Calan Mai – FIRST CONCERT EVER

In this First Concert Ever segment, the folk artist, Calan Mai, talks about his first concert ever. You can check out the feature, after the break.

Blink 182 was the first band I ever loved. In fact, I don’t believe I’ll love another band the same way again. That sort of attachment isn’t really possible as a fully-grown adult.

After receiving a copy of Take Off Your Pants and Jacket for Christmas—a secret gift from my older brother—I began loving Mark, Tom and Travis like family. With songs about ejaculation, unrequited crushes and divorce aplenty, this album was designed for the mind of an 11-year-old boy on the cusp of teenhood. I obsessively collected all music, footage and gossip about these man-children who changed my life.

Toward the end of 2003, Blink 182 released their self-titled magnum opus—a darker, more mature record concerning death, anxiety and the desperate longing of men now approaching their thirties. Following this, they announced an Australian tour. Naturally, I begged my mother for tickets and she obliged. After all, I was almost 13. If I was old enough to listen to songs about masturbating into tube socks, I was old enough to go to a rock concert.

I saw Blink 182 in the flesh in September 2004.

I still remember the foyer of Brisbane Entertainment Centre filled with longtime fans. T-shirts from past tours, tattoos of album cover art—everyone was older than me, with a history of adoration that ran deeper than my own. So I bought my first band T, entered the arena and found my seat to stake my claim. I was now officially a fan and no one could ever tell me otherwise.

They started with patented explosions of major key distortion and nursery rhyme melodies. The Blink recipe. I was immediately struck by the fact that Mark, Tom, and Travis were in the same room as me—that a single memory of their lives would now forever contain me—a young man drowning somewhere in that sea of screaming faces. I’d like to say I remember the whole show like it was yesterday, but mostly it’s faded from memory.

I can see images of a stage lit up in stripes of aqua and vermillion.

I recall being asked to remove my mobile phone and hold it in the sky like a lighter.

I remember three women behind me screaming the lyrics to ‘Feeling This’.

I remember crying to the verses of ‘Stay Together For The Kids’.

Blink 182 broke up shortly after this. The three of them have not shared a stage in Australia since. 2004 was the year I started learning guitar and wrote a punk song called ‘Dick Tease’. I can only guess where I drew the inspiration.

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