The AV Club had this Q&A today where the staff all shared answers to this question:
This one was my favorite:
I know that one of my personal favorites was when I attended a midnight screening of the original Star Wars Trilogy back in about 1992. It was years before the Special Editions and the prequels pushed Star Wars geekiness into the mainstream and I still remember grinning uncontrollably as the lights went down and the entire packed crowd began chanting the opening scrawl out loud as it scrolled up the screen.
It’s true that sometimes the audience or the setting or the mood of an event elevates it, regardless of the entertainment value of the event itself. So what are your best shared cultural experiences, where seeing something with exactly the right group made it much more memorable and enjoyable?
Marah Eakin
Mine’s a bit of a cliché, but whatever. I was in England for a couple months during college to study Shakespeare and Tudor England. While I was there, being a total college-radio nerd and (at the time) insane Anglophile, I decided to see as many shows as I could. I went to a ton of little bar nights and saw Belle And Sebastian at the Royal Albert Hall, which was absolutely lovely. I think the absolute best thing I saw, though, was Radiohead’s 2001 “homecoming” concert in Oxford, which the group apparently organized. Beck and Sigur Rós opened, and the crowd was just massive. I remember being totally pleased that all those videos of UK festivals I’d watched was pretty accurate. Everyone pogoed, everyone sang along, and everyone was surprisingly nice to each other. Even the band seemed to be having a genuinely good time, and during its second encore, after seemingly stumbling halfway through “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” Thom just said into the mic “Aw, fuck it,” and launched into “Creep,” which the band hadn’t performed in years and years. And the crowd just went apeshit. Absolutely crazy. Seconds after the band wrapped up, it started pouring, and everyone made their way back to their respective buses, totally happy and totally soaked. It seemed perfect at the time, and you know what? It still does.
Mine’s a bit of a cliché, but whatever. I was in England for a couple months during college to study Shakespeare and Tudor England. While I was there, being a total college-radio nerd and (at the time) insane Anglophile, I decided to see as many shows as I could. I went to a ton of little bar nights and saw Belle And Sebastian at the Royal Albert Hall, which was absolutely lovely. I think the absolute best thing I saw, though, was Radiohead’s 2001 “homecoming” concert in Oxford, which the group apparently organized. Beck and Sigur Rós opened, and the crowd was just massive. I remember being totally pleased that all those videos of UK festivals I’d watched was pretty accurate. Everyone pogoed, everyone sang along, and everyone was surprisingly nice to each other. Even the band seemed to be having a genuinely good time, and during its second encore, after seemingly stumbling halfway through “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” Thom just said into the mic “Aw, fuck it,” and launched into “Creep,” which the band hadn’t performed in years and years. And the crowd just went apeshit. Absolutely crazy. Seconds after the band wrapped up, it started pouring, and everyone made their way back to their respective buses, totally happy and totally soaked. It seemed perfect at the time, and you know what? It still does.
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