Friday, April 22, 2011

Back and Forth



The crowd pushes. Ten thousand people surge collectively forwards, heaving like the lungs of one great monster. The air is pungent with beer and cigarettes, and sweat-soaked singlets rub together in one collective bath of perspiration. Excited whispers run like electric currents through the jostling mass- the people are waiting.
Quickly the whispers gather momentum. 
Impatiently a thousand feet stamp. 
In unison, a thousand more. 
Like dominoes they push forward, surge back. Five thousand stamping now. 
No one can move alone, but are carried with this teething tide of bodies. They are stamping louder, chanting now too. Everyone is yelling but individual voices are silent, lost amongst one deafening cry. Eyes fixed on the empty blackness in front, the crowd are calling.
Two words, ten thousand people, one voice, one great crescendo.

Then, just as they room feels like it may explode from sheer energy, out of the empty blackness wafts a thick, grey mist. From somewhere deep in the mist, a single guitar string sounds. A haunting, pulsing, rasping note builds, louder and louder, stronger and stronger. The crowd hush- this is what they have been waiting for.

And so began my first live experience with the Foo Fighters.

Perhaps there is something special and psychologically ingrained about your first real music love. No matter how my music tastes may change, mature, or broaden, I know this band will always, always have a special power over me. 
In Your Honour was the first album I ever bought and listened to for love of the music, not because it was the coolest new thing on the top-40. The Foo Fighters' concert at Wellington TSB arena was my first big, 'proper' concert- which also shortly preceded my first instance of getting absolutely blind drunk and spewing all over my friend's mother's friend's bathroom.
In the subsequent six years I have bought all their albums, gone to another of their concerts, listened to, and fallen in love with a great variety of other music and never again been a drunken disgrace...(cough, cough). 
Tonight, after watching their latest documentary, Back and Forth, though, I remembered how much I fucking love these guys. My admiration for them is unbounded. I can't say how much respect I have for Dave- a man who drummed in Nirvana, played with John Paul Jones, yet recorded his latest album on tape in a garage and interrupts his own recording sessions to take his seven year old daughter swimming.
Plus, he probably has the most amazing tattoos I have ever seen.

No comments:

Post a Comment