"There is only one better thing than music - live music". Jacek Andrzej Bukowski

I was talking to friends of my husband who had started, in their late 50's, to go to live music regularly. Not the big stadium concerts but the small gigs in the dive bars. As someone who had taken up the same almost as therapy when my father was dying, I asked him if he'd gone a lot in his youth and got back to it, or if it was a new pleasure. While he had done the big name gigs when young, this was a new breed of concert going. 

Like me.

Also like me, he agreed that no matter what your mood was when you went in (he's dealing with a terminal illness), you always came out feeling happy.  I explained my theory about the energy. There is an exchange of energy between you and the performer, of course, but you also feed off the energy of the crowd. In a good audience, you get swept away on the joyful emotion. Add to that some endorphins from dancing and you come out a changed person.

Whether I'm completely sober or had a few drinks, I still leave with an injection of euphoria that lasts well into the next day, if the band is good. Last night was Parov Stelar and they were excellent! Even with a singer with a broken foot in a moonboot, both the band and the crowd was jumping and dancing and high on the experience. (They still have dates in Melbourne and Adelaide - and Noumea - so if you can get there, do! You'll love it).

Making us with old knees work hard....

“Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel." Hunter S. Thompson

Linking with #ThruMyLens. Linking this old post because it was written just before all the live music got taken away - in fact the band returned to Europe and went straight into lockdown. How weird the world shifted.