I imagined the music being calmer and more serene, still loud and echoing, but not at all muddled or overbearing. I had read about the 20-minute wall of noise during "You Made Me Realise" that usually concludes their sets, so I gladly accepted the free earplugs being distributed at the door. But some part of me hoped that "The Holocaust" -- as that segment has come to be known -- would be the only time I'd need to guard my eardrums. In short, I felt more like I was watching a metal band than an indie rock or dream pop band. I know that's partly due to the band's noise rock roots and their close stylistic ties with other late '80s noise groups like Sonic Youth. However, I've always held firmly the idea that the live setting is the truest test of a band's abilities. I'm not suggesting that MBV aren't respectable performers, but their priorities for a live show didn't match my expectations. They seemed much more concerned with creating thunderous white noise than accurately reproducing the songcraft as it was captured on the albums.

I know that in some ways this will come off as passive venting, but I can't be the only one who feels this way. The finale was terrifying, to say the least. And I've seen a lot of scary loud music live. Growing up in the shadow of Detroit's FM radio, I ended up at Lollapalooza or Ozzfest each summer, and after either daylong festival, my ears sometimes buzzed for more than 48 hours. I've seen Slayer and Pantera, two of the loudest metal bands in history, and neither was as dedicated as MBV to churning out droning, atonal noise. The Holocaust was more felt than heard -- kind of like sitting in an electric chair that's situated in a wind tunnel -- and despite its intense, blob-like nature, it actually came in stages, or at least it produced different kinds of sensations or emotions.

The first was a state of awe. It seemed like nobody in the crowd could believe how loud the band was playing. The second was a state of fear. It was a combination of fears actually: like the moment in a zombie movie when your father or mother becomes infected and you or someone near you has to kill them immediately; also, I felt like Raymond K. Hessler in Fight Club, the convenience store clerk whom Tyler Durden pulls out back at gunpoint and asks, "What do you want to do with your life? What do you want to be?" I guess the two scenarios aren't that different after all. There was another fear that I couldn't clarify until after I left. There used to be a rumor that Tom Morello pumped so much voltage through his guitar that, if he made a mistake, it would kill him. Well I felt like MBV were blasting so much sound through their amps that, if they pressed a secret button, it would kill me. This chaotic fear was so pervasive that, as a momentary escape from the situation, I tried to think of the last time I was so afraid of a musician. In the late '90s I saw the music video for Aphex Twin's "Come To Daddy," in which a giant-mouthed monster screams point-blank at an old lady. It practically gave me nightmares.

This brings me back to the idea of dreams. The My Bloody Valentine show was like a dream, or a trail of different dreams sequences, in which some parts are pure bliss, and some rank among the darkest night terrors of your life. Unfortunately, the finale was long enough to allow a third state: annoyance. By the 12- or 14-minute mark, the faces in the crowd looked exhausted, bored, or frustrated. The applause and clapping seemed to be done perfunctorily. We had been facing some dark demons for a while, but from whence did they come? Were they our own demons mirrored in the music, or the band's interpretation of a demonic world? Personally, I had driven four hours to see MBV because I thought they would evoke the same optimistic soul-spark as a band like Broken Social Scene. Only during a few songs did I feel like the drive was justified, and those were songs from Loveless, specifically "To Here Knows When" and "Soon."

If anything, the show was a demonstration of how much time has passed, and how much has actually changed, since MBV's hiatus began in 1993. Perhaps it's their analog versus our digital recording method. Maybe I've gotten too used to live performances that feature sound quality on par with the recorded albums. Shields uses stacks of Marshall amps that more closely resemble early '80s arena rock than the single-amplifier, laptop-altered hook-ups of the new millennium. And the band was borne of the "me generation," not the "YouTube generation."

Then it hit me. I didn't even find My Bloody Valentine until around 2005. I had been approaching their music from the perspective of this decade, which is, in terms of music, infinitely different than the 1990s. Music writers like me had been attributing very much credit to the band for their influence over the past 20 years. Maybe the credit was unwarranted. Maybe Loveless was a fluke. Their other recordings certainly wouldn't top any decade lists. I had noticed that Loveless fails slightly when heard on vinyl, and that's not something I can say about my other favorite albums. Like any music junkie, I'd readily claim that my favorite albums sound better on vinyl.

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