Last weekend I went to Chicago and saw Belle and Sebastian. Wait, let me start over.
Last weekend I went to a Belle and Sebastian concert. For some reason, Belle and Sebastian draws an unusually tall crowd so I never actually saw the band except at one point where he stood on a speaker for a few lines.
There was a time, years ago when I really enjoyed going to concerts. A group of us would drive down to Deer Creek (now Verizon Wireless Music Center) and see Dave Matthews or Phish or Counting Crows or whatever other Top 40 alt rock band would come through. It was a huge, impersonal venue but being with friends and girls and making fun of the bad dancers and giggling as people would make out and feeling shocked when the girls would get strangers to buy them beer and feeling subversive for being able to pick out the smell of weed made the whole concert experience...
There was something about shutting your eyes and feeling the bass in your stomach, and seeing the lights flash behind your eyelids, and hearing thousands of people scream in recognition as the first note of a song played...
In college, the feeling began to go away. Bob Schnieder and Rufus Wainwright and Guster and Ani Difranco all put on good shows but there was something missing. Even when I went back to Deer Creek to see Paul Simon, who did three encores and it thundered and poured all around us, I felt more removed from the experience and was content with smaller venues and more personal touches but the excitment, the enthusiasm was never the same.
So when S, C, K, and I went to the Belle and Sebastian concert we found a spot on the floor but the idea of being pressed against people for 2 hours wasn't exactly appealing. So we (except S) moved back by the bar and stood against the wall. Maybe I'm not a good concertgoer. But concerts nowadays feel like I'm listening to a really loud, never-before-released live record. Even artists like Sigur Ros who intentially flood the senses, I find lackluster. And the whole time I'm thinking, I could be listening to this CD at home while I play Yahtzee! or read or cook.
Last weekend I went to a Belle and Sebastian concert. For some reason, Belle and Sebastian draws an unusually tall crowd so I never actually saw the band except at one point where he stood on a speaker for a few lines.
There was a time, years ago when I really enjoyed going to concerts. A group of us would drive down to Deer Creek (now Verizon Wireless Music Center) and see Dave Matthews or Phish or Counting Crows or whatever other Top 40 alt rock band would come through. It was a huge, impersonal venue but being with friends and girls and making fun of the bad dancers and giggling as people would make out and feeling shocked when the girls would get strangers to buy them beer and feeling subversive for being able to pick out the smell of weed made the whole concert experience...
There was something about shutting your eyes and feeling the bass in your stomach, and seeing the lights flash behind your eyelids, and hearing thousands of people scream in recognition as the first note of a song played...
In college, the feeling began to go away. Bob Schnieder and Rufus Wainwright and Guster and Ani Difranco all put on good shows but there was something missing. Even when I went back to Deer Creek to see Paul Simon, who did three encores and it thundered and poured all around us, I felt more removed from the experience and was content with smaller venues and more personal touches but the excitment, the enthusiasm was never the same.
So when S, C, K, and I went to the Belle and Sebastian concert we found a spot on the floor but the idea of being pressed against people for 2 hours wasn't exactly appealing. So we (except S) moved back by the bar and stood against the wall. Maybe I'm not a good concertgoer. But concerts nowadays feel like I'm listening to a really loud, never-before-released live record. Even artists like Sigur Ros who intentially flood the senses, I find lackluster. And the whole time I'm thinking, I could be listening to this CD at home while I play Yahtzee! or read or cook.
