Soundwave 2010

Many speak with one voice.
It was a curious thing, witnessing it. I’ll do my best to catalogue the events here – this was a pretty fantastic, amazing, inspiring, experience of my life and I wish to do it justice.
I and three friends woke up at 4:30am to get to Sydney in order to attend the Soundwave Festival 2010. We left Canberra as the sun was rising, and our excitement was building at about the same rate as the temperature. My three favourite bands at this time – Placebo, Alexisonfire, and Paramore – were all playing at the event, so understandably I was rather pumped up.
So we got there and waited in line. Waited around. Saw the big stage. Saw the floods of people. Saw more floods of people. Saw still more people. There wasn’t enough room to swing a cat by the time the larger bands were on. I heard somewhere that there was over two hundred thousand people there, and at that point I could believe it. A roiling, broiling tide of people, all there for the music.
I feel I should take a moment here to focus on the word ‘broiling’. It was hot. It was not mildly hot. It was not even uncomfortably hot. It was unbearable. It was ‘drink water constantly and dump half the bottle over your head, or you will die of heatstroke’ hot. It was sweltering, cramped, dusty heat. It was heat in which you could break an egg and have it fully cooked before it hit the ground.
I’m not sure I’m getting across my feelings about the temperature, but it was HOT.
So, to continue – my first hour or two at the festival was pretty uneventful. I sort of just wandered aimlessly, while there was still room to do so. Saw some things, giggled a lot – there was little in the way of drugs there, as sniffer dogs and police were crawling over the joint, but of course that can’t stop you from having something on the way up there – and about the time my high wore off, Alexisonfire were due to take the stage.
I’m just going to take a brief moment to extend my rudest sentiment possible towards the duo who call themselves ‘The Eagles of Death Metal’ or whatever it was. You took fifteen minutes of my life in that mosh with your refusal to get off stage, your god-awful music and your deeply disturbing womanizing of members of the audience. You made me sit there, anxiously awaiting the arrival of my all-time favourite band in that broiling heat, surrounded by equally belligerent fans who were forced to endure your irritating antics. By the end of it, we were chanting obscenities at you in an effort to voice our disapproval and discomfit, and my voice was one of the loudest. In conclusion, fuck you and your crap music.
So eventually Alexisonfire began to take the stage. I remember this pretty clearly. First on the scene was the drummer, and the two flanking guitarists – and then the lead singer arrived, clad in nothing but a pair of Canadian flag boxer shorts.
The crowd promptly rushed the barrier, roaring at the top of their lungs. I was literally crushed against the people around me, the pressure on my ribcage so intense that I actually feared for my safety. I lifted my legs off the ground and I was suspended in the crush.
Then they played their opening chords and we get to the phenomenon that leads me to write this blog in the first place.
Picture it – you have a veritable swarm of individuals. They are hot. They are annoyed at the previous band. They are unbearably, shockingly, inextinguishably excited. They are packed in about as tight as humanity can pack in. They are waiting for something with bated breath, clenched guts, waiting with every ounce of energy they possess. This is active waiting. The tension is so thick that it’s beating you over the head, hard.
And then it comes.
Not only that, it comes and it surges down your spinal chord and into your lungs without bothering to pay a call on Mr. Brain on the way there.
The opening line to Alexisonfire’s track ‘Drunks, Lovers, Sinners and Saints” is All right! This is from our hearts! This line is screamed, and it is screamed twice. The opening to the song is incredibly characteristic, and any fan would recognize it immediately – and so we all did. We hardly had a choice in the matter. It swept over us like a bolt of lightning, like a roaring fire (apt, considering our body temperature). Energy I had been expending trying to keep myself afloat in the mosh was suddenly diverted to screaming out the lyrics at the top of my lungs, along with everyone else around me. It was a shock to the system for two reasons – the first being that that which I had been waiting for was finally occurring, and the second being that, for me, other people knowing the words to the songs was a rare thing indeed.
So they played their set. They played it and I could describe their idiosyncrasies, their verve. I could describe their pure passion and their amazing presence. But I’m not going to bother. A lot of bands did that, that day. Paramore put on a fantastic show – Hayley Williams has tremendous presence. Placebo was awe-inspiring, true professionals at work. But Alexisonfire, for me, was the life-changing band of the day – because every moment they played, every second of the songs, I was in the thick of it. I was there screaming out lyrics with everyone around me, thousands of people speaking, singing, shouting and screaming, but all with one voice. To be a part of that whole, to be experiencing that feeling – it was a turning point in my life. I emerged from that pit a changed person. I am eternally grateful for the experience.

(P.S If you have never heard of a band called the Aquabats, as I had not until that day, do yourself a favour and go investigate them. Trust me. It’s worth it just for the what-the-fuck value.)