An ode to live music
There's nothing better.
Sticky Fingers live in Utrecht, 2019. Photo by me.
I was 12 years old when I went to my first concert. I went with my family and friends, wore my only black shirt and stood on a chair at the back of this tiny venue while I saw a live performance for the first time. It was loud, often gross, and I’m not sure if I should have been there as a 12 year old.
I loved it.
Next was the Rock In Rio festival when I was 13. The lineup including Florence + The Machine, 30 Seconds To Mars, and Muse was the most 2013 lineup ever. Seeing Florence run back and forth barefoot on this huge stage was unlike anything I had seen, and I just kept telling my friend that she looked like a fairy.
Every year from 2012 to 2019 I went to at least one concert. After that, the three-year wait until the next show seemed eternal. The chaos of being surrounded by hundreds of people, all there to share the same experience felt more distant than ever.
Now, in the age of the Ticketmaster fiasco and overpriced tickets, it feels indispensable to reminisce on the good old days.
Concerts have been around since the 17th century, making it one of the oldest ways of mass music distribution. When music was still impossible to record, this was the only way to hear musicians play. It’s always around in one way or another, in an open mic or an arena tour or an old man playing clarinet in the park.
Whichever location you choose, you’re sharing that moment with everyone around you, and that exact moment will never be replicated. However staged the concert might be, that exact night will never happen again. More than anything, it's the shared experience between you, the artist, and the other people around you.
“More than anything, it’s the shared experience between you, the artist, and the other people around you.”
There is no other place or situation in which I let myself go more than in a live show. Screaming, jumping, and dancing with a friend by my side, nothing else matters as we sing so loud that the veins in our neck leap out, our hair covering our faces and drenched in sweat after doing each other’s makeup and talking with strangers in the 2-hour line.
I remember when I saw BROCKHAMPTON live in 2019 and chatted with those sitting in front of the stage with me. Which Saturation album was our favourite? Who is our favourite member?
Or when I lived my childhood dream and saw My Chemical Romance, how my friend and I walked to the parking lot where thousands of people waited, an ocean of black clothing and dyed hair.
Or when I saw Noname and she actually autographed my record! Of course, now I keep it propped up in my bedside table, next to the signed drumstick I got in 2017 at a Kaleo concert. That same night I also managed to snag Rubin Pollock’s guitar pick.
Concerts should be a place where excitement isn’t weird, it’s encouraged. It is not a place to judge or be obnoxious, it is a place to keep each other safe and prioritise enjoying this limited time that we have to experience our favourite music. It’s a place to dance with others, to sing, to celebrate music. That’s the core of it: a celebration. It’s a rare and fleeting chance to share a room with people we’ve looked up to, who have written some of our favourite words, who have shaped a genre, inspired us, comforted us, made us laugh, introduced us to new friends.
I remember the first time I experienced loud music. I felt my heart beat with it, the bass thumping through my body, and I couldn’t quite tell if I liked it, but I couldn’t leave that room, I was in awe.
This awe has not left my body yet, and every time I have the honour of standing in a crowded, sweaty room with strangers after waiting days, if nor months, in anticipation, of singing my favourite lyrics as loud as I can, my friends and I sharing wide-eyed stares at each other and cheering when hearing the first note of a song we were hoping to hear; every time I have these experiences, this same child-like awe fills my body again. Nothing else has ever given me that same feeling.
For more details about my favourite concerts, listen to my episode of the My Mum Had a Mullet radio show about the topic here:
