The loudest sound I have ever heard was Hampton before a note was played

Five years off. A lot of people, myself included, had quietly filed the whole thing under "over."

Then the lights went down at Hampton and the noise the building made was not applause. Applause has a texture. This was one solid wall of sound that arrived before the band did and stayed for a genuinely uncomfortable length of time. The woman next to me was sobbing and had not yet heard a note.

I've been in loud rooms. I've been at a game seven. This was different because it wasn't for anything that had happened — it was pure relief, twenty thousand people exhaling at once.

Then Fluffhead. Of course Fluffhead. They knew exactly what they were doing.