I've been calling this summer my summer of music. I've been to a total of 5 concerts in my life. The past two have been this summer, and they have been amazing.

Weekend before last I saw Mason Jennings. I wasn't familiar with his music, but I loved the concert. It was in this old classic theater with ornate carvings and vaulted ceilings. I think i spent half the time watching the lights play on the ceiling. The way they mixed with shadow was beautiful.

Mason was wonderful too. I couldn't make out all the words to his songs because I'm not familiar with them, but the music was phenomenal, and I think I got a little misty a couple times. Especially the song, "In Your City." So sweet. I had such a marvelous time with friends. When I wasn't watching the ceiling or watching the stage, I was snickering with dembrat. It was worth the ticket price to get to hang out.

I didn't think that concert could be beat for fun. And it couldn't. But, musically and emotionally speaking it was blown out of the water by the concert I went to this past Saturday. I saw Devotchka in a small theater about an hour and a half from where I live.

The opening band was good, but I wasn't expecting much from what came next. I mean, I knew Devotchka was good, but I was overheated and annoyed with one of my concert mates. But then Devotchka came on, and nothing mattered.

It was esoteric instrument night, apparently. Over the course of the evening, in addtion to the normal guitar, drums, upright base, violin (which was played so fiercly, he burned through some strings on his bow) and trumpet, I heard the accordian, the tuba (which was wreathed with red twinkle lights), the mandolin, the saw, and the theremin
At one point, the lead singer was playing the thermin (which is played by changing one's proximity to the instrument) with the neck of the electric guitar he was playing. It made such a haunting sound.

Devotchka opened the show by Nick raising a bottle of wine to the crowd and taking a swig. They began to play a slow gypsy tune and I was hooked. The theater was small, holding only maybe 200 people, standing room only.

During the faster songs, the crowd would start dancing in time to the music. The enthusiasm of his hard-core fans was contageous. The energy of the room rose higher and higher and higher, and then came to a dead stand still (or maybe it was just vibrating too fast to see) when he played How It Ends. This was the only song I'd heard before of Devotchka's, and I'd fallen in love with it. But. It was nothing like hearing it live. I grinned when I recognized the first few notes. "This is the one we know!!" I said excitedly to a concert mate. And then I turned my head back to the stage just in time to hear him sing the first few words. My heart and my jaw dropped. As far as I was concerned, there was no other noise in the room. I was towards the back of the crowd, but suddenly, the lead singer was all I could see. He had a double microphone to create an expansive effect. And it worked. Oh my how it worked.

His voice filled the theater and I felt like the room had suddenly become 10 times the size. His voice had to have reached the stars themselves. As he sang the words I listened to over and over when I had said goodbye to a dear boy I loved, I felt frozen to the floor. I physically could not move. Nor could I stop the tears that started to stream down my face. I may have stopped breathing.

And then he turned the microphone around and all the instruments stopped for us to finish off the chorus. "And you already know how this will end." And it was perfect. We all knew the words and suddenly, we were all supporting each other in voice, and our voices were reaching the stars too. I was crying and smiling because I have never been so connected to my fellow concert goers. And he turned the microphone back on, and the music swelled, and my heart broke and it was beautiful. It was exquisite.

I can't remember any specifics of the music after that, except that each song brought an amazing energy to the stage, and I couldn't keep myself from dancing along.

This is my summer of music. My sensible side said I should have been saving up the money for future use, because goodness knows I could use it. But with the experiences I've had so far, I wouldn't trade them for the world. No matter what the tickets cost, you can't buy memories like that for any price.