some wine at the Sacré Coeur my friends and I got up to leave in the middle of an open air movie that was playing. There was a large crowd of French people gathered on the hill watching the screen at the bottom of the hill. I of course tripped down this hill while wearing a dress, it is a steep hill and I fell on my face, thus flashing everyone a nice view of my derrière, while the two empty wine bottles fell out my purse and slowly rolled down each step with a loud clink. Everybody saw and heard. If you have never heard a crowd of 200ish people snickering or laughing outright at you, I suggest you try it, it's really humbling. I only wish that after I stood up I did a curtsy for the crowd. After that my friend said, "I always thought you were exaggerating in your emails about all of your awkward stories, but after witnessing that I have a feeling you don't." So yeah...thats the kind of person I am, luckily I can laugh at myself. Here are some music-blogger specific awkward highlights of the year, in random order. Read my ten moments after the break.

1. Inadvertently poke fun at Jakob Dylan fans (for poor concert manners) and Baby Boomers in one post, people actually read it. This was the one of the first concert reviews I ever did, I didn't know how I wanted to write it so I just let loose and stayed up late, 100% sober, the night of the concert and wrote until I felt like I was finished, then clicked publish post without giving it much thought. Hardly anyone read my blog at this point, but when I woke up the next morning, thanks to someone posting a link to my review on a few Jakob Dylan and Neko Case fan sites, thousands of people read my blog and I got my first and only piece of hate mail. Each individual person I called out, like the people flashing pictures in Jakob Dylan's face during the concert managed to read the review and leave a comment or send an email. It was baffling. And while I stand by what I wrote, and I would never edit it, I was embarrassed by how many people felt the need to correct my opinions of what I saw. I wish I could say that is where my over-detailed concert reviews came to an end, but they didn't. Read the post here.

Neko Case - People Got a Lotta Nerve (via treeswingers)

2. Tweets under the influence. Some people are smart enough to not tweet during concerts or after a few beers. (Although I have to say I NEVER tweet more than 1 picture--and usually not even that--while a band is playing, no matter how many beers I've had.) On multiple occasions I forgot to be one of those smart people, leading to tweets like "I danced my feelings out" and other absurdities like, "I stole a book and got brain washed!" or....I'll just stop right there.

 Ou est le Swimming Pool - Dance the way I feel

3. Spelling errors. I cringe when I see other people make them, I experience intense embarrassment when I do it. There was one week on twitter where I kept hitting enter before I was ready and it led to many a deleted tweet. I know it sounds minor, but it is a personal pet peeve that really causes me anguish. I'm sure everyone has made a bad spelling mistake that led to a misunderstanding, I've had more than my fair share.

4. My first solo concert. Friends got really tired of me asking them to come to concerts, so one day I gave up and decided to go by myself for the first time. Now that I've gone solo often enough, I don't really care, but I will always remember the first time. I was already nervous about being alone but then I walked into the venue to discover that I was a tall girl swimming in a sea of midget lesbians. I have nothing against either group but I have never felt more out of place. I was easily the tallest person there at 5'9" and every else seemed to be 5'3" and under. I would have been more comfortable dressed in head to toe argyle at a heavy metal concert. It didn't help that this was also the first time I've been hit on by a girl. And I really didn't know what to say. So the girl took my blundering, loss of words, and blushing as me accepting the drink offer. I had a fun time trying to explain myself over the course of a beer. Ahhh memories. For the record, Jenny Owen Youngs, Allison Weiss, and Bess Rogers are responsible for drawing these demographics. (Sorry in advance if you were there and neither a midget nor a lesbian as I have probably over-generalized yet again, further adding on to my list of embarassments.) Woo spring break forever tour!

I'm Ready by Allison Weiss

Jenny Owen Youngs - Fuck was I (via folkhive)

5. Explaining to friends not on twitter, that I was meeting a twitter friend. Of course there are better ways to phrase such things, but I saw friends from the good old days of high school on my way to meet someone and they asked who I was there with. I unnecessarily explained how I knew the person via twitter. The memory of the disapproving looks they gave me is enough to make me pause before mentioning "twitter" in front of people forever. This was just slightly worse than the time I introduced myself in real life by twitter handle, "Hi I'm Jessica, or you know NewMusicCo, I @ message you sometimes" I got a weird look for that one too.

6. Meeting twitter Friends, more specifically someone named "P". I've met a handful of really awesome people, music bloggers, musicians, and music lovers that I knew on twitter before meeting in real life and have had really great experiences, except for one. I'm still confused by this meet up because it went like this: I recieved a few nice comments on posts from one person and then before a concert the twitter exchange was this (we'll call him/her "P" for person) P: hey, I'll be at the concert, let's meet up! Me: Cool, see you there. P gave me only one way to find him/her "I am wearing a black shirt, come say hi!", I asked what area of the bar and got no response. I searched for P asking a few wrong black-shirted people along the way. One of the wrong people I asked was convinced I was meeting someone on a blind date but thought I was too embarrassed to admit it, I said I was meeting a friend of a friend and this time remembered to not say "from twitter." They kept egging me on and asking why I was meeting this person, but they did finally spot black-shirted P for me. Somehow that was not the awkward part. When I finally met P, all P had to say was: "hi, so I follow you on twitter." Me: "Umm yeah that's why I came to say hi. Uhh are you excited for the concert?" P: "Not really, I have to work early tomorrow, I don't know why I came." Me: Oh, Ok. Well it was nice... P: (cuts me off midsentence) "I don't really like to make small talk with people from twitter." And then walked away. I had no idea what had just happened and was shocked to have met someone who was 100 times more socially inept than myself. As I made my way back towards the stage, the people that helped me spot P asked if I just got rejected. I was about to tell them off for being so nosy, but then they bought me a drink and I explained the story and we all had a good laugh.

7. The interview that never happened.  I was really excited to meet this band for an interview and I showed up where they said and waited 30 minutes but they were nowhere to be found. I started asking people carrying instruments if they were in "so and so band", thinking I forgot what they looked like. I was really worried that I wasn't recognizing anyone, and really didn't want to miss the band, so I was a little over-eager in asking everyone I saw and introducing myself as Jessica from the blog Newmusicco started to sound silly after a while. I later found out the band had told me the wrong date. I had been asking people coming from an orchestra practice if they were in an indie rock band. Oops.

8. Fainting at a bluegrass concert. Just a month ago, I was at a Trampled by Turtles concert and during their closing song, it started getting really warm and humid. I had just returned from Europe and when I started seeing spots and sweating profusely I thought it was just a jet lag thing. I left my prime viewing spot to get away from the crowd, get a cup of water, and lean against a wall. The next thing I knew I woke up in a heap on the ground, with my cup of water spilled all over me and no idea of what had happened. A stranger was shaking me, and a crowd of people had gathered all asking if I was OK. All I could say was: "It just got so good, and then I got so hot, I must have fainted." Then I kind of ran out of there to go buy a gatorade at the convenience store. I was more scared that security was going to kick me out thinking I was wasted or on drugs or something, since they were looking at me funny. When I returned for the headlining act I found out that I missed Trampled by Turtles's encore that included a Pixies cover of "Where is My Mind" and forgot all about the embarrassment of fainting and just felt disappointed the rest of the night. Who faints at a bluegrass concert? This girl! (I'm so hardcore)

Trampled By Turtles - New Orleans

9. Emails Can Be Embarrassing Too.   There is this really cool PR company that I at one time applied to work for, a few months after I was rejected, I was cruising their site and saw at the top of one of their pages they wanted bloggers to help promote an HBO TV show by talking about the theme song. I thought this was cool and also wanted to look professional, so I took a good chunk of time and wrote a thoughtful email saying I'd be interested. I never got a response. When I checked back at the site, I saw that the post I was emailing about was over a year old (even though it appeared at the top of the page). The guy I sent the email to did start following me on twitter after that, and I am convinced he does it just to see how many other mistakes I make.

10. The story that is too embarrassing to tell. Really, I'm not going to tell you about this one.

That concludes my story time, even though there are plenty more where those came from. Feel free to share any or all of your awkward stories too. Thanks for reading.