Edgefest 2003
For the last couple of years, my music collection has limped along, getting neither smaller nor much larger. For that matter, my music-listening habits have gone downhill, as well. (I expect that I'm going to discover a lot of things that I've let languish over the last couple of years of being self-unemployed then just plain unemployed, but that's another kettle o' worms).
Anyhow, I went to Edgefest 2003 with Sam, Ryan and Reggie yesterday. This was my first-ever music festival-type thing. I don't know why I've never been to others...just odd timing with my shifting musical tastes over the years, but I hadn't been. It was one long-ass day. We got there at about 11:30am, didn't leave until about 9:30pm.
There were several bands that I either didn't care for or just outright didn't like, but who wants to talk about that, really? With the bands that made serious impressions, I was blown away several times by some of the stage-moments, by some of the songs, and a few times, by the reactions of the crowds.
New stuff has been invented since I've been away from it all. Punk shows that I used to go to in the 80s were always angry, hopefully were intense, and were all about a room full of people who seemed to use the others around them mainly as things to pound into or bounce off of.
There was plenty of anger, plenty of scary-mean retaliatory sentiments in the songs, but there were also these amazing times were the crowds were singing along, joined together in a non-moshing way. Strange thing is, the lyrics were usually still angry and vengeful, but folks seemed together on it. It was nothing like the hide-in-your-basement-blasting-Sex-Pistols and hating the fucking world and telling authority to fuck off. There's still plenty of that going on, it seems, but damn, it was fucking amazing seeing what music can still do to folks, what newness it can create.
Near the end of the night, we were all vegging as the last band, The Used, played. We were back up in the bleachers (EdgeFest took place in a baseball stadium) watching from a distance. The crowd, from that vantage point, was a single organism, a response-body, being played by the music, instead of the other way around.
Sam, in a very hoarse voice, an almost sleepy voice, leaned over to me and said, “Look at that. It's music that brought all these people together.”
Fuck yeah.