Exploring Concert Experiences at Home and Abroad

PetCo Field in San Diego, California

Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan, combined age 176, brought their Outlaw Festival to Bangor recently, and eight days before that, Bonnie Raitt, age 75, graced our waterfront venue. I don’t get out to a lot of shows, but when three legends performed within walking distance of my home, I felt an obligation to pay homage.

I’ve been to a few shows at the Bangor Waterfront. At every one of them, people started streaming out early, in numbers noticeable from throughout the arena. It seems to be an American phenomenon at almost any public event and the norm for a concert experience.

My date was disturbed by the early exits. “You’ve got Willie Nelson playing what’s probably his last show in Bangor, and you can’t stay to the end?” she said. “Show some respect.”

Americans leave events early ostensibly to “beat the traffic.” I’ve got news for them. You can’t beat the traffic when you ARE the traffic.

I caught a Dylan show in Prague in April of 2019. I traveled by bus from Sofia, booked a hotel not far from the city center, and rode the tram for the three days I spent there. The concert was in a below-ground theater attached to an indoor shopping plaza. There was no sign bearing Bob Dylan’s name, no parking lot, and just enough space outside the venue for a tour bus or a truck to park and drop off people and equipment. I met a few fellow fans from several different countries, walking around like I was, eyes alight, asking strangers if they were indeed in the right place.

Not until two hours before showtime did a small poster go up in the lobby window, but when the curtain rose at 8 pm, the place was packed. Cameras and phones were not allowed, but binoculars were. (The Bangor Waterfront, for some inane reason, prohibits them.)

But the best of the Prague concert may have been its immediate aftermath. The bar remained open, and people got drinks and hung around to discuss the show. Almost no one drove there, and almost no one was in a hurry to leave. Outside on the sidewalk, a few enterprising young people hawked Dylan posters and tee shirts. The trams ran well into the night, enabling me to easily get back to my hotel after I’d had enough of the concert afterglow.

In Bangor, the concessions closed well before the end of the show, and any post-

concert conversations took place on the way to the exits.

This rush to leave is not confined to concerts. People drove far into Maine’s hinterlands last year to see the total eclipse of the sun. In Greenville, where I was, a few cars started up moments after the end of totality. Instead of savoring the denouement of the sky’s greatest spectacle, a few drivers wanted to shave a few minutes off the drive home.

The famous Kirk Gibson walk-off home run in the 1988 World Series is immortalized on video. As the ball flies over the fence and the crowd erupts with joy, you can see the brake lights of a car in the parking lot go on. The driver had obviously decided to make a quick getaway and catch the end of the game on the radio. I hope the small amount of time they saved was worth missing one of the great moments in baseball history.

Cars isolate us from one another. They turn shared experiences into jostling

competitions between people in bubbles, from which we can communicate only with hand gestures, horns, turn signals, and feints into an adjacent lane. They deplete our sense of community and exacerbate our sense of entitlement. We assume and demand ample parking at any event we choose to attend, even if diminishes our enjoyment of the event itself.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Concert venues could run shuttles to nearby communities before and after large shows. Restoring passenger rail to Bangor would give travelers a viable alternative to driving. Locals could use taxis or carpool or walk in greater numbers.

And we could all relax about leaving the venue as quickly as possible. What’s the hurry? A good concert is like a good meal. We should take the time to digest it.