here's a paper I wrote about my first Papa Roach Concert. it was back in 2007 when they were headlining their Paramour Sessions Tour.

Impetuous Scars

The rise and fall of the crowd undulates with the heart-pumping rock music in which Tommy, Devin, and I are immersed. First Avenue is packed with energetic Papa Roach fans dancing about in their deflated personal bubbles. Everyone is in an ecstatic mood which is only heightened by the collectiveness that we feel, sewn together by the paradoxical melancholic and uplifting music flowing forth from the enormous speakers. Everything is taken in at once, the palpitation causing rhythm, the clean yet smoke-lingering smells, the hypnotizing lights, and the captivating lead singer.
The three of us stand sparsely separated on slightly elevated ground which provides a perfect view of ‘the pit’ and the phenomenal band. The music stops with the end of a song as does the beating of my heart, it’s as if the music is the only thing keeping it going. Silence bewilders the audience just long enough for the singer to say, “This next song saved my life,” before the few chords trigger the entire crowd to applause and scream wildly with anticipation. My heart recognizes it immediately as the emotionally out-pouring song “Scars” as does everyone else. Melodic lyrics encircle my heart in an unreal understanding and I almost involuntarily sing along as I find the words so easily as my own. I look to my right where Devin is also singing along and with a lighter in his hand held high and rather righteously. When the chorus begins for the first time, the trembling inside me feels as though it is the music coursing through me, healing the emotional scars I hide from everyone.
So clearly and beautifully the words, “I tare my heart open. I sew myself shut. My weakness is that I cared too much and my scars remind me that the past is real. I tare my heart open just to feel,” are sung. The energy, love, understanding, and hurt that is conveyed by the band and the fans is so powerful and overwhelmingly poignant that I would say it is life changing. The years I spent alone, made fun of, haunted, and utterly invisible and the scars the experiences have all left on my life were incapacitated by this powerful force. It is through this song that everything falls into place, cognitively and emotionally. When the last repetition of the chorus is sung, it is as if he is singly specifically to all of us, that we are all included in a realization by the one modification, “The scars remind us that the past is real.” There has never been such a singular moment of useful realizations I have ever been a part of.
In the midst of this concert I found my self in the affirmation of the band’s music which drips with meaning and real emotions, and in this large crowd’s familiar ability to relate to the implications of the lyrics as I do.