Just got back from the Disturbed concert. In all likelihood, I will not be able to lift my head off my pillow tomorrow morning.
Un Loco was the first band and there's not much to say there. Then Chevelle came on, and they rocked although their set was too long; they have about four good songs and they played about seven. In the interludes between acts the crowd amused itself by putting girls up on shoulders, and yelling at them until they obliged by showing us their breasts. One girl had a piercing in each one and that was kind of interesting to look at. Then these two fourteen year-old girls (I'm guessing) who claimed to be a lesbian couple (and I'm guessing weren't) were persuaded to let themselves be hoisted up, bare-chested, while they made out. This was at the insistence of a high school football player type. There was a big group of these guys, some of them approaching 300 pounds, who ran a tight ship in the mosh pits, effectively making them off limits for the rest of us who could only stand compressed together, packed like sardines in a tin can. No one could dance and you had to constantly be on your guard against nearby moshers and crowd surfers getting dropped on you from behind. So basically your typical concert situation.
Well after Chevelle I had had about enough of this. And besides, Taproot was coming up, and I had to flee from their suckage, so I went to the back and put in my earplugs. Taproot did not fail to disappoint me--they sucked severely. Although the lead singer did run around the edge of the entire auditorium on one song, all the way to the back, shaking hands and stuff, and this was kinda cool.
Watching the pretty lights from the back with my earplugs in I experienced some moments of clarity. I have been living from day to day with hardly any plans for the next one, much less an idea of what I'm going to do with my life in the long-term. There was a time when I deliberately set out to do this; I even called what I was striving for the happiness vector. Anyway it suddenly occurred to me that while I take pains to make sure every assignment is on time, I'm putting off the real assignment of figuring out what I'm doing here, what the big picture is, until the last moment. Schoolwork and programming are just convenient ways to distract me from making the most important decisions anyone can ever make.
So back to the concert. Disturbed finally came on with "Awaken" (which was my follow-up to Rage's "Wake Up" for alarm music earlier this semester). The lead singer was so incredibly flat that I almost wanted to walk out, I thought for a while he was one of those dudes who can't sing worth a damn live. I don't know what the deal was but by the third song he had it figured out. Then after that they rocked out and it was awesome. By the end of the thing I was close to being insane and was floundering around in a mosh pit with a bunch of big guys, all shirtless and muscled-up.
I gotta say though there is something wrong with these people. I wanted to say, look guys, this is not what it's about, it's about dancing to the music and enjoying it and not kicking each other's asses because you're taking steroids or something. It was definitely the opposite of the Weezer concert I went to in Lincoln, where things were tight and hot and suffocating but we all were singing at the top of our lungs, totally happy because that's the effect Weezer has on people, and you kind of felt this connection with everyone else. From the outset at the Disturbed concert, however, everyone just had hostility towards each other, and I felt no connection.
It's not the kind of music that's responsible for this. At the Keller I always felt a connection with other people--they were people really into the same kind of music I was, and there wasn't ever that feeling of unbridled hostility. It was all dancing and it was about the music. The crowd at Disturbed hardly danced at all, they just stood there as if under the mistaken impression that you can only dance to rap or hip-hop, and that with metal your options are head-banging, jumping in place, or getting aggro on each other in a mosh pit.
I just wished I could show them how wrong they were, that dancing is fun and you're not limited to moshing, head-banging, and jumping just because you listen to hard music. But that just wouldn't work...I guess they need to visit the Keller in Munich for themselves to find this out. ;)
Posted by Alan at March 9, 2003 06:41 AM