Sunday, July 11, 2021

This week marks the beginning of our 2021-2022 SCOPE Selects series! We will be introducing our incoming exec board with a personalized playlist every other Thursday. This week, our General Manager Joey O'Kelly starts the year off strong with a collection of many of his personal favorites.

Name: Joey O’Kelly (he/they)
Hometown: Kansas City, MO
Year: Junior
Field(s) of Study: Social Justice, Arts Entrepreneurship
SCOPE Position: General Manager

Three Favorite Albums:

This Is It // The Greeting Committee, The Swell Season // The Swell Season, Punisher // Phoebe Bridgers

Favorite Concert Experience:

I saw Nothing but Thieves and The Wrecks a few days before I turned 16 at RecordBar in Kansas City. Nothing but Thieves was my favorite band at the time, but neither band was that popular yet, so it was a fairly small and intimate venue. After the show, we hung around for a while, and the people working the show kept handing me random items. I walked away with a signed kickdrum head, setlist, poster, t-shirt, and a few guitar picks, most of which were just handed to me. I even got to talk to the members of the band for 30 minutes or so. It was really rad.

Hobbies & Interests:

I’m currently working on recording an EP under the moniker Joey OK. It’s your standard sad boy acoustic stuff. It’ll hopefully make you cry. :) I’m also quite the coffee fanatic, so catch me slinging espresso and chugging oat milk lattes at your local Iowa City cafes.

The Deep Cuts:

With over 3,000 liked songs in my library, narrowing it down to even 35 has been the hardest thing I’ve done so far in my time as GM. I did my best to encapsulate the chaos and variety that is my music taste. Feel free to listen on shuffle or straight through, I put the songs in chronological order based on when I started listening to them. I hope you enjoy it! Keep reading to learn about a few of the songs I put in the playlist and what they mean to me. Cheers.

When Your Mind’s Made Up // The Swell Season: I don’t know if I could ever definitively say that any song is my favorite song of all time, but this might be the closest. I first discovered it when I was about 13 years old while watching a documentary called “Once,” about an Irish musician named Glen Hansard and a Czech musician named Markéta Irglová. The two of them wrote this song and performed it in the film, but they also recorded it in a real studio version on this album. I’ve always preferred the Swell Season album version over the Once soundtrack version. They aren’t that different, but the swell (no pun intended) of the instruments in the album version just leaves me with chills every single time. I try to listen to something different each time. The piano, the strings, the vocal harmonies, all of it is… perfect. I’ve been listening to it for over 7 years now and have yet to grow tired of it.

I Don’t Mind // The Greeting Committee: Similarly to what I said above about picking an all-time favorite song, the same could be said about choosing an all-time favorite artist; The Greeting Committee is as close as I can get. I have such fond memories with this band. At my first SCOPE meeting during freshman year, I almost cried when given the news they would be the opener for Bad Suns at our homecoming show. I’ve seen them live probably 7 or 8 times, including shows with artists like Samia and Brother Moses, who are also featured on this playlist. We interact quite often on Twitter, and being from the same hometown, we’ve even had some wonderful in-person interactions. This band is one that I hold very close to my heart, and this song means quite a bit to me. I have vivid memories of dramatically listening to it while looking out the car window when I was 17 (let’s be honest, I still do that). A listening recommendation for you, take a deep breath and close your eyes at 3:00. Then, at 3:04, let that breath out and open your eyes. Out of body experience guaranteed, or your money back.

Bathroom Floor // Brother Moses: A runner-up for the question about favorite concert experiences was a show I went to in November 2018. It was The Greeting Committee’s tour for their debut album, “This Is It,” and they were playing their hometown show at the Uptown Theater in Kansas City with Rachel Mallin & the Wild Type – a killer local band – and Brother Moses. There’s something special about falling in love with an opening band you’ve never heard of, and that’s what happened with Brother Moses that night. My second-to-last show before COVID hit was seeing Brother Moses at Gabe’s on their Desperation Pop album release tour, and this song was by far my favorite off of the album. The song addresses conflict in a raw and honest way, with gut-punch lyrics and perfectly placed instrumentals, including a guitar solo that feels jarringly out of place in the best way possible. It’s perfect for listening on an introspective walk or screaming on a cathartic drive.