Collegiate Times

There's something about listening to music live that can't be captured over a pair of headphones.

For all the manufactured pop bliss that barrages the senses with synthesizers and vocoders, the raw experience of watching your favorite artist -- or in my case, rock and roll band -- play live captures a collective temporal moment that can't be replaced by listening over the headphones alone.

Because of the recent spell of warm weather, I've been thinking a lot of what I consider to be live music season -- the summer. Around the nation, thousands of people gather for a variety of music festivals depending on tastes and budgets.

One I've attended since its inception in the summer of 2006 is Virgin Fest, which usually takes a large variety of artists and puts them on stage at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. Throw in the typical August 90 degree weather and a few thousand of your new sweaty best friends, and you have yourself a musical experience unlike any other.

Of course the summer festival music experience has to come with a requisite disclaimer: If you do not like being hot as all Hades, cramped and occasionally crushed in the party pit, then you should avoid this scene at the cost of your precious sanity. However, if you can learn to appreciate these circumstances and persevere through the 10 acts taking the stage that day to make it to the headlining artist, you'll find a natural high unlike any other.

Though I might be confusing this feeling with being overcome by sheer delirium, you'll feel the ringing in your ears and the rattle in your bones. As long as you're not that dude who's wandering about in his boxers and a bandanna on his head asking where the "goods" are, I'd consider one to be in good shape.

Let's take last year's Virgin Fest for example. After a long day of enjoying the good (Iggy Pop, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, IGGY POP), suffering through the bad (Lil Wayne ... seriously, man, put down the guitar), and the awful (Paramore can put the price on a friendship), my friends and I had finally made it to the headlining sets of Kanye West and Nine Inch Nails.

I've never considered myself a huge Nine Inch Nails fan, but they put on a show I'm probably never going to forget.

The phrase "bow down before the one you serve" is a lot more commanding when it's being screamed by a massive crowd that surrounds you.

Along with the intense visuals that accompanied their show, Nine Inch Nails definitely earned their headline spot. Perhaps I was too quick to judge them with their song on the radio about fornicating like an animal.

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