Joshfest 2011
by Jonathan Joseph
November 8, 2022
Melancholic is when you feel this sort of subtle sadness. It’s a feeling that is incredibly vague but everyone can empathize with. It’s a feeling I felt during the end of summer before my first year of college. Now there's two choices one can make when you're melancholic, either succumb to the melancholy, or hastily throw a concert named after your friend and hope to every god imaginable that it goes well. With no hesitation my friends went with option two. Originally the concert was supposed to be a classic battle of the bands at a local high school. However, a day before the battle of the bands was set to take place, the high school pulled out and canceled the event. Instead of accepting defeat my friends took it upon themselves to make the concert happen. They found a venue in our hometown's park district building, and a few hours later an Instagram story announced that Josh-Fest 2011 is on.
All I could feel during the day was anticipation and excitement. This was the final hurrah of high school with all the people I love, and we planned on going out with a bang. The venue itself was a decently sized concert hall with white walls and a wooden stage. There were chairs lined up against the walls and a perfect amount of room in front of the stage for a mosh pit. As time passed the venue started filling up with friends and family. The anticipation was killing me, every second that passed felt like an hour. Finally, a friend's voice flowed through the air announcing the beginning of Josh-Fest 2011. The lights went off and the crowd roared with excitement.
The energy once the music hit was otherworldly. I was with my friends at the front of the stage, getting our eardrums blown up by the speakers. We came into this concert ready to lose our minds. My friends and I kept starting mosh pits and dancing. Every band that played kept the crowd energized. Playing music from bands like The Pixies or Weezer, every song was performed masterfully. Watching all my friends on stage perform music that they worked so hard to create was so blissful. The covers were done wonderfully, every chord and beat was perfect. After hours of dancing and enjoying the music all the bands got up on stage for one final song. Dozens of people donned their instruments and played Say it Ain’t So by Weezer. Multiple guitarists tiredly played the same riff, three people played the same keyboard, and we all sang our hearts out. This song somehow became our anthem, and we embraced it fully. The song finished; the crowd roared one final time; Josh-Fest 2011 was over. Josh-Fest represented the convergence of creativity with all my friends. I witnessed all these people being passionate about one single thing that was so important to everyone who was involved with it and watched it. Josh-Fest 2011 had an underlying melancholy to it, because it marked an important change in all our lives, going to college. Yet that change was a good thing, we were all taking important steps to adulthood, but through this concert we were able to just be kids for a single night. This night will always be in a special place in my heart, and I can’t wait to return home to experience Josh-Fest 2012.
Jonathan Joseph