Back in 2014 I got to see Rise Against play at the House of Blues in Boston, which was amazing, and just recently I went to see grandson and K. Flay perform together.
I think these are my two favorite concerts I’ve been to, and the key factor seems to be the energy between the crowd and the band. It’s a thing that’s kinda hard to express in words, but for me that’s definitely what makes a concert go from good to great. It doesn’t need to be a high-energy thing necessarily, either: one of the best moments from grandson’s set was actually a really somber, lower energy song that he came down onto the floor to perform, and you could just tell that everyone was really invested in that moment.
What about you all? What takes a concert to the next level for you?
I’ve been going to punk shows and playing in bands for years.
One of my favorite things about a show is when a band is absolutely crushing it and there’s just an electric feeling in the air. It’s hard to describe, but the music gets the entire room of people synchronized in vibe and people just want to move and have fun.
It’s a rare thing, but when it happens, it’s unreal. As a musician, I’ve been chasing this high my entire life. It’s an incredibly hard thing to do, because sometimes the best music feels like it’s on the edge of falling apart, but doesn’t… that might be what makes it so great.
Yeah! I wonder if we might be talking about the same kind of energy. Whatever it is, it’s definitely something reciprocal between the crowd and the band that you just can’t get listening to a recording of the music, even if it’s a group of people listening together.
I’ve never been in a band so I guess I don’t know if you can get that energy when you’re playing on your own without an audience, but I’d guess probably not.
It’s for sure possible without an huge audience. Sometimes being able to capture even an audience of 5-10 strangers can be powerful.
I played a show in Seattle at a bar last September and during one of our songs, I saw someone in the audience look to their friend and mouth “what the fuck” - as in we had sounded really good and they were shocked by that.
Afterwards we had a really great conversation and that person told us we were one of the best bands she had seen at that bar.
I think the energy thing is something that is palpable when the music is just undeniably good and fills the room, crowds just throw fuel onto the fire.