After weeks of pleading and grueling hours of talking to my parents, I was able to convince them to go to the Dubai Jazz Festival. There was one specific band, Lifehouse, that I was dying to see. Lifehouse is a band that has been together for almost eleven years and I fell in love with them after hearing one of their songs play in the first seasons of Smallville.
As soon as the band walked on stage the whole crowd went silent, among the thousands of people there was actual silence! People from different countries flew to dubai just to attend the concert. People of different cultures, some living in dubai and some from outside, all came together for one purpose. To forget about the world for ,what was originally, 90 minutes and become consumed in the world of amazing music. The perfect example of collective effervescence, even though i've never been to a sport event, I am quite sure the energy in this group would have topped any other crowd.
Jason Wade takes the mic and the crowd goes crazy, screams and applause were heard all over the place. The whole crowd was standing and swaying along with the music, singing the words to every single song being played. Even the songs in their new album made the fans get hyped up. Halfway through the concert the band started asking song requests from the audience and immediately they got a million requests. Jason Wade was genuinely shocked by the amount of people that knew their songs, he even began to say that they were initially planning on skipping this part of the show because they didn't expect anyone in the middle east would know any of their songs.
I guess its true what they say, always save the best for last. Their last few songs were out of their older album and you could hear the whole crowd sing along to all the lyrics of every song.
Between songs Jason would talk about random trips they went on in dubai and how he found sand dunning to be absolutely terrifying.
At one point, the lead singer's guitar microphone stopped working. While they were trying to fix that problem backstage, Jason began singing an acapella version of one of my favorite songs of all-time, the storm, and it was definitely the best version of the song i have ever heard.
The concert was supposed to end at exactly midnight and the band said their goodbyes and how they hope to play another concert in dubai and then they all left the stage. No one moved from where they were standing and the whole crowd began to chant WE WANT MORE! This went on for about 10 minutes and people did not want to give up.
I finally see Jason come back to the stage and the crowd went wild, screaming out the songs they wanted to hear again. The band begins to play the full versions of their older songs such as Everything, Broken, Hanging by the moment, and everyone in the crowd is beaming from ear to ear overcome with excitement. Even though no one knew each other it still felt like we were all the closest of friends, smiling and laughing with one another.
The show ended with the song Everything and it was the perfect ending to the perfect concert.
