The crowd mills about in energetic anticipation. The air inside the venue is thick with the wanton energy often felt before shows, leaping from head to head of concert goer, as we packed ourselves in like sardines. The lights are low; the floor is sticky. The opener had killed it.
Some young men that had driven up all the way from Baton Rouge joke and tease each other next to me. They’re drunk on excitement (and Miller light). They good natured-ly offer to hoist me up on their shoulders so I can see better and I joke that I’m afraid of heights. We’re Show Friends now. That unique type of friend you maintain only for the hour or two you spend sweating next to them in GA (although I’ve met some lifetime friends this way too.)
“You seen ‘em before?”
I shake my head.
“You’re in for a treat.”
A single chord rings out across the room, reverberating off each wall, like a bat caught in a belfry.
The crowd’s attention is laser focused now on the stage as they erupt into cheers and howls, a cacophonous cry of unified joy. We are as a pack of coyotes, crying out into the night, each cheer multiplied by the voice adjacent.
My new friends nudge my shoulder, smiles nearly cracking their faces in two. The joy of the night has only begun, and yet the crowd already moved as one unified being.
This was 2017, my first experience seeing Green Day. My local stop on their tour had sold out in minutes, so I’d driven nearly 300 miles up to Tulsa to see them. It had been worth every penny and mile. I saved the confetti they dropped on our heads that night.
I was looking forward to my second experience with Green Day this summer, on their Hella Mega Tour with Fall Out Boy and Weezer. I’d bought tickets in advance, even looked into hotels in the area. Wouldn’t be caught with my pants down twice.
Much like many, many shows and concerts, Hella Mega Tour has been postponed to next summer, due to the pandemic.
I’ve spent time grieving The Summer that Never Was, much like most of us avid concert goers. I find myself wondering if live music will ever be the same again. The idea of not being surrounded by hundreds of other fans with the same type of love for music and lust for freedom as me is heartbreaking, and yet the idea of being packed into an arena with thousands of people I don’t know terrifies me.
But if there’s anything my limited experience in life has taught me, it’s that if you’re worried about the future, seek wisdom from the past.
I was lamenting the loss of live music this year, when a friend of mine (who is an ever delightfully glass half full type of person) pointed out to me a little show called Toronto Rocks. Never heard of it? You might know it by one of its other names, like SARSStock or SARS-a-palooza. It was a benefit show put together to celebrate the end of the SARS outbreak in Canada. 500,000 people showed up, no one got SARS, and the world was reminded that although pandemics, outbreaks and awful things happen, when the proper precautions are taken, and we heal, we can go back to doing the things that we love.
My tickets to Hella Mega Tour remain, pinned to my cork board, a reminder of the good things to come. So I live in the now and look forward to the future, and imagine the satisfying sound of those perforated slips of joy getting torn at the turnstiles.