Is live music a communal or an alone-together experience?
When I want to be immersed in music, I usually listen alone, in those rare moments when life allows the kind of deep listening that evokes images, emotions and dreams. But like dreams, they're intensely meaningful to the person having them, and intensely boring to everyone else.
Live music is supposed to be one of those rare moments. At least based on the ticket prices. You get the immediacy, a more all-encompassing sonic and maybe visual experience, shared with a crowd of dozens to thousands.
And when we're all in the same place, being caressed or hammered by whatever sonic tapestry is being created for us, how shared is it? I’ve heard mythology of concert crowds coming together around music and feeling part of a shared moment, but I'm not sure that's happened to me. I'm having my solitary experience, just co-located with others who I assume are having theirs.
Conversations immediately afterwards with friends who were there don't get much beyond "That was awesome," or the reverse. Maybe I don't hang out with people who like to talk about how song X evoked rich sensory memory Y, any more than they would talk about a random dream they had.
Not a critique, just an observation of how few times in my life I've felt like someone else was listening to, and being moved by, the same music I was.