Never fell in love
‘till I fell in love with you
Never knew what a good
time was till I had a good time with you
If you’ve ever been to it, Chinatown’s quaint rock-and-roll
cathedral, the Trocadero Theatre, sticks out like a P.F. Chang’s in Little
Italy. So it’s not hard to imagine
myself, just a nervous college freshman in 2006, wandering the streets of
Chinatown with my brother wondering if we’d ever find the concert hall in the
middle of so many similarly named “Rising Sun” and “Lucky Garden” Chinese restaurants.
After a few anxious minutes of meandering the streets around
Market East Station, my brother and I spotted a couple of kids in Operation Ivy
t-shirts walking with confidence past us.
The shirts and one of their stiff, blue Mohawks hinted they were going
to the show as well. Surely enough
after following them we ended up at the mouth of the club’s unassuming
exterior. We walked down Arch
Street to the end of the line with our tickets in hand. As we passed fellow concertgoers, we
noticed very few of them looked like us.
We wore t-shirts and shorts on the hot August night, but we observed
several people in denim jackets adorned with metal spikes; others in tattered
skintight jeans; and tons of colorful, random hairdos and piercings. It being my first true punk concert, I
can’t deny that mixed in with the excitement and anticipation was a tinge of
fear. I wasn’t like these people,
and I felt their stares fall heavily upon my brother and I as bouncers scanned
our tickets and we walked into the steamy Trocadero for the first time. August 20, 2006. The band was Rancid.
If you wanna get the
feeling and you wanna get it right
Then the music gotta
be loud
When Rancid finally took the stage and the music started, my
brother and I tried to push forward to get closer to the action. Surprisingly, our push forward was met
with an equally strong push that sent us backward. Once again we drove toward the stage. This time we were thrown to our left
and then back to our right. It
wasn’t before long that we realized we were in the center of one massive circle
pit. The sea of hooligans bounced around
the Trocadero floor like waves during a storm.
I
watched my brother float away from me as I continued to be pushed around like a
rag doll. At first, I was
angry. I had come to listen to
Rancid play their mu
sic; not get shoved by 30 year-olds with unkempt beards and
body odor.
The
more songs I heard, the more I found myself jumping around like an idiot. Sometime between “Salvation” and
“Tenderloin”, I found myself voluntarily back in the pit with the punx. I pushed and shoved and danced and
sang. The more Rancid played the
deeper the feeling of ecstasy.
When people in the pit fell, others around immediately paused the pit to
help them up. The steam heat rose
from the sold out crowd and licked the Trocadero’s ceiling.
It
was official; I was hooked. To me,
shows were never just about hearing your favorite bands play music. It was about getting away from it all
and truly let yourself go.
Today,
nearly 7 years since that inaugural Rancid Troc show, my brother and I venture
back to Philadelphia to see the band that started it all for me. It’s Rancid. It’s the Electric Factory. See ya in the pit.
Cuz when the music hits
I feel no pain at all
