You were there, lighting the path. Under a sky full of stars, they saw you, breathing the air that was electrically charged with all your great expectations. In a wrap-around line leading to San Diego’s House of Blues, on Sunday, November 9, they saw you as an indelible light in a sky full of stars.

And you didn’t care to be anywhere else in the semblance of real time, but shimmering in this technological fairy tale that you helped spin out of millions of YouTube views and Facebook likes–each cumulatively ensuring your chosen band, the Common Kings, that elusively sought-after, social-media-driven jettison to the stars.

And just as in that exuberant Coldplay love song you can’t get out of your head, ultimately, in a sky full of stars, this is about you–a determinedly influential and avowed fan–and the fabulous and highly laudable Common Kings. For what impossible Universe would allow one without the other? Isn’t fandom a universally relatable and most importantly ,reciprocal, experience? One neither fan nor artist can live without.

Is it an island thing? In the uncommonly thrilling shared experience of catching the Common Kings fresh off their head-spinning Australian and New Zealand leg of the Justin Timberlake tour, you should know, in your heart of given hearts, that although not physically, you were spiritually there as well, as part of that preternatural force that catapulted them onto that all-enviable world stage–playing arenas–so why not wear that plumeria or hibiscus blossom in your hair–whether you’re Polynesian or just play one on TV?

It is an island thing. One that was demographically waiting to happen, but, ultimately, one to be shared by everyone as The Common Kings are on the cusp of going internationally viral, taking the world stage by storm now, so stop fretting and enjoy the show.
And a great, supercharged, beat driven, sold out show it was. Just as you dreamed. As part of a standing room crowd, you swayed to Hawaii’s own Maoli, as Tennelle drove the performance to a charged-up level worthy of mention for a stand-out, opening act. But as the Common Kings took the stage, they had your heart aflutter as it was already given to them. And they were exhilaratingly on fire. And didn’t the House of Blues turn into that proverbial house without a roof?

Seeing the internationally rising stars, the uncommonly thrilling Common Kings, comprised of bassist Lui Kirimaua (Ivan), lead singer Sasualei Maliga (Junyer), drummer Jerome Taito (Rome), and lead guitarist Taumata Grey (Mata), proved to be its own irrefutable reward. Being able to sing the lyrics to their rock, reggae, and R&B fusion driven hits “Alcoholic”, “Wade In Your Water”, “Fly” and “No Other Love”, with them took you to another level–the one where both you and the band exchange music as oxygen and where musicians and fans recognize each other as being mutually indispensable.

Backstage, they would have told you that. Affably and incredibly humble, bordering on contagiously jovial, the band remains accessible and playful. Citing their shared passion for their art, confirming their chosen name as bearing tribute to their Polynesian roots, waxing poetic about their collective collaborative and how to maintain their childhood friendship during this wild trajectory from Costa Mesa–in the improbable O.C.–to a world stage.
Yes, they obviously have people from Fiji, Tonga, Hawaii and Samoa in the O.C as evidenced by each member. But, most importantly, if your name was Annie, rest assured that they’d regale you with an impromptu chorus “Of It’s A Hard Knock Life” in which you’d join in, giddily off key and deeply moved.

In this Cinderella story of a band with a debut album still awaiting its January release, we come to the conclusion that the same internet that Kim Kardashian unceremoniously professes to want to break–by sitting on it?–can ultimately be utilized to make and take a music career to nearly unprecedented nose-bleed heights. But it couldn’t have happened without you. As you gaze expectantly upon your heroes teetering on the verge of that world stage, each Common King wants you to know that in this shared sky full of stars, they saw you, too, and from their vantage point, you’re such a heavenly view.