Have you ever had a dream when, sometime later in the day you can't exactly remember what the dream was about, but you can remember the feeling that it gave you? That's the closest I can come to explaining what this Spiritualized show was like. It's not so much what happened at the show – though I can certainly tell you some - as it is how I felt during it and how it resonated long after.

Now, I'm not some flake. I've been to tons of shows, mostly punk rock or high-energy rock & roll bands, but I try to keep an open mind. A friend of mine whose musical taste I trust said he was going to see Spiritualized and it would be great and did I want to go and I said, Sure, I'm always up for something new.

I really didn't know what to expect – I had never heard them before and didn't really know what they were about. I've since bought the records, which have become a major part of my listening life. At the show, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club opened and they were super lame, not at all living up to their press as the Next Big Thing. Real snoozers. After they finished there was about a ½ hour delay and then the lights went out and Spiritualized started their 2 ½ hour set.

Here I am again, kind of blanking. Maybe some specifics: there must have been more than 20 people onstage, which included 4 electric guitar players, a full horn section, maybe 3 keyboard players, a piano player, various percussionists, many others, and Jason Pierce, who IS Spiritualized. He sat on a stool with an acoustic guitar facing the side of the stage and the rest of the band. The songs built so slowly - the whole sound of everything could be so lush and full, slowly slowly building to incredibly loud, total atonal madness - with all 4 guitar players abusing the shit out of their instruments, making sounds mimicking the tremendous emotional pain in the songs - and stop on a dime, where Pierce would just be strumming his acoustic guitar, almost crying, "I don't even feel it, but Lord how I need it, when I'm not with her, I'm not all myself / Sometimes have my breakfast right off of the mirror, sometimes I have it right out of the bottle, come on."

Pierce apparently embraced heroin, and it's a theme that runs through many of his songs. The liner notes to Spiritualized's 1997 album Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space are designed to look like a prescription insert, and the songs are about how the only antidote to lost love is losing yourself in drugs, though Pierce finds that doesn't do it either. I've heard that many people go to Spiritualized shows tripping out on ex and whatever else is around. Certainly part of the whole experience of the show is the lights. The incredible sonic dynamics of the band live were equally matched by the visual stuff. At many shows the lights are kind of an afterthought, almost like something the band feels they have to do, but these guys mirrored the visual stuff exactly with the music. The horribly painful passages of feedback and white noise and anger and the chaos of drug addiction were matched by absolutely blinding lights, so much so that you couldn't see the band for long stretches of time. And I kid you not: I saw two slumped-over people get dragged out of the show by cops and another taken out on a stretcher. No shit. It sounds contrived and hard to believe as I'm writing this but when it happened it made total sense and I understood why completely.

I mean, I've certainly never experienced a concert having anything like this totally naked emotional pain before, in both the music and the visual experience, and it was really, really affecting. Again, I'm no flake, but there were many times where I was almost in tears, and I wasn't the only one – I saw people openly crying and others just hanging their heads and staring at the ground.

So all this sounds like some sort of religious epiphany. It isn't. It is an amazing thing for me, though: I'm 34 and had no beliefs that any new music could 100% blow me away anymore (like London Calling did on the first spin, or even Ok Computer), and, happily, I was 100% wrong. I've bought the records and they're all great in their own individual way (though Ladies and Gentlemen. . .is the best, I think). Not to detract from the records but the live show is the records squared or cubed or whatever is next. And this might sound kind of twisted but feeling and completely realizing and empathizing with someone else's crippling emotional pain can be quite an incredible experience, though admittedly it's not for everyone. But if you are one of those people who are really driven by your feelings, I think you'll get as much as I did out of a Spiritualized show. I can't wait to see them again.