friday

[phineasjones]

ok, so i had this crazy weekend? and i'm going to try to write about it now. it's a combo concert report/my friday fun times. so you will read about things like our drive and hotel room and jamia sighting and ray toro signing and, yeah, the concert. and it includes a few crappy cell phone photos that... are crappy. but they're mine.

this is how it went.

inkunket and i left friday am and managed to get lost on our way to jjtaylor's. ah yes. even managed to take a long series of wrong turns right down the street from where i used to live. we are awesome! good thing we had air in the tires -



we made it to jj's eventually and collected her and were on our way. an uneventful trip, though apparently a little too long for jj. she didn't like being trapped in the car and it turned her into mikey way -



we still managed to amuse ourselves with bandom 20 questions using our weemos to weemos cards ('brian shaving bob' turns out to be really difficult to guess in 20Q).

we got to the hotel where we met up with wildgreentide. fuschia had already gone ahead to get in line and meet up with some of her concert-going buddies. while we were at the hotel, jj came out of the closet -





\o/ ok, brendon, now you!!!

then we headed out. i was having a good time making fun of other people's travel-related neuroses until we got the doors of the hotel and i had to split off for a moment because of my fear of revolving doors. yeah, yeah. glass houses blah blah blah. we walked to the subway through the icky nasty that was the weather. thumbs down on that one. rainy, chilly, windy. inkjunket and i were carrying fold-up ponchos and she even put hers on briefly. but the dorkitude was too much for her. sad. she made a really cute waddly grey duck.

jamia
we got to madison square garden around 4. jj and wgt went straight to get some coffee and inky and i made for the line. which is wear we saw jamia. it didn't register at first. the line was next to the buses and she and another woman who was with her (not alicia, though we wondered briefly) were trying to get past the gate and get to them. i don't really have anything exciting to say about her except, wow, she's kind of beautiful. i didn't really get that from the many pictures i've seen, but in person, she was very lovely.

msg is awesome.
when we could stop our quiet squeaking about jamia, inky and i realized the line was bizarrely small. madison square garden? 4 pm? short line? did not compute. but this was the first in a long line of misconceptions i had about the garden. since my only previous mcr-viewing experience was at the fillmore in denver, i expected: long lines, anti-camera nazi-ism (so i didn't bring one), a crazy pit with shoving and squishing, and that a 4 pm arrival would mean standing far from the stage and having a shitty view. wrong on all counts. as i would learn again the following night in connecticut, having a house that is not entirely GA makes a gigantic difference. ::glares at the fillmore::

we visited fuschia in line and then i headed to the very front to say hi to restriction who was in a poncho-ed, umbrella-ed press of people who'd arrived at 8 am or earlier. which. man. it was a shitty day. they are dedicated folks. inky and i went and got some food and bought umbrellas so we wouldn't have to wear our dorky ponchos. somewhere in there, we met up with olivia_circe and admired the way she worked her bright blue poncho. :) and then we waited for a while and then they started letting people in. pretty early, i think - like 6?

when we got in to the pit, we all had a "seriously?" moment. it was small and not very crowded. we ended up on ray's side, maybe 10 people back from the stage. we hung out, met some more of the internet (i remember fayemeadows, lordessrenegade, um... guillotine something - we weren't all very good at introducing ourselves), sat on the floor.

drive by
then drive by played. i found myself wondering as i watched them, do i not really like them just because they're not mcr and i don't know that much about them? because, really, i found them pretty boring. i can't really compare to the denver experience bc while they played, i was having the life squeezed out of my by hordes of insane teenagers. at msg, people were, like, apologizing if they bumped into me at this point. yeah, what? anyway. i kept wondering that, vaguely, until taking back sunday came out.

taking back sunday
i really don't know tbs at all. but HOLY CRAP THEY WERE AWESOME. apparently some people in our party were a little weirded out by adam lazzara. i found him kind of mesmerizing. and matt rubano!!!! how are you the cutest thing to ever hold a bass? srsly! how so tiny and bouncy? i don't understand! also, right, their music. i liked it. it was also a moment of incredibly adorableness when adam lazzara had the whole garden wish his father happy birthday - and we saw his proud daddy waving his old man cap (much like frankie's) at all of us. sweet.

so, during tbs, the crowds were rowdier, but still not smushing. amazing. and somehow, what movement there was just kept pushing me closer to the stage.

mcr
and then there was some waiting, and then mcr played. (and i got closer to the stage still, until i was about 4 or 5 people back - and perfectly comfortable! msg, i love you).

they started with give 'em hell kid and frank and gerard were wearing flak vest thingies. and HEART. and this is the rest of the setlist - out of order - to the best of my memory (and i do feel like i'm forgetting things - please help me out if you notice something) -

sleep
welcome to the black parade
teenagers
famous last words
headfirst for halos
i'm not okay
my way home is through you
desert song
helena
cancer
prison
i don't love you
this is how i disappear
dead!
cemetery drive
mama
sharpest lives
house of wolves

so, right, i didn't bring my camera. but i gave in to the urge to take a few pictures with my phone. all that really comes through the blur is how nice and close i was, and how completely awesome they are:











shenanigans
and here are some moments of adorable/ridiculous/hilarious/awesome that i remember -

it was later in the show. gerard went around behind mikey, grabbed him around the waist and picked him up and carried him partway across the stage. mikey just picked up his legs and kept on playing. srsly, u guyz. THE ADORABLE.

gerard was doling out his usual high doses of campiness, throwing his hips around, prancing (literally) across the stage, etc. this was the first time i'd seen him slap his own ass, though. hopefully not the last.

i can't remember what song this was... possibly in the break in the middle of halos? but frank wandered over to ray and they said something to each other and smiled and then frank ducked his head and kind of bumped it against ray's chest and ray ruffled his hair and i died of cute.

before desert song, frank was over off stage right getting help taking his shirts off. later, he put a new york basketball shirt on over his t-shirt. it came downs to his knees.

gerard told us how he and ray had talked about this and ray had a new camera he was very excited about and wanted to take our picture. would that be cool? so. yeah. out came ray's camera and they gave it to some guy who stood up behind bob and took a picture of the crowd, who basically froze in place and all but said cheese.

i don't remember what song again, but there was a part where bob was drumming and ray was not playing and he air drummed along with bob for a minute and i died of hilarity.

they brought a little boy out on stage and gerard introduced him to us a micah, a very brave kid. he didn't say why. he had us all say hi to him. and then he said the next song was dedicated to him and beside me, wildgreentide said, 'oh please, not cancer.' thank GOD, no. it was the black parade. and i was momentarily distracted from gerard's lyric pantomime, watching ray adorably shepherd the kid off stage. but looked back in time to see gerard point to the ground on the word 'city'. oh, gerard.

gerard told us that this would be their last concert for a very long time because they were going to go write an album full of cowboy jams.

he told the story of him and mikey coming to msg to see the smashing pumpkins and how mikey said that was what he wanted to do and gerard said, ok, mikey. and every heart in the place exploded.

yes, he had the whole place do the wave. he pointed stage left and said they'd start there. and then apparently saw restriction telling her friend that no, it should start on the other side (apparently this is an australian thing?) and said something like, 'she thinks it goes the other way, but we're going to go this way!' and then told everyone to sit down. and then ray came over and told him they're not supposed to sit down (but gerard had the crowd under his thrall, they were already sitting). it was hilarious to watch ray's gestures for 'not sit down' and 'just do this.' and then everybody did the wave. it was pretty great.

was it prison? maybe? that he started while wearing his sweaty towel on his head? yeah, whatever song it was, it was dorky and great. and then he threw the sweaty towel into the crowd in front of us and people dove for it. i'm actually kind of proud of myself for thinking, 'ew.'

bob! his lady locks were as flowing and lovely as ever. but his socks! he had one black, knee-high sock with white stripes and one shorter white sock on. also, other socks on his arms. oh, bob.

gerard introduced i'm not okay with a weird little riff on the opening of the video. something like, 'you never could do the limbo. you don't know karate. you don't know jujitsu. you don't know how to use nunchucks. you'll never fit in. i don't wanna fit in. i just wanna DANCE!' yeah. i don't know. but it was awesome.

and there were the types of things we've come to expect from our dear gerard. he jerked off the mic into his mouth. he licked his hand in an extremely dirty fashion. he made... orgasm noises? - rly, i don't know how better to describe it - at the end of one song (? cemetery drive maybe? idk).

and then at the very end, gerard said, 'if we never play another show... if we never, ever play another show, keep yourselves alive!' and then i think he said it again.

omg, how can i love them this much?
which brings me to the things that jjtaylor already said really, really well in her post.

I think of My Chemical Romance songs as songs of catharsis, of songs that take you someplace dark, that grab you by the neck and fucking drag you through some awful experience so that you can feel better on the other side, so that you can feel the release.

the concert itself was like that on a larger scale. i did kind of, um, weep a couple times. sometimes for really kind of personal reasons, shit going on with me that i feel like some of what they do and say speaks to and sometimes for the incredible beauty of their story as i know it. and sometimes, really, for no particular reason. but when i look at gerard up there, being a huge weirdo and having a gigantic stadium of people cheering him on for it... i just. it makes me so happy, i can't even hold it in. a couple people ahead of me, there was an adorable gay boy couple, alternately snuggling and screaming their heads off. i think we were seeing the same thing - these guys who got to this crazy successful place by being completely dedicated to being their ridiculous, dorktastic selves. i watch gerard singing i'm not okay and i think about who they all were when they wrote those dumbass, awesome lyrics and who they are now and it gives me that kind of scary, insane hope for things - for myself, for everyone around me - that just makes me feel all ripped open on vulnerable but also... great.

it was an amazing performance. they were on. the whole, huge crowd was riveted. it was totally cathartic and beautiful and i am so, 100% happy that i got to be there.

and when it was over, we all stood around hugging each other and crying for a while. and then we went to get some food. :)

post-concert. insane teenie fans. ray toro.
after our veggie burgers etc, we headed back over to the street by the buses. there was a small crowd devotedly waiting there, though it was past midnight at this point. we joined them and hunkered down and spent a lot of time being completely absurd, telling jokes about ponchos and jerky that really seemed funny at the time. maybe they were, idk. and time passed. and it was about 2 am. and jjtaylor, wildgreentide and fuschia bailed, quite reasonably, leaving inkjunket and i (and half the internet and some insane teenagers) waiting outside msg. we all kept wondering aloud, 'why are we still here?' the only good answer came from restriction - "because the internet is here. what would we do if we went home?"

various trucks pulled away and left. the bus left. and yet we stayed.

and then, in the distance, we saw jamia (ink and i recognized her outfit) come out of a door with a short dude dressed head to toe in denim, wearing a cap and carrying a big bag. they both got in a limo van thing and drove away. we cracked ourselves up for a while - some dude who looks like frank just carried frank out in a bag! yeah, idk. it was utterly hilarious at the time.

and then, mikey came out and got into his own limo van. and this is when the crazies started being crazy. some nutty teenage fans were kind of screaming at/to mikey and then, when his van started to drive away, they stepped into the street, holding up their mikey fuckin way t-shirts and trying to get the van to stop. it didn't, so they got all irate and thew their shirt after it. the rest of us cringed mightily and shook our heads at their our of control senses of entitlement.

and yet we stayed.

some time around now, while we all continued to watch the door, schechter came charging past us, sporting a backpack big enough to carry frankie. he was pretty much in business mode and he was HOT AND TINY OMG.

and then ray came out of the same door to get into his limo van. and the crazy teens went crazy. our favorite was the one who pointed and shouted "RAY!!!! I SEEEEE YOOOUUU!!!!" which made us all crack up (after we finished cringing and hiding) and talk about the icons and shirts we could make with that on it. a tiny ray toro with a giant finger pointing and RAY I SEE YOU written across. yeah.

so then his limo started to pull out and the crazies started to get in the street again and we all cringed some more but then the limo suddenly pulled over (i thought the driver was going to yell at the teenies or something, but they weren't actually blocking the street, just standing on the side of it) and ray got out. and he made his way over to our side of the street and was super srs bznz and said something like, 'alright i'm going home so i'm just signing, no pictures, and i'll start down there and work my way back!' and everyone just sort of shut up and got in line and he came speeding down the line, signing as he went, trailed by a protective schechter. i happened to be standing between an aussie and a kiwi on one side and some brits on the other and that slowed him down and got him chatting with people. i didn't say anything but thanks! as he signed my ticket. he was tall! taller than me in my heeled shoes and also, his curly locks were huge and beautiful. srsly. <3<3<3

he didn't have to stop and do that and it's lovely that he did. <3 ray toro. and then we could finally leave and take a cab back to the hotel where we told our stories to the others and laughed and laughed and then OOF fell asleep. for entirely too short a time before we had to pack up and head for connecticut. but that's a story for another post.

Comments

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

yes. i mean, i love the fic and i love the stage gay and i love, well, pretty much everything about them. but somewhere along the line, they started being incredibly meaningful to me. and that really is all about their music and their performances.

<3