Before the show

I wrote the majority of this first part in the notes app of my phone, while waiting for Evanescence to come on stage.

I am standing alone at the Evanescence show. This is the third time I have seen them, but the first time I have gone by myself. The time before this, I went with Giselle, who asked to review it pretty much so that she could take me for free (she is a good friend). We had great seats and it was a great show, but it was also kinda weird, because we were surrounded by a lot of people who didn't seem all that excited to be there - they just sat there, arms crossed, blank faced, even during the older songs. But Giselle and I got to do our karaoke song (Bring Me to Life) with Amy herself, so it was totally worth it just for that.

The time before that I went with my friends who I grew up listening to Evanescence with. We were too young to go to the tour for the first album, but old enough to go to the tour for the second album which, at the time, we didn’t think was as good*, but of course they played a bunch of the songs from the first album. We had already had a kind of disastrous mosh pit experience at an all ages Panic! at the Disco show (lol) so we had already decided that we were going to hang out at the back of the GA crowd. Which was a good decision, because it meant we could be as excitable and obnoxious as we pleased, which I am sure we were. I have a vivid memory of Aidan grabbing me when they started playing ‘Imaginary’ and yelling into my ear " I have to be next to you for this song!" I remember us gripping each other tightly and staring up at Amy, who was just a speck seated at a piano from where we were standing, almost unable to comprehend that we were hearing a song we had listened to so many times alone in our bedrooms played live.

This time, however, there is no one for me to grab hold of if ‘Imaginary’ makes the setlist. I am on my own. I didn't ask Giselle to come because I knew she wouldn't want to pay a bunch of money to come see a band she doesn't actually care about that much, and I didn't ask any of my old friends because ... I don't know why. Fear of rejection, maybe? I don’t think they'd reject me outright. I think they’d be surprised, more than anything else, that I’d even want to go. I wrote a whole zine about my changing relationship to heavy music, but I haven’t given a copy to either of them, even though they both played huge parts in the first act. Maybe I’m scared that if I bring it up, I’ll find out that it doesn’t mean as much to them as it did to me, or that they’ll remember it too differently. Also, it’s getting really crowded in here now, which I reckon they'd both hate, and I’d feel bad and say we could go stand somewhere closer to the edge, or maybe up the back like we did all those years ago. Like, there is this man standing behind me who keeps telling his girlfriend to stop touching his dick and laughing, and I want to punch him in his dick, but I won’t, instead I will focus on holding my ground**. I try to look busy, like I am here by myself on purpose, I start typing into my notes app, like Giselle might do if she was writing a review of the show. Maybe I'll turn this into a zine or a blog post or something.

Anyway, maybe I should stop doing that thing that my therapist keeps telling me not to do, which is assume how people feel, or anticipate how they will react. Maybe I should just, you know, ask them about it - my friends, not the dick guy and his girlfriend. Maybe I should just ask them, or give them a zine, at least, and then next time they come maybe I won’t have to be here on my own.


After the show

Ok so, the show was actually so good. I know I shouldn’t say it like I am so surprised, like I’m already trying to convince people who haven’t even asked me about it yet. I had the same reaction when I saw Lacuna Coil a couple years ago, as if they hadn’t been a band for all those years since I stopped listening to them, writing and playing and honing their sound. The same goes for Evanescence, I think. Amy has one of those voices that sounds even better live than recorded. Like I cannot get over how good she sounds, her voice is crystal clear, it doesn’t break once with the effort. It is a delicate hand during the ballads, and a fist during the heavy songs. I love it, like I genuinely love her voice, no one can sing like she does and I know because I have tried at karaoke so many times, and her register is actually so hard to replicate.

I also realise during this show that I am a two song crier. I realise this because I start crying in the middle of ‘What You Want’, a song that is fine but I have no particular feelings about. Maybe it takes a whole song for me to absorb what is happening, but by the second song it has sunk in and I am losing it. And I am losing it during this song, like chin trembling tears streaming, and maybe it’s good that I am here by myself. I pull it together by the third song which is ironically one of my favourites from Fallen (Going Under), and now I’m just having a really good time. She sounds so good!! I want to text this to someone, but I can’t think of anyone to text, except maybe Kyle, because I know he doesn’t care but at least he’ll be happy for me. But no, I’m already surrounded by people who care, people who care so much they’ve figured out how to get to the middle of Port Melbourne on a rainy Friday night to see them play. Dick-guy and his girlfriend have been shuffled off towards the centre of the crowd, and now I am having the best time.

When they start playing ‘Imaginary’ about halfway through the set, I am genuinely shocked. They did play it, or at least some of it, at the show Giselle and I went to, but it was part of this weird Fallen medley, which I understand why they did but didn’t really like that much. But this time it’s the whole fucking song! I have no one to grab hold of this time, but in my shock I let out a ‘what the fuuuuck’, to no one in particular. The whole crowd starts singing along, and I want to take a video to send to Aidan, but then I’d have to explain where I was and why, and also I hate taking videos at gigs. So I just think of him the whole time and vow to give him a zine the next time I see him.

I break my no phones at gigs rule twice - once to take a video of Bring Me to Life for Giselle, and a second time to get a picture of Amy at her keyboards. I have this thing where if I am seeing someone whose music means a lot to me, I try and get a single picture of them so that I can print it out and put it on the window sill above my desk. I guess they work for me kind of like those Catholic saint cards - instead of Joan of Arc or the Pope, I have people like Amy Lee, Angie McMahon, Grace Cummings and PJ Harvey, to watch over me while I write. I can see her now, as I sit here at my desk and finish this post, next to a photo I took of Rome Vega from RVG at Meredith last year. Two very different artists, who both make very different styles of music, but whose songs have, at one time or another, made me feel more connected to loved ones, to strangers, to myself. Going to this Evanescence show, on my own, I realise that the connection is still there, and that Amy deserves a place on my weird little window sill altar as much as the rest of them. She deserves to be there because she is good, not just because she was the first.


instax poloroid photos of Romy Vega playing guitar and Amy Lee playing keyboards, sitting on a window sill

* Now I actually think The Open Door is a better album than Fallen, even though I still love Fallen more. It’s more complex, and you can tell Amy has broken free from the restrictions that co-founder Ben Moody was trying to place on her, before he left the band in 2004.

** I didn’t write this bit in real time because I was pretty sure this guy was also looking over my shoulder at one point to try and read what I was writing, and as much as I wanted him to know how I felt, he was also really tall and genuinely kinda scary.



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