Live Experience example essay topic

My Experience at the Warped Tour My friend Richard and I have known each other since childhood, we always have a good time no matter what it was that we are doing. We are always learning from each other. I am learning from school, and he is learning from the facts of life. In middle school, we were the misfits. We were the two that would always high-five each other in the hall, we were the ones shouting at the ladies when they walked by, and we were the guys who everyone was cool with. Yet, a strange thing happened.

As middle school came to an end, I was moving on to high school, but Richard stayed behind. Over the years of high school, Richard and I started to drift farther and farther apart, until eventually I saw him maybe once or twice a month. We still had good times, just not as often. I remember going to the Warped Tour back in 2000, I don't quite remember the bands then, but I still had an overall good experience. From the mosh pits to the crowd surfing, the Warped Tour has never let me down, but it wasn't until last year that I can truly say that I have had a real live experience. You might be wondering what the Warped Tour is.

The Warped Tour lasts all summer and is a very big punk'o'rama event that includes a plethora of bands from the many different genres of punk music. It lasts all day, rain or shine, and everything is very overpriced, but the music is well worth it. It all started when I was sitting at my house. I was watching the television when I got a call from, you guessed it, Richard. He knew that I was about to head out for college and invited me to one more day out, our last day out for a long, long time. When I heard the news, the feeling I had inside can only be described as ecstatic.

The chance to go out with one last bang was something that I could not possibly pass up. So we got tickets for each of us, but then another question came up. Should we bring our girlfriends along too? The answer, of course, was yes.

We then got tickets for them. The big day has now come, and we all meet up at Richard's house to get ready with water bottles, sun block, and punk paraphernalia. We check to see what if weather forecast would be in our favor, light rain to get things muddy, and then warm climate the rest of the day. We could only hope for the best.

When we finally get to the venue, parking was easy, but the line to get in was fairly long, so we all just chilled out for a while. We got inside about 12: 00 and the place was already packed. We then proceeded to mingle around for a while until Andrew W.K. came on at 4: 00. Andrew W.K. is a band like no other. Each member is between 30 and 45 years old, but they play music better than some of the younger bands. When they got to their debut song "We Want Fun", the whole crowd started to get more and more packed.

Towards the end of the song, the singer let people on the stage, and gave everyone up there the chance to sing the chorus line. The most memorable people to me that were up there was this guy in a wheelchair, this little girl who couldn't have been any older than five, and this really old guy who was at least 60 years old. These people are proof of how wide a range of people listen to Andrew W.K. The next band that came on, The Atari's, wasn't really my kind of music, so Richard and I decided to walk around to all of the booths. Some of the booths had food, merchandise, and CD's. One booth in particular caught my eye.

This booth had a Rastafarian on the other side. He was selling ganja lollipops, hacky sacks, and Jamaican T-shirts. I bought one of the hacky sacks, and Richard got a Jamaican T-shirt. I then glanced at the watch and, noticing that it was 6: 30, decided to mosey on over to the stage where AFI was going to play at 7: 00. I had only heard of AFI about a month before and Richard was a big fan, so I wasn't sure of what to expect from this band. But as the band started to play their introduction music, the atmosphere of the crowd became exhilarating.

The only way to describe the AFI live performance is best presented by the biography on their website. "To witness the AFI live experience is to understand both that unique internal chemistry and the undeniable bond between band and audience that has been honed and strengthened through nearly seven years of non-stop worldwide touring. Favorites from Black Sails, The Art Of Drowning and the All Hallow's and A Fire Inside EPs typically find the band fighting to be heard over the din of the chanting crowd, every song received with a rabid enthusiasm that possesses the players, the songs and the audience alike. It's a primal, almost tribal experience, one that via word of mouth has tickets for the band's already sold-out early 2003 shows eliciting eBay bids of more than $300 a pair". (web) The mosh pit is also another experience I need to include.

To be in any mosh pit is an experience that nobody should miss, save the young, old, and handicapped. When the music starts going, you get this feeling, this itch that you can not control. You have to get yourself in there and dance. For hip-hop and rap music, dancing is the fluid motion and constant movement of your body. For rock & roll, it's what some might consider a violent flailing of the body. But if you ask somebody who finds themselves just coming out of a pit, they will tell you that it was awesome, and an overwhelming experience.

It is not just the flailing that gets people excited; it's the music, the thoughts about how they didn't do well in school that day, or the dysfunctionalality of the family they live with. You can really express your anger in the pit, but not in a harmful way, but rather in an un disruptive way. When I came out of the AFI pit, my shirt was drenched with sweat, my eye was a little bruised, and my vision was a little impaired, but I was proud that I was able to survive that big three hundred pound dude with the spiked wristbands. I found Richard in and we were both amazed at the performance. The lead singer, Davey Havoc, stood on the shoulders of some of the fans, to sing "Girls Not Grey".

But I have to say it was the performance of "The Leaving Song Pt. 2" that make it clear to me the emotion, passion, vehemence, and at the same time coldness, unforgiving, and merciless feelings that this band put into each one of their songs. I believe that this experience as a whole was an unbelievable way to end the summer of my high school career, and transition over to my years in college. Richard and I new it wasn't the end, just a big gap in each of our lives, maybe a time to grow, maybe a time to appreciate the things we had, but always a time to stay punk, to stay real, but most of all, to stay friends.