An ode to live music
In a room with sweaty strangers, your eardrums are exploding. Your throat and legs will be sore tomorrow. There's nothing better.
Sticky Fingers live in Utrecht, 2019. Photo by Júlia Moritz.
I was 12 years old when I went to my first concert. It was The Pretty Reckless, and I went with my family and friends. I 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. In hindsight, the lineup including Florence + The Machine, 30 Seconds To Mars, and Muse was the most painfully 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 so ethereal, like a fairy or an angel.
Every year from 2012 to 2019 I went to at least one concert. Then I had to wait almost 3 years until my next one and it felt like an excruciatingly long time. I missed being in a room with strangers who are all there for the same reason, singing my favourite songs as loud as I can, ending the night sweaty and with a raspy voice, thrilled to have experienced that past hour and a half. So in a time when everyone is discussing the Ticketmaster fiasco, and the fact that concert tickets are painfully overpriced, it feels necessary to remember the magic of these gatherings.
Concerts were the first way to distribute music to a large audience, starting in the 17th century. When music was impossible to record, this was the main way to hear musicians play. A concert is one of the oldest aspects of music distribution. 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. When attending a concert, you’re sharing a room, an experience with people who have all in one way or another been touched by this music. Even if it’s a mother accompanying her child to their first concert and watching an artist she never would have heard were it not for the morning drives to school. Or a partner who might not have a particularly strong connection to music but takes joy in simply being there with loved ones and enjoying the sounds. Or if it’s a friend going blindly to watch a performer they’ve never even heard of, but this performer will soon become their newest obsession. However strong or weak, everyone in the room has some sort of association or story linked to this music. It is a beautiful, celebratory event.
“When attending a concert, you’re sharing a room, an experience with people who have all in one way or another been touched by this music.”
There is no other place or situation in which I let myself go more than in a live show. Screaming, jumping, and dancing with my friend by my side, watching a band we have loved since our childhood and now finally, a decade after nearly 13 years of waiting, we get to hear their music being played right there, right in front of us. Nothing else matters in this massive room 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? We share inside jokes as a result of ours and the band’s somewhat constant online presence (before they got very famous and became more recluse). 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 are a place where excitement is 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 in its purest form. It’s a rare and fleeting chance to share a room with some of the people who we’ve looked up to, who have written some of our favourite words or chord progressions, who have shaped a genre, inspired us, comforted us, made us laugh, introduced us to new friends.
I remember when I was a child and for the first time I was in the same room as a very loud speaker. I felt my heart beat with the music, the bass thumping through my body, and at my young age of 7 years old, I couldn’t quite tell if I liked it, but I was intrigued. Now when I have the same feeling in a concert, I remember that 7 year old version of me experiencing the physiological effects of music for the first time, confused and 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 hours in line 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:
