Reiff - Lighters in the Sky

Copyright 2017 Corbin Reiff

first published in the united states of america in 2017 by :

Lesser Gods, 15 W. 36th St., 8th Fl., New York, NY 10018,

an imprint of Overamstel Publishers, Inc.

phone (646) 850-4201

www.lessergodsbooks.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by means

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise,

without prior consent of the publisher.

distributed by : Consortium Book Sales & Distribution,

34 13th Ave. NE #101, Minneapolis, MN 55413

phone (800) 283-3572

www.cbsd.com

first edition september 2017 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

printed and bound in the u.s.a.

isbn : 978-1-944713-43-0

library of congress control number : 2017940760

Introduction

I remember vividly the first concert I ever attended. September 28, 2005: Nine Inch Nails at Arco Arena in Sacramento, California, with Queens of the Stone Age supporting. I was 16 and a junior in high school. I had spent the entire summer slinging blizzards at Dairy Queen and, having saved up enough money, convinced some friends to go all in with me on general admission passes.

I had no idea what to expect as I entered the cavernous space. The sight of so many people sitting down on the open floor was bewildering. My friends and I carved out a chunk of concrete near the right side of the stage. We sat down and chatted about what songs we hoped Trent Reznor and company would play.

A half-hour after the opening bands set ended, the lights went out and Queens of the Stone ambled into view. I whooped and hollered as the guys grabbed their instruments and kicked into Someones in the Wolf. The Queens primarily played songs from their two most recent albums, Lullabies to Paralyze and Songs for the Deaf . I knew most of the music and was thrilled to sing and dance along with the crowd.

Midway through, singer Josh Homme noticed a burly dude who kept jumping over a small woman near the front barricade. He stopped the show immediately. Homme has the height and build of an NFL tight end, and his threat to enter the fracas got the offending bro to back off.

As the last notes of No One Knows died out and the Queens took their final bow, I could feel a pit well up in my stomach. Everyone has at least oneif not two, three or fourmusical paragons that help them navigate through the horror of adolescence. Nine Inch Nails albums The Downward Spiral and The Fragile were the receptacles for my teenage angst. When I couldnt articulate my own deep-seated anxieties and fears, Trent Reznor screamed them out for me with full, vocal cordshredding fury. The thought of experiencing something so important and personal while surrounded by so many people was overwhelming. I felt like throwing up.

When the lights went down again, I experienced for the first time that euphoric release of the energy from the crowd consuming you. The hours of built-up anticipation explode out in one single scream. Those exhilarating seconds before the music starts, standing in the darkness waiting to be blasted into another dimension, can feel like a lifetime.

Reznor walked out and the audience in the pit surged forward, taking me with them. He didnt say a word. He simply picked up a guitar and launched into Love Is Not Enough. All around me, bodies collided as the fanatics moshed. I became separated from my friends. I was lost in the moment, going berserk, totally free. The slower numbers like Hurt and Right Where It Belongs were a temporary reprieve from the madness, but then the band would launch into something like Wish or Head Like a Hole and the mania would take hold again.

By the time Reznor had snarled his last snarl and screamed his final scream, I was physically and emotionally exhausted. My head was pounding, my feet were throbbing and my back was stiff. I was on the verge of tears, but my heart was filled with a burning desire to do it all againand soon.

Ive attended hundreds of concerts since then. I wouldnt say Ive seen it all, but Ive seen a lot. Ive seen future icons on their way up, big names in their prime and megastars well past it. While I was in the Army, one of the last things I did before I deployed to Iraq was see Depeche Mode at Key Arena in Seattle. One of the first things I did when I came home was see Bob Dylan at McMenamins Edgefield in Portland, Oregon.

After hanging up my uniform, I managed to carve out a career as a music writer, which has greatly expanded my potential to catch live performances. Ive seen farewell jaunts, homecoming blowouts, tour kickoffs, private events and full-album performances. Ive had beer spilled on me in small clubs, belted my lungs out in intimate theaters, danced through the aisles of basketball arenas, felt the hot blast from pyro on my face in massive outdoor stadiums and camped out for multiple nights at sprawling music festivals. Ive seen classic rock, indie rock, prog rock, punk, metal, jazz, blues, pop, rap, trap, hip-hop, R&B, funk, folk, country, new wave, EDM, emo, shoegaze, hardcore, softcore, dance-core and any other -core you can imagine.

Theres so much about the concert experience that I find intoxicating. I love the first pang of excitement that wells up inside my chest when I hear about a cool gig. I relish the weeks or months of anticipation. I love the pre-show beer... the second and third pre-show beers. I love the post-show recaps and taco runs. I love how all that tension leads up to a single cathartic release when the lights go down, the crowd roars around you and the band walks onstage.

Not every show leaves a mark, but every once in a while, when the energy and emotion being expended onstage translates into the crowd, when the music blasted directly at your face at 100 dB and more finds its way down into the pit of your soul, theres hardly anything better. A concert can change your life. More than a few have changed mine.

Each year theres usually one, maybe two, live musical performances that transcend all others. Its a unique event that forces you to say, How cool would it have been to have been there? Rather than make a list of the 50 or 100 greatest concerts of all time, I thought itd be more interesting to pick out a single performance from each year since 1960 and unpack what made them so special, unique and important. As anyone who was lucky enough to attend such a show can tell you, the sense that you witnessed something exceptional sticks with you forever.

A few types of live gigs have that power. The first is the stacked bill. These are typically mega-festivals like Woodstock, Monterey Pop or an especially fruitful Coachella, where the sheer amount of musical talent overwhelms anything that a singular artist can achieve on their own.

The next type is the big name in a small space. This is a concert that draws a modest crowd in a compact settingthe key word here is intimateand is mythologized in retrospect. Examples include Elton John at the Troubadour in Hollywood in 1970, The Replacements at First Avenue in Minneapolis in the mid-1980s and Elliott Smith at Largo in the late 1990s. Even though only a couple of hundred people were present, everybody and their uncle claims to have been there.