Partway through a recent concert in Madison, Wisconsin, the sets lit up, the mood changed, and guitarist Marcus King sang a slow and haunting song with a call and response. The audience started swaying and putting their hands up and I thought it seemed strangely, like the best parts of church services I’d remembered. People in a community sharing something real and stirring – but this time it was live music. If I’d been listening to King on my headphones or watching an online performance, I would not have felt that way. Just like the theme of this week’s show, "You Had To Be There."
I’m even more grateful for the shared experience of live music now after several years and canceled concerts during the height of the pandemic. I was supposed to go with a friend and our daughters to hear Ke$ha, and go to The Revivalists and Wilco concerts with my husband. We got to go to Wilco a couple of years after the canceled date, and Jeff Tweedy asked the audience who was supposed to have been there those years before. So many of us cheered. Back to live music recently has also meant hearing Tori Amos sing "Cornflake Girl" and British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #3 with the Madison Symphony Orchestra.
But perhaps the most amazing you had to be there music experience I felt recently was just on the outskirts of an actual performance. I took my daughter and her friend to hear Taylor Swift in Chicago. The Eras Tour has been truly epic, in how hard it was to get tickets, in Swift’s range of songs and costumes and special surprise performances in each city. And in the Swifties themselves. The throes of fans took over Chicago, dressed for one of Swift’s eras – glitter, country, and so many more – trading bracelets with letters spelling songs, "Willow" and "Champagne Problems." And the concertgoers were living one of their best nights ever, all together, shoulder to shoulder, singing and screaming in beautiful unison.
–Shannon