Sunday, May 31, 2009

Cigarettes and Cheap Champagne

Pretend we're the only ones alive in this town

I have a lot of weird notions about being a Grown Up, like how maturity means standing on the edge of a writhing concert pit and enjoying the band from afar. I calculated it once, though have since lost track due to numerous venues that didn't issue physical tickets, but I have been to at least 50 concerts in my lifetime. My guess would be closer to 60 or 65, but as I said, I've lost track. Most of my concert-going was between the ages of 16 and 20, as I've been to precious few in the last couple years (Hanson, however, has graced the docket at least once a year in the meantime).

I'm not sure why I stopped actively seeking out performances, and after the LBC concert last weekend I sure as hell cannot fathom why I've missed their concerts in the last year or so. I think perhaps that, given enough time, the memory of the adrenaline rush and sheer joy that accompanies these events fades to something mediocre.

Against all my Grown Up plans to lie low at the Double Door, instinct (and probably alcohol) took over once I was inside and I found myself diving head-first into the pit. I used to describe the pit experience, especially the LBC pit experience, as "feeling infinite", and last Sunday as my heart pounded itself out of my chest and my ears throbbed with the fast, tight, perfect mayhem that is Lucky Boys Confusion, I realized that it's been a very, very long time since I felt that good.

There are countless things in my life that make me happy, and a few that I would claim make me euphoric but nothing can or has made me feel so alive than throwing myself mind, body, and soul into a LBC show.

Not everything can be sunshine and rainbows, of course. My reawakening was also accompanied by a friend's very poor decision making. The aftermath of the concert has left me wondering if I'm cold-hearted, a bad friend, or merely a realist. I'm a firm believer in fighting one's own battles, and when those battles are the result of a night of heavy drinking, I find it difficult to muster up much sympathy.

And so my suburban equilibrium hums along. Don't expect to hear much of anything in my car or on my iPod but my boys in the five-piece band called LBC for a while.

40/80,
Cathi