DMB looks like Stonehenge behind the white curtain.

The lawn full of zealots cheers like Wallace’s freedom-fighting Scots in Braveheart. Some part of me is terrified.

The curtain drops. The show begins.

*

Dave Matthews Band holds a special place in our musical/cultural zeitgeist. And I don’t mean ’special’ as in–pardon the term–retarded. Which is what makes DMB so intriguing: that you have to specify that a compliment to them is not, actually, a thinly veiled insult.

Just like the lead singer’s sexuality, they reside in a strange ether–somewhere between respected, neo-classic pop virtuosos and throwaway, sundress and spiked hair, Greek-system jam band. It’s hard for a music lover yet non-diehard fan to know what to make of them. And this two-stepping, blood-lusting crowd isn’t helping with an answer.

*

When someone says they like DMB, the rote response from people like me is, “Really?” When the fan confirms, you take a moment to pop-culturally undress and smile. “Yeah,” you admit. “I like DMB too.”

*

It’s far too rare in this mini-mall, pre-packaged, homogenized American shitculture to feel like something is an ‘experience.’ Remember those up-all-night, we-will-be-geniuses conversations back in freshman year of college, many to the soundtrack of Under the Table and Dreaming, or Crash? I have bad news for you, buckshot: Those were bullshit. If you could see a tape of those nights, you would immediately start reading up on astrophysics so you could invent a time machine to go back and punch yourself in the ear.

We were all idiots high off Lysol and middle-class dental gas. I would bet the majority of America doesn’t even remember what a true cultural experience feels like, we’ve been force-fed the prepackaged musical/web/television cheese for so long. At this point it’s like a memory of an appendage from a previous incarnation of the species. It’s somewhere in the paperwork, but nowhere on the walls, you know?

Experience.

The DMB concert at The Virginia Beach Amphitheatre wasn’t an experience. DMB doesn’t teach us anything. I doubt our grandchildren will know any of their songs. What they do is make you feel something, an alchemious, strength of a thousand men, young, dumb, and full of cum, futures-so-bright-we’ve-got-to-wear-shades feeling of being 19 years old again.

I guess that’s what makes DMB so great, and makes the people of Hampton Roads cheer like they’re ready for a revolution. DMB reminds me of what it was like to think I might just get to be President or play shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals one day. And for the members of the crowd who actually were 19 years old, shit, the music makes them feel like they might just get to stay that way.

No, DMB wasn’t an experience, but the crowd’s reaction was enough of one to write 462 words about it. And that–that–is something I will gladly pay $70 bucks for.