By Roberto Barreto
This is a very personal chronicle of how I lived my first concert of Alter Bridge (11-13-2023). After making this announcement, I feel freer to give myself license and not follow the —sometimes— tedious and common narrative thread that corresponds to a journalistic report (give the set-list, describe the most important moments of the concert, interview the fans , quote the words of the artists, etc.).
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The concert of Alter Bridge at the Caupolicán Theater in Santiago, Chile was the most significant of my life. I’ve been listening to the band since 2005, since I was 13, when I got hooked on WWE again and realized that the wrestler Edge had a new entrance theme: ‘Metalingus‘. The song is an anthem for many wrestling fans, which conveys rebellion against the adversities of everyday life and the ghosts that we all have, but most make a mistake: they do not dare to review what AB has to offer in addition to she.
I did dare to check it out and found on the disk One Day Remains lyrics that described the loneliness of not having a family member or loved one, and an attempt to find oneself; accompanied, of course, by the pleasant voice of Myles Kennedy and the heavy rock of the former members of Creed (Mark Tremonti, Brian Marshall and Scott Phillips). The rest of the albums only made me confirm that I had found the soundtrack of my life.
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One of the debts I have is that I tried together with other passionate guys to bring the band to Peru since 2011, but it didn’t happen no matter how hard we pushed, since it wasn’t profitable for the production companies. When someone wants to imply that Peru is a rocker, I prefer to change the topic because it is clear that other genres connect with the Peruvian genre in a more spontaneous way and not necessarily because of the responsibility of the mass media (although they already stop with ‘Of light music’, ‘ Avenida Larco’ and ‘Sexo’, please, when it’s your turn to play rock).
In 2017 the chance to meet Alter Bridge, but things turned out tragic for me. In 13 years of being created, the band would make its first tour in South America (Brazil and Argentina, you know). My old and skinny friend Omar, administrator of Alter Bridge Peru and a fervent fan, informed me of the good news; He was very happy and in a hurry because he already wanted to buy entry to Argentina, book the flight, see how his passport was going, find out if a visa was necessary and know where the group would stay. We knew he wouldn’t be missing, but me? I had to look at my financial situation due to some expenses I had been making.
Does matters! We’re going to Argentina, I see how I can do it. Omar did me the favor of buying my ticket. Excited, I uploaded my ticket online, and received good vibes from my friends and family through their positive reactions. Facebook, who had had to endure my continuous posts about the band many times. I needed to see the flight and stay packages, and start to see the economics, but I received the worst blow in my life.
My mother suffered a fatal accident that caused her death days later in a local hospital. Very affected, I told Omar what was happening and she understood that he had no head. It wasn’t the time for the band he loved so much, it wasn’t the time for anything really, beyond being with the family. I think that the premature death of a loved one and in unforeseen circumstances is never overcome, but one ends up eating his song for periods and continues working, getting excited, singing the songs of his favorite band and those of his soccer team.
2023 arrived. 6 years passed and, although the pain was, ‘Life Must Go On’. During that time many important things happened: I married my accomplice, Mirian, with whom I have been in a relationship for 9 years; I bonded more with my family; I adopted cats that, although they do not replace human warmth, you manage to perceive that they care for you and you learn to love them; I got a better position in my career and with greater stability; I saw my team suffer bad moments, but also win 3 times, 2 of them, me in the stands; etc
I had put Alter Bridge aside a bit and focused a lot on my first months of marriage and going to the court; I hadn’t heard at all, in fact, ‘Pawns and Kings’, but when—again—Omar told me that they were coming to Brazil, Argentina and Chile, I told myself that it was my time. It was time to travel, to get rid of the thorn and listen to the band with which I identified so much.
After 3 months of waiting, the time had now come to travel to the sister country, from which I admire its folklorist Violeta Parra and I am always grateful to the Colo-colo club for the gesture it had when my club suffered its worst tragedy ( The plane that his players were on crashed and they all died, in 1987) while lending players. The concert happened at a precise time for me. I was sad because—again, football and the stands—my club had just lost a final days before, that is, a season was thrown away, so I needed to clear my head, and Alter Bridge helped in that task, with which I was able to reconnect. .
Already in Chile, Mirian and I went sightseeing with Omar and other Peruvians—and Brazilians—before Monday, November 13. Although we could be 300 meters up on the Costanera Sky or dining at the Hard Rock Café, the main theme was Alter Bridge. It was going to be my first time and little by little I became hooked on what it meant to see them, although I preferred to avoid reviewing the set-list.
The Caupolicán Theater has mystique. It has a cozy atmosphere suitable for intimate concerts, but at times you feel like you have to be alert to the unexpected and anarchy, because of how close you are to the stage, because of the permission they give to drink canned beer and bottles of water for sale. , by the usual – and necessary – pushing that occurs at concerts and by the low railings on the balconies in the upper sector. Yes, that’s rock and roll, but I’m already over 30, you’ll excuse me.
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When Alter Bridge went on stage at 8:35—Mirian and I in the fourth row, on the left; while Omar in the front row—memories of my mother came to me and I marked an unlocked achievement check in my head, like in video games. They opened with Silver Tongue and applause and screams rained down from the crowd. My wife, not such a fan but committed to the cause of learning all the songs she could, watched me rock out, a facet that she has rarely seen.
‘Addicted to Pain’ and ‘Cry of Achilles’ made me jump, sing and pog, the latter inside me, while ‘Broken Wings’ and ‘Burn it Down’ served to take the intensity of the concert down a notch, but also to remind me how deep and melancholic the band’s lyrics are.
The most magical moment came when Myles Kennedy sings and plays ‘Wonderful Life’ solo. With lip service, many of us say that we will cry when we see our favorite band, and sometimes one tries to force the feeling just by living in the moment, which, in turn, is not necessarily wrong, but in my case everything was natural. The song started playing and I hugged my wife from behind, I moved slowly to the rhythm of the beautiful song and started singing it. I wanted to replicate that scene seen at the 2011 Wembley concert, when a couple was captured hugging while that piece was playing and I was doing it now; What I didn’t know was that my tears were going to come out like rain, just like the song says.
Immediately came ‘Watch Over You’, which I sang despite my out-of-tune voice. Suddenly, guitarist Mark Tremonti sits next to Myles and I think they are going to play ‘Words Darker Than Their Wings’, but no, he starts playing with Myles ‘In Loving Memory’, the song he composed in tribute to his mother. deceased. Mirian asks me what they are going to sing because he had not had the chance to listen to it and I explain that this song is for the mothers who were no longer with us.
Mirian quickly understands that she must hug me tighter, that I am going to collapse and that she must always be by my side in those moments, as well as me with her. Crying thinking about my mother and being wrapped up was very good for me. It was a necessary relief; I’m sure I’m going to continue crying for her, but I feel that, at the concert, in the corners of Caupolicán, I have left another Roberto, and that the one who is already in Lima will above all smile when he remembers her. Although I must say that he wasn’t the only one crying, because I saw several people – tough metalheads too – shed tears, how beautiful.
For their part, not only the fans had an incredible time, the band was surprised that all their songs were chanted – sometimes shouted – and that there were balloons prepared for ‘Blackbird’s’ turn and to turn the recital into a party almost popular. They even said that they did not remember such a vibrant concert and that they would like this to be recorded on a DVD to market it.
The time has come for ‘Metalingus’, the most anticipated song. For me, it all started with that song in 2005 and I could listen to it live after 18 years of playing it on MP3, stereos, DVDs, Blue-Ray and computers. As the song says, on this day I see clearly that everything has come to life, and that the bitter places and broken dreams we will leave behind.
The audience, as in the entire concert, was up to par and enjoyed the masterpiece; We tried to do the pogo or a circle pit, but we were all very crowded. Anyway, everything was lived like a Copa Libertadores match. When Metalingus finished, I smiled for many seconds and was satisfied. Dreams fucking come true, as Myles once said in a concert before performing the aforementioned song.
But some were missing, ‘Open Your Eyes’ and ‘Rise Today’, 2 anthems from their first 2 albums. They were the icing on the cake of the concert of my life. I had just been at the presentation that I had been waiting so long to be at and for which I had to travel. We looked for Omar for a final photo, but he was as in demand as the members of Alter Bridge themselves, since he is well known in the band’s fan community and several Chileans—and even Argentines and Brazilians—were asking for a photo. The photo with us could wait; The most important thing was what we had just witnessed.
Thank you, Alter Bridge, for your lyrics, your art and because you made me remember that I find a refuge in you; thanks to the production company that opted for it to arrive in Chile; thanks to the friends I met through the band and thanks to my wife for holding me when ‘In Loving Memory’ came on.
#Alter #Bridge #Chile #quotDreams #fking #truequot
