miss adventures

Who's This?

Seeing Brandon and Billie Joe in the same weekend, a very fine thing indeed. I have no more concerts on calendar. We were so damn impressed last night, more by the phenomenon* they have become than anything else. We just had no idea. The years passed by quickly. I remember when j. and I were talking about the cover of Dookie, when we were tweens.

We noticed that Billie Joe had three tricks in his pocket. One was what j. termed "partisanship" which seems to get a rise out of everybody. He would direct one side to yell, then the other side to yell, and this basic dueling would send the stadium rousing. The second trick was screaming "Los Angeleees!" every four minutes or so, which sent us into compulsory fist-pumping hysterics. The last was hollering "Heyyy-o!" and requiring us to echo it, which made us wonder what kind of influence Harry Belafonte had on him. We got a huge kick out of screaming "FIRE!" whenever the pyrotechnics were activated. But underneath all the punk jumping and guttural screams, it was sort of obvious that Billie Joe has the musicality only prodigies have, with tinges of swing, oldies, arena rock, and who knows what else, affecting his repertoire. Even the beginning of "Hitchin' a Ride" sounds like the score from Fiddler on the Roof.

There was so much music last night. Including all of j.'s mixed CDs, a wealth of well-known, lesser-known, never-known artists, spanning from Justin Timberlake to Trashcan Sinatras to the Academy.

Making music is the result of one of us having such depth of feeling, so many swirling thoughts, that it can only be expressed by being lyricized. They place thoughts with moods, words with melodies, and give life to buried emotions. So we flock to it because they say what we are too shy or composed to present ourselves. And then, for instance, 27,000 of us will convene at a soccer stadium for them to remind us of what we all feel or identify with, but cannot say ourselves. And although most of the crowd is composed of Republican families, we'll holler allegiance to the anti-establishment, briefly suspending our more conservative cornerstones in the name of rock and roll. We'll scream and light the place with our flipped-open cell phones, be more moved than at any point of the work week, and when the concert is over, we will tuck the emotions back inside, get in our cars and grumble about the traffic on the way out. So then, it's over.

Political dissension, repressed sexuality, mental delirium, coping with death. It's not conversation material, it's the stuff of concerts.

* OK, fine. The third time.

posted by Lucy Sloan @ 1:22 PM