Several months ago, I penned an installment of “Sonic Boom” titled “My Bloody Luck,” in which I lamented the fact that I would not be able to attend the September concerts held in New York City by the recently reunited Irish shoegazer band My Bloody Valentine. I noted that I have loved the group since 1993-approximately the same time they stopped touring, cracked up, split up and vanished from the face of the Earth-and it broke my heart and frustrated me to no end that I would be on vacation in San Francisco the two nights they would be back together in New York.

A day after that column was published, I was made aware of two interesting, enlightening facts: (1) I would not, in fact, be in San Francisco till the day after the first of two MBV shows at Manhattan’s Roseland Ballroom, meaning I could indeed see the band (I’m bad with things like calendars and clocks); and (2) As luck would have it, My Bloody Valentine would be performing in San Francisco during the time I was scheduled to be there. Soon after that, a third factor made its way into the mix: (3) My trip to San Francisco was rescheduled, rendering all the above entirely moot. Needless to say, I purchased tickets immediately and spent great amounts of the last several months thinking about the show, which was finally held a few nights ago. Since then, I’ve been carefully considering how to put my experience into words, but even today, I’m overwhelmed by it, and the best I can do is run down a list of elements that stand out:

• As Jenn and I walked up to Roseland’s doorway, I could not help but take out my phone and snap a photograph of the marquee. I was slightly embarrassed by this, as I felt it made me look like a tourist or a teenager, but there was something miraculous about seeing the words “My Bloody Valentine – Sold Out” spelled out in big red plastic letters, lit up in the autumn evening. It was something I honestly never thought I would see, and knowing I would soon be inside that building, in the same room as that band and 3,000 like-minded fans-many of whom had been waiting for this for more than a decade-was nothing less than thrilling.

• But once I was inside and the show was underway, I wondered, what the heck had I been worried about? Everyone was taking pictures of the band as they played. I was somewhere in the middle of the room, so I was standing behind hundreds of cameras and camera phones, which created an odd effect: All those little screens, lit up with a miniature version of the action on-stage, almost acted as a secondary light show-or, even weirder, it was almost like watching the show through someone else’s eyes, or hundreds of sets of eyes at once.

• Since the smoking ban took hold in New York, I don’t find nearly as many people smoking pot at concerts-and those who try are very often grabbed instantly by security and removed from the premises. But for whatever reason (lax security; tightly packed crowd; the munificence of a fickle but occasionally generous higher power), a large percentage of the crowd around me was getting high with no retribution or even any apparent fear of retribution. My drug days are long behind me, but the scent snapped me into a reverie, reminded me what music used to sound like, what shows used to feel like, when I was 19 and 20 and 21, when shows were great, life-changing events.

• Like this show.

• When recollecting this concert, everyone in attendance will point to its climax, which occurred during “You Made Me Realise,” wherein the band steered the song into a merciless, face-melting 15-minute-long feedback assault. It was terrifying and magnificent and like nothing I have ever heard before. It felt like what I imagine it might feel like to stand directly beneath a space shuttle during liftoff-or what it might feel like at the exact epicenter of an earthquake, 6 miles or so beneath the surface of the planet. The band gave away earplugs at the door, and I hope every fan took and used a pair. I sure did-and I had my hands over my ears during this section of the set-and it still seemed literally deafening: I could physically feel the sound in my bones; it made the hair on my arms stand on end; the floor was shaking and there was a breeze coming from the amps. Billboard’s Jonathan Cohen described it as “sound in its most visceral form, pummeling the body and permeating the mind,” and while I hesitate to lean on another writer’s words, I’m going to do so here, because to me, that sounds just about perfect.