They Don't Know I Feel Superior: At the Fred Again... Album Listening Party
Being happy being unhappy
On Thursday night, hours before Fred Again…’s third album Actual Life 3 (January 1 - September 9, 2022) dropped on streaming services worldwide, I attended the official U.S.A. listening party. As someone who does not self-identify as a Fred Again… fan, the event was not, as it seemed to be for most everyone else in attendance, a blissful night of communal enjoyment. As a miserable human being with a sour outlook on life, who revels in feeling superior to those with horrible music taste and personalities, it was one of the best nights I’ve had in a long while.
I learned about the event when a friend posted a screenshot from Fred Again…’s official Discord server into another Discord server full of semi-IRL friends of which I am an (over)active member. The image was a list of locations in which Actual Life 3 would be played live for audiences early that night. Fred himself even popped in to say demand for parties in underrepresented cities was so high it had become “quite jokes,” so he’d be giving an advance copy of the album to anyone who could prove they had a venue lined up to debut it. The Discord server of which I am a member is not dedicated to Fred Again…, but has become a central hub for re-streaming the same YouTube video and discussing the various studio versions of songs from that YouTube video ever since one person posted his Boiler Room set a few months ago. Out of the chat members who live in Los Angeles, I was the only one who for some reason agreed to go.
My reason for wanting to attend was in part to give Fred Again…’s music—which I tend to hate on out of a contrarian urge to argue with friends who love pop-electronica—a fair shot. Through forced exposure to the artist, I have come to appreciate his hustle and approach to craft. He smacks beat pads to play drum loops live like a pop-house Aarab Muzik. He takes samples from anywhere: recordings from his “actual life” or YouTube (an approach which is too common to be talked up as much as it was in this New York Times article, but which is also more inventive than many other producers). Fred appreciates and did a good job of re-contextualizing Future. Maybe, in the hot sweat of the dance floor, I would learn to love him like so many others seem to.
I also wanted to attend because the U.S.A. listening party venue was R Bar, the long-running speakeasy on 8th street. The bar where, as 18-year-old college students, me and the same friends who are now in the aforementioned Discord server tried to get in because we found the secret entrance password posted on Myspace. With misguided confidence and a lack of the fake IDs we’d soon procure on Alvarado St., we approached the bouncer and uttered the phrase. He nodded then asked for our IDs, so we just looked at each other and shrugged and then sulked back to our dorms. With nostalgia for that experience, and the promise of grilled bulgogi, lemon soju and public karaoke as potential activities to follow the listening party, I got in my car and drove the 45 minutes to Koreatown.
Arriving well before my friend, the actual fan, I walked in to a packed room, an unreachable bar, and a bunch of people jumping and throwing their arms toward a disco ball.
I wandered into an empty area off to the side with empty tables and sat down alone to stare at my phone. My friend, coming from Manhattan Beach, texted me that he was stuck in traffic. So I listened to the entire album by myself.
I was the only guy not dancing or chatting loudly and drunkenly with enthusiastic others about how great Fred Again… is, how proud of him we are, how different or similar these album versions sound to the Boiler Room set that became instant canon. I began to think of myself as the stick figure in the “They Don’t Know I Know” meme. They don’t know I know they have terrible music taste.
Many of my musical memories involve standing cross-armed in a pit of dancing fools, alternating between heavy bass-induced panic attacks and moments of contentment from recognizing that my music taste and general ingrained sense of angst is superior to everyone else at the abandoned warehouse rave or speakeasy listening party. I grew up loving punk and hip-hop, got my release from shoving others in a pit or nodding my head while focusing on the words of a lyricist, and have yet to rewire my brain by taking molly and dancing all night like most people my age. But my friends and acquaintances have always loved electronic dance bullshit so my exposure to the music—especially in a live setting—has been inescapable. This feeling of being unhappy in a room full of happy dumbasses was nothing new. I fired off a tweet inspired by my experience, and it got a few likes. At least that affirmed I am not alone in this miserable existence.
The album, especially blaring out of a good sound system to a room full of enjoyers, was not bad. “Danielle (smile on my face)” won me over. Another random track with a slightly wobbling bass line sounded nice. But I mostly observed the evening from a detached perspective, like it was a psychological study. The album was playing off an aux cord, but everyone in the bar faced the same direction as if Fred were actually there, performing. It was like the elevator phenomenon, in which people will naturally face whichever direction others are facing when they get in an elevator with doors on both sides, even if they know the doors open the opposite way. It reminded me of concerts in the early 1900s, when crowds would show up to watch a phonograph on stage playing a recording. Oftentimes in a packed bar it’s hard to see a DJ or watch what they’re doing with their hands anyways, so the listening party truly felt like a live show. The crowd responded appropriately to the album’s tonal shifts. There was big party energy up front, followed by some lulls with more intricate composition or introspective vocals that might sound better on headphones.
During one such late-album lull, a big group moved into the table room where I was sitting and bothered me with their positive enthusiasm. I didn’t want to hear stuff that made me question my decision to attend, like “The album’s going to be online in like an hour but I just had to hear it here.” I got up and moved closer to the door because my friend texted me he’d parked and was walking over. Then my night began to turn around.
I sat down on the empty bouncer’s stool near the entrance. The real bouncer was outside, managing the line that had formed since my arrival. He’d pop in occasionally to check how much of a fire hazard it was inside, but he gave me the go-ahead to take his spot for the time being. The stool was not only an upgrade from the table room because it was close to a speaker, but because it instilled me with a sense of power I’d never previously experienced. Suddenly it didn’t matter that I was cross-armed, staring at nothing, not even nodding my head to the beat. I was a bouncer! One guy stopped grinding on his girl to ask me where he could vape. I told him I have no idea and I do not care. He went outside and his girl shrugged at me. Another group put on their coats as they moved toward the exit, then made a point to smile and thank me on their way out.
Eventually, during the album’s closing track, when the dance floor was riling themselves up by holding artificial flowers and cell phones beneath the disco ball, my friend finally made it in. We pushed our way through a crowd of people emanating worst-case covid, best-case offensive B.O., and secured gin and tonics. After a few seconds of speaker silence, the intro to the Boiler Room set blared and people cheered. I laughed and said, “that’s funny they’re playing the Boiler Room set.”
Because I’d entered the venue after the album had started playing, I wasn’t 100% sure that we were in fact hearing the Boiler Room set and not the studio album. My friend, the actual fan, thought that maybe Fred started the album with the Boiler Room intro. Compared to what I’d just heard, though, the music sounded dancier and more live-mixed. There were crowd noises that weren’t present on the album. My friend explained that many of the album’s early singles were renditions of tracks that Fred played during the Boiler Room set. So again, due to another strange psychological phenomenon, it didn’t really matter what was playing. People in the crowd continued going nuts. Everyone, myself excluded, was there to celebrate one of their favorite artists, together. If I rewired my brain with molly, I’d probably call it beautiful.
We left and rode scooters to Kazunori, got a couple handrolls then went to Gjokku Gjokku for all-you-can-eat bbq. When we got back in our cars I played Actual Life 3 on Spotify to see if it started with the Boiler Room intro as my friend had suspected. It didn’t. I felt superior for identifying the Boiler Room set despite my lack of fandom, which maybe, just a little bit, was fading into some form of evolved appreciation. Nah.