I Am In Love With the Music For Better or Worse
3:31 PM
Wanted to do something a little different today and share my feature story I wrote for my journalism class. Hope you guys enjoy!
This touches my soul in many ways
as a person so deeply in love with music.
I think we all search for love
whether we want to admit it or not. Who doesn't think of their soul mate? The
future? While I've said I've been
in love, none of them have ever given me the same spark as this exact feeling:
of being in a crowd when my favorite band enters the stage.
I got my first taste of live concerts
at the age of 2, seeing Britney Spears. I wish it was something cooler, like
Pantera or Metallica, but my first concert was Britney Spears. I obviously didn't
experience that fluttering feeling there.
I tasted that feeling at my first
Avenged Sevenfold concert. It was January 20th, 2011 at the Sovereign Bank
Center. I'd seen some of my favorite, most cherished bands before this (My
Chemical Romance twice by this time, and plenty of Warped Tour bands), but I
had never actually been three people away from the barricades for my absolute
favorite band.
I watched New Medicine, Hollywood
Undead, and Stone Sour anxiously and was jostled amongst the other concertgoers.
I fell twice, bruised my elbow, and sprained my pinky. How very rock and
roll.
The best part of a concert is when
the last of the opening bands heads off the stage (Sorry Corey Taylor) and the
lights dim. I can literally feel myself shaking as I type this, recalling the
same heavenly feeling as I did that same night around 10 o'clock. I was standing
in an arena with thousands of other fans and felt more at home than I ever had
with friends.
In reality, it takes about forty
minutes for them to set the stage up for the headliner, so it was thousands of
us milling around the arena with the lights on, some of us trying to make a
home on the floor to relax before the next big event. I nervously bounced on
the balls of my feet, calling out to the guitar techs I saw behind the black
curtains. But when those forty minutes are over and the lights dim, there’s one
tiny millisecond where everyone is
holding their breath.
Avenged Sevenfold was touring
after the release of Nightmare, their album dedication to their late brother
and drummer Jimmy 'The Rev' Sullivan. The tour was rightfully named the Nightmare
After Christmas, and their first show – the same one I was attending – was
going to showcase their new tour drummer, Arin Ilejay. The show would be the
first time playing ‘Danger Line’ live,
and it would also be their first time playing ‘Fiction,’ the last song that The Rev had wrote and played for the
band.
I found Avenged Sevenfold in the
beginning of middle school, where my awkward phase as a kid began. It was
around the same time that I found all of my favorite bands that got me through
middle and high school. I love music, but I made a special connection with the
band through their music. I knew them. I watched their music videos, I analyzed
their interviews. I spent hours on YouTube watching shaky camera shots of the
band performing. I knew their whole story. I loved them. I felt like I actually
knew them, and that they knew me and understood me on a whole other level
different than anyone else did.
The opening piano of Nightmare
made me shake so bad and my stomach do flips and turns that I thought I would
pass out from happiness. Actually, I was so happy that I distinctly remember
crying and a guy next to me asking me if I was hurt. Along with the piano
intro, their stunt man stepped off of a platform raised high in the air with a
noose around his neck; giving the illusion of hanging himself. The pyrotechnics
were practically licking at my face it. There’s nothing better than being
pressed against a bunch of other sweaty, screaming people just to see your
favorite band. I lost my voice that night from screaming so much. Needless to
say, it was the time of my life.
I still get chills just thinking
about that. It's been 3 years and I've seen them twice since, but it gets
better every time. I try to see them every time they come around the NJ/Philly/NYC
area, and I have no doubt that they’ll just keep getting better and better.
Every time I see them, I fall more in love with them.
If I were to find someone that
made me feel like that moment, it would be the most amazing dream in the world.
My point is that I get ready for
concerts like most women get ready for their wedding day.
When
I meet someone who makes me feel like how my favorite band does when they walk
on stage, that'll change. Until then, I am in love with the music for better or
worse.
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