A Mocked and Paid Litany

I saw the Mars Volta live last week. It was numinous – I haven’t experienced anything like it before.

I’ve heard people bullshitting about the “energy” between a band and the audience before, and I don’t buy into much of it, but I really think that idea applies here. From the moment the band walked onto the stage, you could tell that everyone got the sense that they were just there to play music for you – not to Perform or to get through a certain number of songs, but to create an actual musical experience.

They played for more than three and a half hours, without stopping for even a moment.

I would almost call it traditional, because of the complexity of the compositions and the teamwork and interaction between band members, as well as Omar’s strong leadership, but I don’t think any traditional or classical music is so dynamic and allows so much improvisation whilst being so tight.

Omar would scurry around the stage telling the others what to do (while playing guitar), giving instructions and formulating complex plans, like in a cool battle with guitars and.. spaceships and stuff. You could catch Omar signalling the band when to drop. Band members would start their own Thing going and the rest of the band would accommodate it, and allow the focus to shift to whoever had something funky happening.

At one point, amongst incredibly heavy drumming and complicated keyboard compositions and the bass rhythm, a sort of improvised competitive game thing developed between Adrian on his sax and Omar. Omar would do something really complicated on the guitar and Adrian would try to emulate it. The stakes grew, with the rest of the band being cocky fuckers as they realised what was going on, and then Omar turned it onto the drummer, who was exhausted, and had the whole band wordlessly taunting him and egging him on. And all of it was a small arm branching off of another arm that was incorporated into.. some more arms.. that fused with the overall anthem and oh god it was amazing.

I’m unable to get a grasp on the ideas I’m trying to evoke, mainly because I have no musical training – something I regret. There’s a real sense, though, that this is what music is about. This isn’t just entertainment or showmanship, it’s real art. Of course there’s plenty of modern music that’s truly artistic, and I’m not really qualified to assess the art, but I’m still going to say that The Mars Volta sits at the top.