So i think i finally understand. I think that all the times i thought i understood in the past i was wrong.  Now, i finally get it. Just what the hell am i talking about?  I guess i should tell you.  
   Tonight i went to a concert, not something that unusual, but tonight's concert was different.  Concerts in the past have done different things for me, each thing special and necessary to me, but this one surpassed and carried me to a new level.   
   Classical music, jazz, and opera do something  very real and special to me, each in their own unique way.  In some way or another they all take my mind into an arena of serenity and clear thought.  Coasting through the avenues of my mind with alternating clear purpose and knowing abandon.   I love the feeling of sitting there, hearing a song that can take my mind and make it coast.  Leaving the world and its contents behind.  I suppose the two words that represent this feeling the best for me are peace and emptiness. 
   Rock and roll and things of that nature are also good. I like to listen to the music and in a shallow sort of way i can lose myself to it.  When i feel the beat, and the energy of the music, i start to tap, and move to the rhythm and if it is good enough, all that remains important is the moving, and the rhythm and the beat.  This has always been good.  These sort of concerts have always worked best in bars, pubs and etc, because there i feel free to dance and cavort and truly become one.  The few large concerts of this nature that i have seen, i have enjoyed, to an extent but not enough.  They always managed to take away from the music itself, and the voices and the etc, in a live situation.  I just couldn't enjoy it as much.  And if i was going to shell out $50....well let's just say it wasn't better than playing the CD in my home.  
   This has always confused me more than a little, here are all these people that love live concerts more than anything, will go to almost any lengths to see them.  It just never made sense to me.  Best i could determine was that it was some sort of hero worship that made things more real and better when you could feel the presence of the musician there with you.  Tonight this all changed.  

   I went to see the Barenaked Ladies, opened by Chantal Kreviazuk.  The first act, Chantal, was phenomenal, amazing and much to short, she almost fits into the same category as jazz and classical for me, i really enjoyed seeing her.  And if i must, i will even admit that there was some level of hero enjoyment there as well (i really like her).  But then came on the Ladies, and to tell the truth i wasn't expecting much more than to enjoy the concert, as i always do. 
   I could not be more wrong.  As i watched these men on stage i began to notice a different sort of feeling that i have had before.  I could feel the energy of this band, pouring out of them like a cascading sheet of water, and then as it hit the audience, returning to the band, as if a wave, building back up as a tidal wave.  And then it would come back.  The energy just began to build and grow.  I could feel this energy.  i don't know if i have ever felt anything like this.  I could feel tingling grow through my arms and into my chest, coursing through my body, impeded by nothing physical.  The best i can liken it to is as an adrenalin rush, hitting my fingers and coming back again. 
  For this concert i was also under a bit of a disadvantage.  According to my doctor, i might have what is known as trauma induced asthma (the trauma being a bad chest cold, not a beating in an alley).  What this means is i am pretty much constantly short of wind and as the day goes on, i get progressively shorter.  At this point tonight i was feeling the pain quite a bit, so i had told myself when i sat down in the seat, that i would not jump up and down, i would not scream, i would take it easy.  And as things went on i realized that i had no choice in this really, i couldn't have shouted if i had wanted. 
   An interesting thing happened with this as i let the energy of the performance overtake me.  My adrenalin did start to move, my heart started to pound, and i could feel my lungs begin to gurgle.  I was moving so much more blood that my body was starting to labour.  Just from sounds coming from the stage.  It is as if i had been plugged into a wall socket with more energy to help myself move at a higher metabolism.  I was actually frightened a little, but thought, what the hell, i don't see this very often.  I let it carry me away. 
   Then something even cooler happened.  I began to, get, moved by the music.  Normally, music has very little to almost no power to make me feel emotions.  I can't remember any sort of emotional feelings arising from any concert in the past.  Not anything other than the sort of peace that i can now get.  Don't get me wrong, i have a very strong connection to music and it has a huge effect on my being, but, not to the point where listening to a song actually induces emotion.  In this concert, i was almost batted from one emotional state from each song to the next.  I experience joy, sorrow, elation, happiness, consternation, and more, so many that i can no longer even remember them now. 
  I found myself drifting into weird patterns of thought as well.  All of a sudden seeing patterns of proactive effort that i could make in my life.  Finding all different threads of creativity and thoughts bursting all over in my head.  It is as if the energy that they were pouring into me was setting me free.  This feeling was so incredibly above and beyond the interesting blankness and coasting of tripping to music that, i have no words for it. 
   My point, being, i finally get, why people can love a concert so much.  Why the gathering of people can be so good for them.   The energy of the crowd.   I guess i shall be trying it again.

   In case you didn't get it in there, the Barenaked Ladies give you a show like no other.  It was unique in my experience.  They have certainly changed from the band on stage in a bar, cracking a couple of wise, and singing their songs.  Now they put on a show.