For those who nodded and said outloud (or thought, or giggled): 'yeah you're so weird, erika!'...Thank you very much, I meant another sort of freak...
I'm a concertfreak. Yes, I really am.
Honestly, I would go every single day to a concert if I could...But first of all, this country is too little to be noticed, which means that awesome artists don't come all the time. The biggest, coolest bands come like...every 2 years (if lucky), only when there's an European tour obviously...AND SOMETIMES, sometimes they even SKIP Holland!
I suppose they think: 'What's that dot on the map? Did you spill something?' And when they finally figure out it's our beloved country, they go 'Dude, Netherlands exists for REAL? I thought someone made it up'
It hurts. It deeply, deeply hurts. Give the Dutchies a CHANCE!
Besides, I go see GOOD music, not some crappy Ilse de Lange (no offence), Anouk (no offence), Marco Borsato (no offence) or Frans Bauer (offence).
I'm not saying I'm picky with music, not at all...My iPOD shuffles Avenged Sevenfold to Daddy Yankee to Celia Cruz to Bloc Party to even Frank friggin' Sinatra.
The bands don't have to be extremely famous to give a great concert. True story: the best concerts I've been to are the smallest concerst (except for Incubus, my favorite band ever).
Example I: You me At Six. I went to see this band before they went to Pinkpop, Warped Tour or were the support act of PARAMORE. Okay. They were just a small band...The stage was tiny and really low...The tickets weren't even sold out...The place was really small (people were moshing anyway...fucking awesome).
And guess what? That night, Josh held my hand, the bassist kept posing and looking into my camera, I was in the front...Afterwards, we even spoke to the singer and he gave me his autograph and everything. I even got FREE BEER!
Example II: Avenged Sevenfold. At that point, Avenged Sevenfold was my obsession.
Same thing, small stage, small place, huge moshpits, I was like..fifteen years old.
And what happened? I spoke to the guitarist (Synyster Gates). Yet it was quite a dissapoinment...*flashback music*
After the concert, Gabriel and I went to the little bar thingie. So there we stood, but WOW! The coolest belt buckle I've ever seen. So I decided that I deserved it and I walked over to the merchandise selling thingie to purchase the ghettoest belt buckle I've ever seen (still have it :)). To my surprise, there were a lot...A LOT! Of girls standing at one side of the table (there were like three tables full of shirts, buttons, etcetera etcetera). I'm a really distracted person, so I didn't even realise what was going on. I walked to the other side of the table-merchandise-selling-thingie and surprisingly enough...It was empty. I naively (?) thought: haha, suckers, NOW I GET TO GO FIRST WITHOUT STANDING IN LINE. This hot guy, with eyeliner, a hat, long hair, full of tattoos and pretty buff walked over to me and asked me 'How can I help you? How did you like the show?!'...I looked at him and only thought to myself 'damn, he's hot!' but at the same time 'what a baaaad copy of Synyster Gates'...so I responded (after a short pause, where the hell was my head) 'can I eh...have one of those...uh....belt...thingies?' He smiled friendly at me and said 'Sure you can, that'll be fifteen euros.' I dug deep in my pocket to find a 10-euro and a 5-euro bill. 'Thanks' I said, smiling flirty, doing my very best to impress him with my charms. As I walked over to my brother, I heard some of the girls telling the extremely-buffy-and-handsome guy: 'I lost my backstage pass, it sucks, do you know any way we can go backstage?' and again I thought: 'hahaha, suckers.'
When I got back to my brother, we were ready to head to the train station, but I needed to pee (of all that beer and Red Bull I assume). The bathroom was entertaining. It was full of rockchicks, tattooed and pierced, they were everywhere. Everywhere! My eyes scanned through body parts of these amazingly beautiful girls 'till I could find a tiny tattooless or piercedless piece of visible skin.
The line was really long, so it was a very good distraction as I stood there, trying not to pee my pants.
I don't think anyone wants to hear any details about my peeing experiences and quite frankly I can't really make up a great story about going to the bathroom, so let's stop right there and get back to the story.
As we walked to the train station, my brother wanted to make me feel jealous (he didn't even like the band, he kept shouting names of other bands during the concert).
So he told me he talked to the guitarist:
'Great show, man! What's your band's name again?'
Synyster supposedly answered: 'Avenged Sevenfold, man' as he laughed.
My brother sarcastically teased him: 'What? Gay name. Avenged Sevenfold, what does that mean?! A sevenfold that avenges?'
Synyster: 'Hahaha, you're an asshole man!'
...I asked him how he managed to do that, and why didn't he call me?!
And then it hit me: the hot guy, the very bad copy of Synyster Gates (I assumed it was part of the show)...IT WAS HIM! HIM! My favorite guitarist at that point.
Silly silly me.
There's just something about the whole vibe and environment that makes me happy.
A lot of people hate the fact they have to wait HOURS in line before they can finally go in the building. I love it. I love standing hours, squished to death by everyone surrounding me, holding my ticket with both hands to keep it safe.
Tip I: always have your ticket by hand or in pocket, there's too much mess going on for you to grab it from your purse/backpack. You have to wait extra long before getting inside and in that single miserable little minute...at least 10 people will pass you by.
When you're standing there, you get impatient. That only means you get more excited, you can't fucking wait. You even get to meet people...People with at that moment the same interest as you.
I love how people secretly fart in line because they just can't hold it any longer. I love it how they pretend it wasn't them.
A lot of people hate waiting hours inside before the actual band comes out. I love it. I so love the support acts (most of the time). And I love just sitting on the floor with something to drink as the waiting music plays(=most of the time awesome music) and you sit with your friends and new friends too.
Then...a lot of people hate how you get pushed around, you get sweaty...your own sweat plus sweat of thousands of unknown people...dripping all over your already sweaty body. Your hair gets pulled all over the place and afterwards you realize you used to have hair all over your head. Your shirt gets pulled, you lose your earring, you lose your necklace...You can even lose your shoe (seriously, once I found a shoe after a concert...'Like, dude, where's my shoe?' ..I never got how that girl never bothered to go back to get her shoe).
You get into moshpits against your own will. It rocks. I love getting pushed. And most of all: I love to push fat, huge, clumsy, dirty, drunk boys around.
It's all part of the process. You can't just skip any step of it.
I love how all of sudden you have to grab someone's leg, back or even buttcheek to help them out as they stagedive. I love how they fall, get back up again and continue rocking out. I love getting long hair on my face whenever they headbang.
I love when the singers go 'Helloooooo, Amsterdam! Are you ready to rock?' and how they always, ALWAYS scream something like: 'I want you all to get fucking crazy!" or "I want to see a huge, crazy moshpit over there!"...
I love when the singer tries to talk dutch.
I love how the band leaves, waving, making peace signs and even blowing kisses to the fans, and the whole audience starts screaming 'we want more!"...I love how the moment the band comes back to play a last song 'for the fans' sake', even though the song was the last song of the line-up all along.
I love the adrenaline as you jump and sing along to your favorite songs. How your arm muscles hurt because you've been holding up your camera the whole entire time. I...secretly also love leaning my arm on the person's head who's standing infront of me (they usually get mad and I give them the bitch-look...they never complain after that). How you can see hundreds of hundreds of sweaty, red, tired heads and faces yelling and singing when you turn your head around. What about the groupies who have been standing since six o'clock in the morning to get infront and actually manage to do it?! How dedicated!...How they scream their lungs out and accidentally spit on people, plus manage to damage your tympanic membrane. How people faint and get carried away. How you have to help out the girl standing next to you that's about to faint, because she asks you to, because she doesn't want to leave her spot...And how after she gets carried away, you have space to go a little more to the front, a little closer to your idols, even it's just an inch.
I love how everyone goes to the same place, at the same time, with a similar ticket but with the same goal. And how they all have something in common. And everyone's so fucking happy.
I love the end, when you can go backstage or you wait around to see if you can get backstage...and if you don't, you go see if you're lucky enough to see at least the top of the head of the awesome drummer, so you can tell your friends all about it. How fucking crazy you go about it.
"MAN, I saw the drummer!" xD
Or getting an autograph, a picture or even a handshake (or a filthy towel...)
And how everyone sits outside, hanging out at 12 AM, with a feeling of total satisfaction (or not if the band was crap).
As you stand for an hour outside freezing to death, you look over at your friend who's walking over to you, because he had to stand in line for more than an hour to get his jacket.
Then he suggests: "Let's go get a burger"
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