Stamping our feet to stave off the negative-degree night air, we stood – a crowd of about two thousand, and I – on the cracked concrete pavement, sandwiched between a Victorian church and the Forum theatre in Kentish Town. The adjoining wall was partly collapsed and there was broken glass everywhere. A police van was parked there, half on the sidewalk, blocking off part of the street. It was a pretty rough place, yeah. “North of the river, innit?” a guy in front of me remarked. I stared at him subtly, not because of what he said, although it was pretty stupid; South London was way worse. Rather, I stared because of his…unique(?)…fashion sense; he was wearing a lab-coat length jacket that was tucked into his massive boots, open from the back to show off his back to everyone. Strange stuff you could see, north of the river at this time of night.
But that was okay. The atmosphere was electric and everyone seemed to be in the 15-25 age range, having loud and lively conversations. I heard names like ‘The Strokes’ and ‘Led Zep’ being dropped frequently, and people were discussing rock albums and guitar chords. This was great. There was also other stuff commonly related to good music, like ‘joint’, and more specifically ‘big joint’. But that was okay, too, especially since the police remained at a safe, out-of-earshot distance. In general, everyone was cold but obviously happy and excited too.

The Forum didn’t open the doors till thirty-five minutes after they said they would, but I was sure it would be worth it. Cage did, after all, have a massive reputation for epic shows and incredible entertainment. I’d watched videos of them beforehand, and it looked promising – guitar-throwing was commonplace, and the shirtless Matt Shultz throwing himself into the crowd a staple. As everyone filed into the venue, I sprinted to the front to get near the stage. Looking around, the eighty-year-old building must have once been grand, with Roman-style frescoes covering the balcony wall and a clay-relief ceiling, but amplifiers and thumping feet had left it with cracked plaster and a faded, music-damaged veneer, while the stained and ragged carpet under our feet was a modern addition. Despite its apparent ugliness, all this gave its beauty greater depth. The damage was like war wounds; each one made the place what it was. The Forum: crap but unpretentious. So that’s what it was.

The show itself was loud and ungainly and brilliant, a cocktail of noise and color spiked with the wails of a crowd in alcohol- and rock-fueled hysteria. Incredible stuff. The sound moved through us like a wave, the mosh pit its breaking point. I don’t remember too much. One clear image is that Matt Shultz wore white dancing shoes. He did tear off his shirt and crowdsurf. I later heard that he’d even jumped from the balcony. Turns out I was too distracted by a ginger-bearded idiot behind me, who thought it’d be fun to start a fistfight with a security guard. With feedback screaming from the amps and a delirious crowd behind them, Cage left the stage.

And then it was over. Back on the overenthusiastic rattling of a Northern Line tube train, just underneath Camden Town, I was staring at my shoes. They were covered in beer stains and dirt. Another relic of the night. My ears had a significant whine in them, and I couldn’t hear much else. I looked around the carriage to see the rest of the crowd from the show sitting, standing, and lying on the floor in various states of intoxication. There was one girl, in particular, who was lying on the floor of the train. I’m sure she was feeling every crashing corner, and I saw people step on her hand at least twice. But her face was alive with joy and love. Love of whom, of what? Cage? Music? Surely, it was of life itself.

It was a Thursday night in February, on a delayed tube train, in a rainy London. Bloody miserable, anyone would agree. And yet, there it was.

Music, bloody hell.