I experienced something tonight at a concert that I've never felt before and I'm not sure how many times I'll feel again.
I went to The Warfield in San Francisco to see Suede, one of the crown jewels of Britpop in the 90s who are remarkably still going strong and who just put out one of their best ever records, Autofiction. That being said, they're pretty old now — eccentric frontman Brett Anderson is 55 — so it was one of those shows where your expectations can't be super high. You have no idea how any of these band members have aged over the last 30 years, and there's a high likelihood that now they just sound like a B+ tribute band, not the real deal.
Well, first off, I was worrying for nothing. From the moment Anderson walked onto the stage, he was jumping around like a fourth grader who overdosed on Fun Dip, striking poses on risers, and screaming out the words loud enough that I'm not even sure the microphone was helping. He was utterly astonishing to watch for the entire 70-minute show, but that's not why I'm writing about it.
11 songs into the set, everyone walked offstage but Anderson, who grabbed a beautiful Gibson J200 acoustic guitar and sat on a riser at the very front of the stage with a microphone stand. After a bit of small talk, he began playing "The Wild Ones," one of his most well-loved and delicate songs.
And the moment he opened his mouth and sang the first few words, my brain went, "This is unfair." It went, "You don't deserve to be experiencing this." It went, "It's utterly tragic that not everyone in the world gets to live this exact moment, right here, right now, and witness something this stunningly beautiful."
It was perhaps the most breathtaking musical performance I have ever seen in my life. When he let out the final desperate gasps of the song and the rest of the band walked back onstage, I was still standing in genuine awe, mouth hanging slightly open and ears still unraveling what they just heard.
It was the first time at a concert I lived a moment so good that I felt genuinely guilty for having gotten the chance.
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