Last weekend I attended the “Death Cab for Cutie / Postal Service 20th Anniversary of Transatlanticism and Give Up” concert in Austin TX. Like most post-emo millennials, these albums helped shape my high school experience, and to be honest I still take unwanted feelings and trap them inside those songs. So of course I was excited for the chance to hear these albums live, to bask in some collective nostalgia, and to celebrate art alongside other people who enjoy it as much as I do. What I got instead was an experience that made me reconsider ever attending another concert again.
In his essay “Shipping Out” (commonly known by the title “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”) David Foster Wallace describes how vacationing on a cruise led him to an existential crisis. For Wallace, the cruise experience is crafted to force you into feeling like you’re having a good time. The colors, words, images, and physical spaces are all curated to evoke pleasure and relaxation, rather than offering genuine opportunities to do nothing. A pre-packaged vacation guaranteed to keep you “pampered to death.” However, being surrounded by an artifice of pleasure just made Wallace feel despair, and all too keenly aware of his own mortality.
The Death Cab show was at the Germania Insurance Amphitheater and I was pleased to discover my ticket included “free parking,” given that paying for or finding a place to park is always an additional hassle at concerts. I didn’t realize that the amphitheater was actually located inside a race track complex called “Circuit of the Americas” - complete with multiple parking lots, bleachers, and a carnival. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the “free parking” section turned out to be a huge lot about a mile away from the venue, and the “complimentary” shuttles were too small and infrequent to actually save you any time. Once you walk the mile or so to the actual complex, you are greeted by inflatable people soullessly grinning at you, welcoming you into a mini-carnival with a free roller coaster, various other rides, and the usual carnivalesque food products such as funnel cakes and nachos (at first I thought I was at the wrong place).
Like Wallace’s cruise, everything at the arena is set up to make you think you are having a good time: bright lights, colorful displays, free rides, and loud music. The whole thing was nauseatingly corporate - everywhere you looked there were huge signs reminding you of your benevolent corporate overlords; the “brought to you by Spectrum” billboard was larger than the sign for the restrooms. I couldn’t help but think of the corporate-sponsored years in Wallace’s Infinite Jest, pretty soon every concert will be prefaced with “Mastercard presents…” There wasn’t a single aspect of the space or experience designed to make things easier, it’s all a ploy to squeeze as much money out of you as possible. After all, you’re there to have a good time! From the carnival entry to the “Win Tickets to See Queen with Adam Lambert!” display, everything felt like a god damn chore. Why would anyone find pleasure in trekking through all the crowds, lights, and advertisements? Why would I want to miss the performance to wait in line and overpay for beer? It was like a fun house of mirrors, but reflected back at me was a grotesque image of the current state of live entertainment.
The truth is, in huge venues like that the point isn’t to enjoy the music anyway, it’s for the experience of saying you went to the show, not for the actual experience of seeing the show. This was nostalgia dressed up in a corporate suit - tailored to remind you of the good times without actually providing you with a good time. There were far too many people everywhere - and no one appeared to be having any fun. I was surprised at how many people didn’t seem to know the songs, as if they had nothing better to do on a Saturday night than pay hundreds of dollars to trek through this huge arena and all the crowds to overpay for beer and nachos. Even Gibbard, the lead singer of both bands, seemed to be going through the motions - forcing himself to imitate the excitement of a live performance, trying to motivate people by jumping around and clapping… he seemed spiritually checked out, and I don’t blame him. People nowadays go to live shows expecting the artist to just perform at them, without offering anything in return. Such people are more concerned about posting a video and watching the show through others’ eyes than through their own. They aren’t there to experience joy, it’s just something to do (as Wallace observes on the dreaded cruise ship: doing nothing is akin to death). Notably, the so-called “New Sincerity movement” which Wallace is often associated with began in Austin.
The soullessness of nostalgia perfectly reflects our hollowed-out culture, where the experience of spectacle replaces any sense authenticity or existential risk. Most of the people there are only vaguely familiar with the music, and they’ll laugh at you if you even attempt to enjoy yourself. In fact, the people around me openly mocked and laughed at those who were (at least) trying to enjoy themselves and the music. After Death Cab performed my favorite song from Transatlanticism (Passenger Seat) I looked up and said to myself, “that was worth the panic attack” only to have a group of people behind me start laughing at me, and repeating to each other in a mocking tone “that is almost worth the panic attack haw haw haw” I mean, what is someone’s life like that they attend a freaking Death Cab show to try and feel superior to others? In a 2003 interview, Wallace criticized the oversaturation of irony in TV and fiction, which threatened to undermine the possibility for earnestness and sincerity. Wallace paraphrases Lewis Hyde’s essay on John Berryman to warn that irony as a way of life, as the default lens through which we experience ourselves and the world, threatens to become “the song of the bird that has learned to love its cage.” People are trapped in a self-imposed prison of insecurity, where the only thing they can do is laugh at other people because they don’t know what else to do.
The truth of the matter is that the concert experience has been turned into another manifestation of corporate greed and going to see nostalgia acts will never help us reclaim the innocent pleasures we might have enjoyed a mere twenty years ago. We were unaware of how cringe we were back then, but now that we’ve become aware, the only way out of irony is through it. I wouldn’t consider myself someone that does the whole “back in my day” thing but REALLY, back in my day you paid for a ticket to see a band in a repurposed house with terrible acoustics and decently priced drinks. Now, you buy a ticket with a 40% service charge to see those same bands playing the same songs in a souless warehouse that charges 20 bucks for a White Claw. And God help you if you allow yourself to let go and enjoy the moment, the people around you will think you’re trying to “prove” you’re a “bigger fan” than them (a comment I received at the Broken Social Scene 20th anniversary show last week). But seriously, who gives a fuck? I’m not here to prove anything to anyone, I’m here to enjoy the music. The least we can do is be 100% present at a concert where artists are taking actual risks in the service of art, or I guess we can feel safe in our little bubble as self-assured assholes that mock the performers if they even dare take an extra minute to tune their instruments (something I’ve witnessed happen more than once). People are too awkward and self-conscious to enjoy themselves, they are afraid of the vulnerability that comes with being earnest, and so it’s easier to mock other people than it is to perform the spiritual work required to actually let yourself feel something.
Next time I’m in a nostalgic mood to listen to music I enjoyed 20 years ago, I’ll just stay home, put an album on, and lay on the floor.