[UPDATED, 2/6/17, 1:06PM] With another video!
Isaiah Rashad came to Wesleyan and it was magical. If you were one of the hundreds who stood in line for two hours on a particularly frigid Friday, I hope you had as wholesome of a night as I did. A few days before the show, my friend Meghana Kandlur ’18, who helped book and put together this whole thing, sent me a video of Isaiah where he calls his mom his best friend. It was a really good video. And it was a really good concert. See look, Isaiah even said it was really cool:
Wesleyan University ????.. it’s been really cool ???
— young lack sleep (@isaiahrashad) February 4, 2017
Read past the jump for some videos!
The earliest arrivals started lining up outside Beckham at 8PM. By 8:45, when I arrived, there were already almost 100 people lined up, despite the doors not opening until 9:30PM. In all of my time at Wesleyan, this is the only thing that people have actually shown up early for, I promise.
At around 9, P-Safe let a bunch of people into the downstairs waiting area to Beckham, and I was stuck just outside. I found some rules posted on the outside of Beckham and posted about them on the Wesleying Instagram:
The rules were right. It was cold outside.
Luckily I got inside to the waiting area shortly, as people moved forward and was able to record some choice quotes from people in the line. As I was recording my observations on my iPhone, someone asked me if I was writing poetry, and I could only think to reply with “you betcha.” Just after this, several people started belting “Don’t Stop Believing” for some reason.
Here are three quotes I managed to record. They may or may not all be from frosh; it’s your call on that one, really.
- “We just keep saying we’re moving to see if people will shove.”
- “When I say daddy, you say daddy.”
- “I knew all of your names at the beginning of the semester, I swear. What are your names?”
That last one really gets me, because I think it’s very genuine. It is only perfectly reasonable that you might have forgotten some people’s names that you learned at the beginning of the semester which, after all, was only a week and a half ago.
Oh yeah, and I got a quote from P-Safe too:
- “Don’t push! Don’t push!”
And then there was this guy’s hat that reminded me of one of those Wesleyan Starter Packs™:
We all got in after some time. Jahmir opened the show accompanied by a live band featuring Becket Cerny ’19 (Drums), Henry Hodder ’20 (Guitar), Johnnie Gilmore ’18 (Bass), and Daphne Gampell ’19 (Vocals). Jahmir opened his set with words of support for people “threatened by the presidency, people affected by police brutality, by transphobia, and homophobia.”
Jahmir’s set was sick and I’ve been trying to find more photos and/or videos of his set. If you have any, email staff[at]wesleying[dot]org and we’ll include them in the post.
For those who didn’t attend the concert, I did manage to snag a video of Isaiah Rashad performing “Brenda.” You can check out the video below. But before that, I do want to mention that my favorite exchange in the concert was when someone in the audience was calling out a song for Isaiah to play, and he responded by saying that he had to stick to the set list. Then this happened:
“Hey, what’s your name?” – Isaiah to audience member
“Jake.” – Jake
“Okay, Jake. Do you play guitar?” – Isaiah
“No, not really.” – Jake
“Really? Cause every Jake I know knows how to play the guitar.”
*laughter from lots of people*
Okay, so here’s the video:
Here’s a vid of him performing “I Shot You Down”: