There’s a memory from 2010 that stays with me: standing in the crowd at DAVV Indore, listening to KK pour his soul into a microphone. It was soulful, it was effortless, and it was great. For over a decade, that remained my one and only concert experience, a perfect, singular data point in my personal history.
I always figured my lack of interest in live shows since then was just a “me” thing. Maybe I wasn’t enough of a “music head,” or perhaps I had just lost track of who’s topping the charts. But a recent weekend at Phoenix Marketcity (Bangalore) made me realize it’s not just indifference anymore.
I think I have officially reached the “get off my lawn” stage of concert culture.
I have learned to avoid malls on Christmas or other such holidays. If there’s one thing I hate more than traffic, it’s the hunt for a parking spot. So I waited for a “boring” weekend in March, thinking I had beaten the system.
I was wrong.
As we got closer to the mall, the traffic became a nightmare and then the parking lot was a battlefield. The culprit? A concert. After finally squeezing into a spot, I was greeted by something that looked less like a musical event and more like a mass migration. A queue so long that just getting past the gate looked like an hour-long commitment. An hour. Just to get in.
Naturally, I was curious. Who was the legend drawing this kind of devotion?
- The Performers: A band I had never heard of.
- The Audience: People willingly sacrificing hours of their lives to stand on asphalt.
To me, the math didn’t add up.
We have all seen the headlines about Gen Z piling up credit card debt for front-row concert seats. I used to think that was hyperbole. But seeing the sheer scale of it in person, the traffic, the one hour wait, the skyrocketing ticket prices and assuming the overpriced food and drinks to top it all, changed my mind. This isn’t just a music scene anymore. It’s a lifestyle statement, regardless of the financial or mental toll.
Maybe I am out of touch. Maybe there’s a magic in that queue that I am just not wired to feel. But as I walked past that sea of people to do my shopping, I felt a strange sense of relief.
While the KK concert in 2010 was only about the music, today’s concert culture feels like it’s more about the endurance test. The “I was there” badge of honor. And let’s be honest, the Instagram stories that go with it. The flex. The proof. The “look where I was last Saturday” post that lives on your feed for 24 hours and in your credit card statement for a lot longer. If being “in touch” means standing in a mall parking lot for three hours to hear a band I don’t know, I am perfectly happy staying in the dark.
