An Ode to the Barrier: My Life in Queues

I recently read the book 'Fangirls' by Hannah Ewens. It's a fantastic book, dedicated to the subsections of teenage girls who dedicate their life to musicians and bands. It's a book that I would recommend to anyone who spent time saving every precious penny just to go see that live concert one more time.

In it, one of the chapters focuses specifically on the practise of queuing outside concert venues for hours. Ewens interviews the girls who wait outside, the ones who camp with sleeping bags, food and water. The ones who wait.

Of all of the chapters in the book, this was one that resonated with me for a long time afterwards.

It resonated, because I used to do the exact same thing.

*

The last concert that I went to (before COVID, of course) was at the O2 Arena in Shepherd's Bush, London. Although I was a fan of the headlining act (Cavetown), I'd actually bought the tickets as a bigger fan of the supporting artist.

I'd had work that day, so I arrived at the venue just as doors were due to open. It was freezing in London that day, but I hadn't wanted to wear a coat for fear it would be too sweaty inside.

I spent thirty minutes shivering outside, watching people slowly trickle in to their seats or the standing section, before I realised that I'd lined up in the wrong queue. I eyed the crowd filing in warily - it seemed, other than parents, that I might have been the oldest person there.

Inside, I was seated in the upper circle. Too cheap to pay for the standing tickets, I crammed my knees into the theatre seats. Despite often going to concerts alone, it felt as though I was an anomaly at this gig. Around me seemed to be only large groups of friends or teenagers with their parents, and I felt obvious in my aloneness.

Directly behind my seat was a teenage girl and her dad. The girl was a huge fan, excitedly telling her dad about Cavetown as though he were a personal friend, a legitimate influence in her life. The dad was engaging her in conversation with a practised acceptance. Listening to them made me smile, thinking of the years that my mum endured the same kind of behaviour from me.

The giddy, excited way she was tripping over her words made it obvious that this was her first concert - or at the very least, the first concert she actually cared about.

This girl clearly was not there for the support artist. In fact, she spent her time while the support acts were playing wishing they would hurry up and finish; all she wanted was to see her favourite singer in the flesh.

Her excitement made me think back to the days when I would have felt the same, frothing at the mouth delight over being in the same physical space as a musician. Back to when I wouldn't want to complain about how my knees were cramped in the theatre seating, or about how the merch was overpriced and didn't have my left.

Back to when I would do almost anything to get a good space at a gig.

*

I once got up at four in the morning to get a bus to Dublin.

This was around six years ago, and I went with my best friend at the time. The two of us got on the bus still wearing our pyjamas, and we slept the entire two hour drive from Belfast's bus station to where we got dropped off on O'Connell Street.

Dublin, compared to Belfast, is a far busier city. It brims over with people: tourists; students; office workers. Unlike Belfast, the chances of bumping into someone you know on the street are minimal, especially if - like me - you don't actually know many people in the city to begin with.

Emboldened by this sense of freedom, my friend and I treated our trip like a novelty. We ate breakfast outside in our pyjamas, we talked loudly and excitedly, we spent far too much money on food. I had my mum's DSLR camera with me and I took every opportunity to snap a photograph.

However, we did actually have a reason for getting ourselves up so shockingly early - we were in Dublin to attend a concert. The band Fall Out Boy were playing that evening at the 3 Arena, with doors scheduled to open at 7PM.

After our trek around Dublin, my friend and I arrived at the 3Arena around 1PM, a full six hours before they were even due to let people in the concert doors. Despite our early arrival, we were so far back in the queue it was ridiculous.

There were groups of teenagers there with sleeping bags, piles of food, dozens of portable phone chargers. The space outside a concert becomes its own civilisation.

This is the world of a teenage fan.

*

Belfast is a pretty small city compared to most of the others usually featured on a UK and Ireland setlist.

As a result, if you’re going to concert after concert featuring the same genres of music, you start to get to know the people in the crowds.

As a teenager, I attended most of my concerts with the aforementioned best friend. Both of us were pretty heavily into the pop-punk, emo, alternative scene (in fact, our mutual love of the genres was how we had become friends in the first place.) The two of us had subscriptions to Kerrang! Magazine. We had CD collections that covered a wall of our room. We wore black and red eyeliner and skinny jeans with holes in and bought our hoodies from an independent shop in the corner of Belfast called Fresh Garbage.

During this time, we didn't just come to know each other, we also got to know the group of people who would come to every concert without fail.

We had nicknames for them: there was Twenty-One Pilots Guy, so dedicated to the band he followed their tour in America; there was Onsie Guy, who went to every show in a dirty Santa onsie, that I suspect he never washed; there was Claire, a girl from Donegal who hated how long she had to travel to get to the gigs, and who we always held a space for while we waited; there was; there was...

These people form the basis of my teenage years. I never met them outside of a concert, but for those hours in the liminal space of a concert queue, we were best friends. We knew everything about each other. We would fight for each other's space in the line, buy coffees for each other, go on group toilet trips together.

Belfast is a city known for it's divisions, but in the line of teenagers of an emo gig, I have never felt more united.

*

The longest that we ever queued for a concert was about twelve hours. It was Twenty One Pilots, in that nebulous time between their self titled album and Blurryface, where you might come across another fan online but rarely in person.

The concert was in the Mandela Hall of Queen's Student Union's old building, a place that I remember with deep fondness that has since been knocked down.

After twelve hours, when the concert security finally scanned our tickets and let us in, my friend and I stormed our way into the stage and managed to get a space against the barrier. Saying this, now, even typing it, leaves me flushed with delighted achievement.

Getting barrier at that Twenty One Pilots gig was a religious experience for me and my best friend. I still remember her calling our other friend when we got in, her hands shaking. As soon as the phone was picked up she said: we're at the barrier.

To a teenage music fan, getting to the barrier at a concert is the equivalent of winning the lottery as an adult.

Except, winning the lottery is all about luck - whereas getting barrier at a gig is hard work and slogging it out in the queue.

The front barrier of a concert is the crowning glory. The best thing you can hope for. Getting close enough you can press your sweaty hand against the metal bar, knowing, knowing that it’s presence is the only thing that separates you from the artist of your dreams.

Twelve hours sat outside the Student’s Union. Freezing arse, surviving off coffee from the café just inside and trying to ignore the judgmental looks that the university students gave us as they walked past.

Twelve hours and we got barrier.

The thing is, after that gig, Josh Dun, one of the two official members for Twenty One Pilots, actually came around the side of the venue to meet those who were waiting. I have a picture of this, where his arm is looped around my shoulder and I am smiling with bewildered delight.

The thing is, after that gig, I got far closer to the band than the barrier would have ever permitted, and yet when I think of that gig, it’s the barrier I think of first. The sheer glory of getting there. Seeing the music that close, one ear next to the speaker, both eyes on the band themselves.

My best memories are formed at the barriers of stages.

*

I don't queue for concerts anymore.

There are various reasons for this. I'm too broke to go to that many concerts. I feel too old when I hear the different ways that fandoms have evolved without me. I don't really listen to emo music anymore.

In fact, the sort of gigs I go to now tend to be indie bands that get played late night on BBC Radio 6. The venues they fill reach about 500 capacity, maximum. People turn up after the doors open.

But, I look at kids queuing outside concerts now, and I get that feeling in my chest - the one that could be a heart attack or could just be nostalgia. I think about how cold their hands must be. How much they must be busting for a wee. How much they wish they’d packed that extra breakfast bar because they’re fucking starving.

I also think about how they probably didn’t know everyone in that queue when they got there, but they will by the end of it.

*

I walk past kids in the queue for a concert now, and I think about how the best meal I ever had was a lukewarm slice of margherita pizza, passed down the queue to me by a guy I saw at every concert as a teenager.

We didn’t know each other’s names, we didn’t ever exchange social media handles. Yet he shared his pizza with me.

And, you know what? Maybe it wasn’t ever about the fucking barrier.

Maybe it was just about that. Standing in line with a group of people who care just as much as you do.

*

(Or, you know...

Maybe I’m older, and locked in my house because there’s a global pandemic on, and I’m romanticising the idea of being able to share pizza with strangers.

Who’s to say?)