Five Staples Series: Starlight Mints
In an effort to familiarize freshmen and new students to local (Norman) music, The Oklahoma Daily is running a five-part series this week entitled, “Five Staples of the Local Music Scene”.
Featured today are infectious pop-rock band, Starlight Mints.
Minty Fresh
By Katie Wilder/The DailyThe Starlight Mints, who, along with Colourmusic and Dorian Small will be playing a free concert on campus tonight, are working to improve live music in Norman one concert at The Opolis at a time.
The Starlight Mints, who have been playing music in Norman for the last ten years, began renting the building that is now The Opolis in 2001. By 2002, the band had purchased the venue and acts had been booked to play. While the addition of a new venue has undoubtedly increased the amount of available performance space and the attractiveness of Norman as a possible tour stop, Nunez insists that there is still more that could be done.
DOWNLOADS:
Starlight Mints - “Inside of Me”
Starlight Mints - “Pumpkin”“Norman has a long way to go,” said Nunez. “The Opolis is really small. There’s not a huge number of people going to shows.”
Due to its size, even a popular show at The Opolis is on the small side.
“We only get a handful of people, the average good show at The Opolis is 100 to 150 people,” said Nunez.
Nunez attributes the small attendance figures both to the venue’s size and to the lack of opportunities for local music lovers to discover smaller bands.
“Here in Oklahoma, we have mainstream alternative radio,” said Nunez. “I think a radio station that plays music could be the best thing OU could do for the local music scene.”
As for the lack of larger venues, Nunez would move The Opolis to a larger area, but first the demand for live music would have to increase.
“If I had shows selling out all the time, I wouldn’t think twice about moving to a bigger venue,” said Nunez. “But mathematically, if you’re not getting people coming to shows, it’s hard to do.”
Though Nunez feels there’s room for improvement, he hasn’t entirely given up hope. With a growing number of local bands playing shows in the area, Nunez said the only way to go is up.
“In the past five years, there’s been a lot of good bands popping up,” said Nunez. “The quality of local bands has improved. Whenever or not there’s a strong local scene makes it more likely for bands to want to come and play here.”
Tonight, The Starlight Mints will be helping to provide an opportunity for the OU community to experience music that doesn’t fit into the mainstream alternative category. In fact, some of the music will be hard to categorize in general.
Stillwater band Colourmusic, who will also be playing, has an interesting muse - the rainbow. According to Colourmusic guitarist and vocalist Ryan “Roy G. Biv” Hendrix, the band writes its music based on colors.
“We use colors as a way to guide us when we’re writing our music” said Hendrix. “When you think of red, you think of certain emotions. We don’t want to write in the form of a genre-we use something intangible to guide us.”
The result is a color-fueled brand of indie-rock that is fun as well as funny.
“Our joke is that our music is Oklahoma sex-rock,” said Hendrix.
Joking aside, Hendrix said Colourmusic really just wants OU students to have a good time.
“One of our missions is to make Norman dance,” said Hendrix. “We want to get everyone involved in the show.”
OU students can dance along with the Starlight Mints, Colourmusic and Dorian Small for free tonight at 7 p.m. on the East lawn of the Oklahoma Memorial Union.