I Wanna Shine On, In the Hearts of Men

On April 26 I had unmitigated privilege of going to see the Killers live here in Calgary. I say that it was an unmitigated privilege because it was one of the best rock shows I have ever been to; not the best, but certainly top ten. I went into the show with an appreciation for the Killers’ music, I came out a newly died in the wool fan (of the fanatical variety).

I think it goes without saying that there are plenty of bad bands/musicians out there, but I think it also bears noting that there are many good bands making music, as well. With the kind of revolutions in recording technology that we now know, it is, at least to my mind, not quite the feat it once was to create a good album full of good music — music that deserves to be recorded, released, and listened to. There are any number of tricks available to musicians to make a voice sound better than it might otherwise, writers and session musicians who can beef up the quality of instrumentation presented, effects that can blow the mind. In some senses, the creation of a good album has become as much, if not more, a process of construction than an art form. I don’t begrudge anyone those technological training wheels and I’m not a purist or a Luddite when it comes to music. But I think this reality is worth noting when we talk about music.

That is why, for me, the live concert as a litmus test for truly great musicianship and artistry has become all the more important. There are lots of things that one can embellish or even fake in the studio, but a great show is a great show and no size or opulence of light and laser show can substitute the chills one gets from a truly great live band with stage presence who are engaged in the infectious and energizing alchemy of their trade.

And it is here that the Killers got me.

Don’t get me wrong, the Killers had a pretty impressive stage show that had some cool effects. But if you press me about it I wouldn’t really be able to give you much in the way of detail because I wasn’t honestly paying much attention to any of it. I was too busy being rapturously lost in their movements and music and rocking out with every fiber of my little corner of space-time. I hurt the next day, in all the right ways, and I didn’t have a drop of alcohol all night. And not to get all high and mighty here, but I’ve seen a pretty fair cross-section of excellent artists live: as diverse a line-up as Bob Dylan to Digable Planets to Rage Against the Machine. I feel confident in saying that I know what a great shows feels like and the Killers was a great fucking rock show — full stop.

The impression that the show left has convinced me that the Killers are musicians in the true sense of the word and are to be reckoned with and that they will be around for years to come, much to our collective sonic benefit.

It is for all of those reasons that it saddened me to be thinking about a disturbing trend at the show. The last couple of times that I’ve gone to concerts with friends, some of us have invariably run into trouble with other concert goers. Those troubles are not of the “two guys get too drunk and start threatening one another” or “getting lippy with the security guard about taking pictures and wind up getting kicked out” variety, they are much more benign and all the more discouraging for it.

No, our troubles have tended to be the “I’m going to light up a joint and have a quick puff” or “I’m going to stand up and dance to this great song that I love” variety, both of which have lead to concert goers around us to get all huffy and call the security guards over to eventually boot some of us out of the concert. Ostensibly, these other concert goers feel that our activities — smoking a joint or dancing — are inhibiting their ability to enjoy the show they have paid good money to see.

But let’s face it, smoking pot and dancing at a concert are traditions as old as the live concert itself. When I go to a live show I basically expect that I will run into people who are smoking pot and dancing, it’s part of the experience. And even though I no longer smoke pot and sometimes am not moved to dance, I always cheer those folks who are on because a concert is goddamn joyous celebration of life itself. While smoking pot and dancing might not always factor into my particular expression of joy, they are not bloody well anathema to such expression and if there is anywhere they ought to be accepted as such, it is a fucking rock show!

But none of that happened at the Killers show, partly because my fiancee, Brandy, and I were smart enough to buy floor tickets so we could shake our money makers unobstructed, but also, I would argue, because the median age at that show was a good decade younger than me. In fact, there was an impressive graft of age ranges at the show: many teenagers, plenty of twenty-somethings, more than a few thirty-somethings (yours included), and then a bevy of parents attending the show with their kids. There was even one couple behind me that, as far as I could tell, were not there with any kids and were easily in their mid-to-late fifties. When, in the midst of one arm flailing, boot stomping gallop, I accidentally nicked the woman’s shoe and turned around to apologize, I was met with a big smile and a thumbs up.

Those are concert goers.

But my heart sinks because they are a dying breed, especially in that particular age range. I am compelled to note that when friends have run into trouble at concerts, it has almost always been the case that the offended parties are older couples who exhibit many of the social cues of being well-to-do. In part, I mention the older couple I encountered at the Killers to demonstrate that I’m trying my damnedest not to be ageist here. But facts be facts, and older, well-to-do concert goers seem to be killing the institution of the rock show via gentrification because with ticket prices what they are, these are increasingly the only folks who can afford to go to a concert.

I don’t begrudge anyone the desire to attend a concert, regardless of their socio-economic background, and so this opining of mine ought not to be seen as a class analysis, per se. I do; however, believe strongly that there is an important social function that the raucous dynamics of a good live concert fulfills and am inclined to bemoan that loss due to gentrification. One has a chance to cut loose, to, as Joseph Campbell extolled, follows your bliss, to shake and gyrate and scream out lyrics in a cathartic release beyond the limitations of everyday life. There is an energy that we tap into at a good rock show that frankly undergirds the motions of our everyday lives. It is a tension that keeps us sharp, attentive, and vitally pugnacious in the face of the temptations towards settled complacency.

Those concert goers who would seek to quell that rambunctious spirit will find themselves on the fighting side of me, I hold the value of that spirit too dearly to go gently into that good night. And so in truth, my lamentation about the gentrification of the rock show/live concert is also a forlorn exploration into the gentrification of democracy and our political spirit.

It struck me at the Killers that it isn’t only in the realm of the live concert that increasing wealth leads to a muted sense of complacency, but that this trend is active in the political discourse of western democracies and informs a goodly portion of my corresponding treading water around democracy itself. You see, at its best I view the social and political dynamics enabled by a true democracy to be not unlike the dynamics at play at a good concert. The governing of a polity of the people, by the people, and for the people, it seems to me, ought to be an exercise in barely controlled chaos. The submission of citizens to a governmental leviathan should be constantly under questioning and held taut by the exploding impulse of those citizens to live as freely as possible.

And so, the experience and face of citizen is much like that of concert goer: restless, full of power and confidence, questioning, but at the same time ecstatic, gregarious towards his or her other citizens/concert goers, joyous, and, ultimately, capable of realizing profound beauty.

My fear is that in our wealth and comfort, we have taken on a philosophically gentrifying malaise of complacency and that this malaise is at play in both the micro and macro contexts of our lives. So, in that fashion, the call of other concert goers to “sit down and be quiet” is analogous to the same call of our fellow citizens when it comes to participation in the democratic and political process.

Both tendencies are to be raged against when encountered.

And so I wonder whether wealth and complacency must go hand in hand. Must the comfortable lives we have come to lead necessarily be the nemesis of both a great concert experience and a vital democracy? My inclination is to say no, if only because in the sea of that decadence one can still find pockets of vitality, both at great concerts and in politically active and astute communities. Though it has matured over time, the élan vital that underwrote both democracy and independence and rock ‘n roll in America still exists out there, in our streets and neighbourhoods, waiting for us to pick up it’s flag in one hand and a pumping fist in the other. I felt that spirit at play as I screamed, “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier,” at the top of my lungs with more than ten thousand other people, a cathartic experience indeed given recent revelations.

But if that spirit is to remain prevalent throughout the twisting evolution of our public and private lives, we must be willing to fight for it, to sound its name from the rooftops, and drape ourselves in the implications of its flag. We must be prepared to rock our citizenship in the same way that we rock a concert, with everything we have and without hesitation. The move here is not just intellectual, but also guttural. It is equal parts Dionysian and Apollonian, as much a Nietzschean will to power as a Kantian application of pure reason.

In short, the truly democratic life isn’t just something we grasp intellectually, it must be something we feel intuitively. And as the gentrifying forces of complacency and opulence seek to make our democratic lives a one-sided affair of the conceptual, we must fight to maintain our direct tie to the subjective quality that life enables.

Back at the concert, that fight was alive in my soul, and the urgency I felt around it in that space brought me to the conclusion that as far as artists go, the Killers are the real deal. My outstanding question is whether the same can be said of us.

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