Tag Archives: Emilee Lindner

If you remember last summer, the sweltering heat is what sticks out. My apartment had no air-conditioning, so my fingers stuck together as I slept. My body went into shock descending into the subway of New York City. NYU had to set up emergency cooling camps.

That said, nobody was really in the mood for dancing the night I saw Fitz in the Tantrums in Central Park. I stood on the fake green turf as I watched in absolute awe of the band’s performance. How could they dance around in such torturous heat?

Fitz and the Tantrums at SummerStage, Central Park 2011

Fast forward to last Thursday, June 14. Fitz’s Buffalo performance, their second appearance at Buffalo Place’s free concert series in two years, emulated the Central Park fiesta — contagious energy, music-loving passion and a danceable vibe you couldn’t stop moving to.

Now, Thursday was 25 degrees cooler than Central Park, so the jumping, gyrating and shaking was justified, but in 90 degrees? No, thanks.

Nevertheless, singers Michael Fitzpatrick and Noelle Scaggs kept us moving. Last summer, Scaggs wore a skin-tight neon pink dress (sweat probably made it cling to her even more). Fitz wore a suit jacket and jeans, his usual garb. This was the real reason I was in awe — their ability to move and sing in the 90-degree weather. With the sun beating down on us, we were encouraged to dance along. If they were doing it onstage, I guess I could, too.

The band’s hit, “MoneyGrabber,” was the most memorable performance of the Central Park show. During the song’s break, the crowd was told to “get down,” something my roommate had no problem doing. We lowered ourselves to the ground, the whole audience crouching and bouncing on the balls of our feet.

“Get ready to loose your mind!,” Fitz yelled, as the sax, bass, keyboards and drums built to an uncontrollable climax. The crowd sprung up, and then, well, I lost my mind. I jumped and sang and flung my arms in the air, celebrating with complete strangers. It felt good to surrender myself to music, forgetting about the heat and stress and insecurities.

We replicated this moment down at Buffalo’s Erie Canal Harbor. I had noticed the set was fairly similar a year later, so I anticipated the burst in energy and music at the end of the show. Sure enough, it was there. In hot, red jeans and a lace cropped top, Scaggs whacked her tambourine against her thighs to the beat of the encore song. Fitz, in a striped T-shirt with his Leno-esque strip of blond hair, taunted us, telling us that we weren’t getting low enough. We touched the ground - a plastic mat protecting the grass from spilled beer and stilettos.

I felt the build of music again, and before I knew it, I rocketed off my feet into the air, mindlessly singing the lyrics. After all, I didn’t mean what they were singing anyway.

“Don’t come back anytime, I’ve already had your kind.” In fact, I wanted them to come back. I wouldn’t mind if Fitz and the Tantrums made Buffalo an annual tour stop. But at the time, I didn’t think of anything we were singing.

I was in the crowd, who was in the music. And we didn’t think about anything else.