Echolalia

Friday night. My neighbor called, asking if I was interested in listening to a J-rock concert Sunday night. I had never heard of An Cafe, but here's what I figured:

1) I have only been to one concert (excluding classical music recitals) in my entire life.

2) At that one concert, I was stuck with balcony seats nowhere near the stage.

3) There was no assigned seat printed on the An Cafe ticket.

4) Who wouldn't accept a free ticket?

In a way, I treated the excursion as a sort of "research project." I've written about fictional concerts but never actually had the experience of being at the foot of the stage and looking up at the band. With the concert I went to last December, I pretty much sat and watched the gigantic screens on either sides of the stage.

At first, I was a little unnerved by all the cosplayers and Gothic Lolitas waiting in line outside the Civic Auditorium, but after awhile, I pretty much felt right at home. Some people are weirded out by those towering platform shoes and zippered face masks; if my life was a cartoon, my eyes were sparkling with Bambi-like awe.

My neighbor C, her friend E, and I were nearly at the entrance of the auditorium when a corpulent coordinator (whose face reminded me of a plump tomato with pale patches of blight) informed us that cameras were not allowed inside the auditorium. Thus, the three of us (and nearly everybody in line) spent the rest of the time trying to figure out the best way to smuggle a camera inside. After watching a "security guard" pat down a male conert-goer at the "checkpoint" in front of the auditorium doors, I attempted to stick my camera into my back pocket, basing off of the assumption that male security guards would not pat down a teenage girl's butt. Unfortunately, due to a fear of crushing objects with my body weight, I have never stuck anything in the back pockets in my entire life and ended up looking like a dog trying to chase its own tail.

E was the first one to be checked by the grouchy security guy; unfortunately, he quickly discovered her camera and ordered her to return to the end of the long winding line. C had been smart enough to hide hers in her shorts pocket and safely entered the auditorium. Upon checking the contents of my bag, Mr. Grouch seemed to feel a strangely rectangular lump in my bag. Fortunately for me, he did not discover the hidden pocket and thus I entered the gates of hell without a scratch.

Instead of climbing upstairs and sitting in a balcony seat like the countless wimps in the auditorium, I was instantly magnetized towards the stage. C and I gathered around the stage with the other psychotic souls dolled up in the most awesome attire. The opening act involved a violin/cello duo that played various J-rock/J-pop songs that I am not particularly familiar with.

Just to set the record straight, I am not one of those anime maniacs who call each other by their "Japanese" names and run around singing the theme songs of every anime they know -- in Japanese. Now, those people drive me nuts.

Anyways, the violin/cello duo played well, but it was not a particularly invigorating set. I had previously held the notion beforehand that opening acts were supposed to get the adrenaline of the audience flowing, but instead, I felt more like curling up on the ground and dozing off with a string rendition of Utada Hikaru's Hikari lulling in the background.

When An Cafe finally appeared onstage, the whole crowd at the foot of the stage began to mosh. I was fairly excited and somewhat apprehensive at first because I had no clue what to do when trapped within a moshing crowd. Fortunately, the music of An Cafe isn't exactly heavy metal, so I guess it didn't really count as moshing. And sure, the blond guy in front of me really needed some deodorant, but the smell of sweat and body odor aside, it was liberating being part of the crowd. Unlike my usually reserved self, my concert-going alter ego was jumping up and down and screaming off the top of her lungs even though she had no idea what the hell the singer was singing.

Despite the excruciating body heat and crowdedness (anyone with claustrophobia probably would have suffered paroxysms), I soldiered on through the night and eventually made it to about the third row of the crowd. I could actually see the singer, Miku, and the bassist, Kanon, fairly clearly. I think the proximity of it all would have been more impacting if it had been, say, a Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert, but nevertheless, it was definitely an eye-opening and ear-splitting experience.

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RIP Joshua