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There is a substantial difference between a live event and listening to albums while sitting on your own couch. The emotion that a concert can unleash is significantly superior to what you get by pressing the play button on a CD player. All senses are excited in equal measure: hearing, sight, smell, touch, and hearing, which plays the leading role in listening to an album at home, takes on a secondary role. It is therefore reasonable to expect a concert to provoke a much more adrenaline-pumping reaction due to the mix of sensations that pour down on our brains. A small musical imperfection that, if present in an album, would make you wrinkle your nose, in a concert can be a source of unusual emotions. The "I'm from Barcelona" are like that: perfectly imperfect, delightfully live, cockeyed like a badly hung painting but?
11:00 PM: The doors open, and while waiting in line at the coat check, I take advantage of the wait to buy a kazoo (which I can't play) and chat with friends. The floor is soaked with beer (as in every good Norwegian venue) and stinks awfully. There aren't many people, and despite the venue being quite small, it's not packed. The "big concert" pathos isn't felt, and it gives a sensation that makes me feel comfortable. I have no expectations, no goals. I live in the moment.
11:15 PM: In the general confusion due to us being packed like sardines, the concert begins. A sampling of "Barcelona" sung by Freddie Mercury indicates the dances are about to begin. The pushes start, the movements, it's getting tight, and the beer smell has been replaced by a mixture of various perfumes-odors-stinks that you can only smell at concerts. They finally enter the room from the back door, passing through the audience and each holding about ten giant balloons. They climb onto the stage one by one: 1, 2, 3...5...10...15...23...28! The stage is overflowing, perhaps they are more than us.
11:30 PM: It starts. The balloons are thrown to the audience, and the 28 wackos begin their show. You see everything on stage, they sing, joke around, but above all, they laugh. Always. They are happy! It is like one of those tales where children realize their dreams and remain with an idiotic grin for hours. They are like that: so happy (from their unexpected success or perhaps just from the fact of "making it") that they live the concert in a sort of musical trance, ecstatic by the audience. They start with their most known songs, "Collection of Stamps", "Treehouse", "Chickenpox" and the joy infects everyone. Everyone hums the simple and fun melodies, from the Viking chubby guy to the freckled blond girl. I'm even invited to get on stage to play the kazoo. They ask me my name in Swedish four times, and since I have absolutely no idea what on earth they want from me, I pretend not to hear and continue in my scandalous kazoo performance amid general irony. The balloons fly everywhere, and an hour and a half of music slips by with the impression of witnessing something that isn't exactly a concert but a sort of reunion of old friends. A handful of confetti is given to everyone present, and after a countdown, everyone throws them in the air. They start with "We're from Barcelona" and, amidst broken glasses and shattered bottles, people dance for 5 minutes, shouting out loud the various "la la la" and "pa pa pa"!
1:00 AM: It ends, they come down from the stage and invite all the audience to get up there. The roles are reversed. 200 people on a small stage and the 28 Swedes watching us applauding and pretending scenes of "groupie hysteria."
I go home with a huge smile on my lips, happy to be happy. It's beautiful to let go and free that childlike part that exists in each of us. It's beautiful to seek a smile just to be able to return it.
If they pass through your area, go see them, enjoy them, and hope they don't change. Success and business devour everything. First and foremost, feelings.
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