My LONG overdue review:
I spend the majority of Thursday recuperating from Wednesday night’s show at Maxwell’s. I get up when Ashley leaves and get myself ready, suffering under the delusion that I might make it to the outlet mall at Secaucus. What I end up doing is a faceplant on the bed during a Law & Order marathon all afternoon.

I drag myself out of the hotel room around 4:00 and hop the shuttle back to the airport. From there I take the NJ Transit train to Newark Penn and walk the two blocks to the venue. It is a circus! I had no idea! There are cops everywhere - on foot, in vehicles, on horses. Homeland security trucks keep driving by. There are about 1500 people out front when I get there. Hey look! Crazy swingy sky lighty thingys! Tons of news cameras! A red carpet! Insanity.

So I stand on the curb by the place on the red carpet where they take pictures. I’m just taking in the sights and enjoying the lovely weather when I catch a glimpse of big blond Jersey hair by my left shoulder. Yup, you guessed it - Mama and Daddy Way are walking past me. She’s gesticulating madly at him while he strolls behind with a cell phone, saying to her, “I don’t think they’re gonna let us in yet.” Then after standing  around for a minute, she pulls him across the red carpet. I turn back around giggling to myself and I see a young My Chem fan in a Black Parade hoodie. I lean over to her and her mother and say, “Gerard and Mikey’s parents just walked by.” Thus ensues some very cute bouncing and “ooooo!”ing.

So I hang out on the semi-red carpet with the reporter from the Star Ledger. I say semi-red carpet because nothing that thrilling is really happening. But I chat with the reporter, who is new and keeps asking me if she’s doing okay, and get to rub elbows with the Mayor of Newark (cute!), Scott Stevens (ex-Captain of the Devils), Milena Govich (Law & Order), Sharon Angela (The Sopranos), Aida Turturro (The Sopranos), and some other random people. Aida and Sharon are hilarious. If I don’t go see her new movie, Aida is going to come beat me up. Then the reporter does a quick interview of me. Apparently I am an interesting person. Naturally, I drop several loud comments about how My Chemical Romance rules and how awesome the show was last night, interspersed with nice sound bites about how the arena will rejuvenate the area and it reminds me of Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio. Blah blah blah. Then I go inside.

I swing by the merch stand and pick up a couple of t-shirts. I normally wouldn’t, but I want souvenirs for this particular event. It seems to be a big fucking deal. It takes forever to get through the shortest merch line ever because everyone is so slow and they are running credit cards. As soon as I get near the table I’ve got my cash in hand, catch the eye of one of the guys and yell out, “Number 17 and number 19 size small!“ He gives shirts. I give cash. Bing bang boom. I get the white shirt with Pepe et al on it and the grey one with the clocks all over it. Then I grab a water and some cookies (yum) and head down to my seat.

I’m in floor section C, row 24, seat 14. That’s the last seat on the last row of the front left floor section, in case you were there. I just have a plain black t-shirt on so I take off my plain black hoodie (oo I match!) and put the grey clocks shirt on over it. If I’m gonna sit by myself in front of all these people, I will make sure everyone knows why I’m there!

By the time My Chem comes on, there still isn’t anyone in the seats around me. I don’t know if it would look better or worse if there were people in those seats that were just sitting there looking at me as if I come from another planet. I am beyond excited about My Chem opening for Bon Jovi. I will date myself here, but I had a poster of Jon Bon Jovi on my wall when I was twelve. So this is really huge. I go nuts all by myself in my little corner when the guys come out.

First of all, I have never seen them from farther away than about sixth row, and especially compared to last night when my view was, ahem, a little different (from under Gerard’s chin), this is a very strange feeling. They open with Famous Last Words which feels a little strange to me as an opening song but I think that’s because I associate it with the end of the album so much. I can see the stage fine but they are so far away. It’s nice to see them on the big screen at least. And from where I am, I can see Mama Way rockin out down front. At this point I’m wishing that I had sucked it up and shelled out the extra for closer seats. But I would have had to buy two and then get rid of the other one. Oh well, that’s water under the bridge.

I think they sound really good, which is so awesome since it’s such a big deal of a night. Dead! is the second song and I try to make up for the lack of people around me by jumping even more than usual. Throughout the set, I’m starting the arm movements and clapping and whatnot right as Gerard does. Perhaps I have seen them too many times… Nah.

In addition to Famous Last Words and Dead!, they play How I Disappear, Welcome to the Black Parade, I Don’t Love You, House of Wolves, Mama, Teenagers, I’m Not Okay, and Cancer. Only one song off of Revenge. What a weird set. When Welcome to the Black Parade starts, someone farther down my row says, “Oh I’ve heard this song before.” I smile.

A couple of weeks before the concert, the venue opened up rear seats, so there are a few hundred people seated behind the stage. Somehow Gerard doesn’t notice them until halfway into the set. He turns around in the middle of a song, sees them and says “WHOA!” Then after the song he says, “I didn’t even know you were back there until the fifth song!” So then he decides to play the Who’s Louder game. He has the front of the arena scream. Then he has the people in the rear seats scream. From where I am they really do sound louder. So Gerard says, “Why are they louder than you? There are fifteen of them!” He does talk about what an honor it is to open for the legendary Bon Jovi and that they are from New Jersey too. Holla! He asks the crowd what their favorite Bon Jovi song is. Then he tells us that he’s no Jon, but he does an awesome karaoke version of Livin’ on a Prayer. Boy would I pay to see that.

Before Teenagers, he tells the audience that this song is about what all of them used to be. He introduces How I Disappear by saying, “Now we’re gonna make you all disappear. It’s a magic trick.” And before I’m Not Okay, he says it is the number one summer jam of all time. I wish I could have more specific details about the set, but they crank through the songs pretty fast and I am too far away to see anything crazy going on. Gerard does knock the mic stand over once and picks it up real smooth-like. And Frank is rockin out as usual. They all are, really. I think they were really stoked to be opening for Bon Jovi, especially on such a big night. I think they end up playing for almost an hour which is a really long set for an opening band, so props to Bon Jovi for giving them so much time. They end with Cancer and then run off stage and I sit down and drink water because I just wore myself out jumping and yelling.

After a long set change, the lights go down and Bon Jovi is gonna come on! Yay! They have a pretty expansive set of a bar scene and they do a real contrived intro that is more reminiscent of a Miller Lite commercial than a rock concert. Eventually Bon Jovi comes on, one at a time with Jon last. And it is a really great, awesome, fun show. It is like a big party in the arena. They play everything I know and more songs that I don’t know. There is a lot of singing along and dancing. The two girls in front of me are really nice and they get progressively drunker as the night goes on. We all stand on our chairs when Bon Jovi comes on so we can see better until the venue people came over and tell us to get down. The girls keep trying to get up on their chairs but as the evening progresses, they spend more time falling off of their chairs. It is very funny.

Jon makes a big deal of thanking My Chemical Romance for opening. He calls them the new generation of Jersey bands, “and what a band!” I really have a genuinely good time during the whole show. I love the end of You Give Love a Bad Name: they have just the arena singing the chorus. I’d like to think that Frank, Gerard, Ray, Bob, and Mikey are somewhere singing along too. I check out the big screen several times to see if I can catch a glimpse of Mama Way rockin’ out to Bon Jovi.

So for the encore… Jon comes out in a MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE T-SHIRT. I LOSE IT! I’m screaming my head off and I have a huge smile across my face during the whole encore because of it. I would have been smiling anyway since they save my two favorite songs for last: Livin’ on a Prayer and Wanted Dead or Alive. It’s definitely worth it to see the show if they come through your town.

That’s it. Nothing terribly exciting but one hell of a fun night. Exhausted, I head back to my hotel room via train and shuttle. I get back around 1:00 AM and throw all of my crap in my bag and sleep in the clothes I have on (yes, two t-shirts) because I have to get up at 3:00 AM to go to the airport for a 5:00 AM flight.

And so I bid New Jersey adieu for now. It was good to me.

Preface

I have a fairly good grasp of the English language and have been known to write well in the past. But I must start this review by saying that there are no words that come even close to explaining what this show was like. I will merely do the best that I can with the tools I’ve been given.

The Show

My journey begins on a 9:30 flight leaving Columbus, OH non-stop to Newark, NJ. I have the minimal amount of supplies I will need for the next 2 days stuffed into a medium-sized purse, as I am still not sure if I will have to carry it to the venue or not. My flight is on time and when I get the text from Ashley that she is waiting for me at the curb, I am beyond relieved. We wind our way to the hotel only to find that we cannot check in yet, so we park the car, grab our stuff, and hop the shuttle back to the airport. From the airport we have a wicked smooth trip, jumping from AirTrain to NJ Transit to PATH into Hoboken.

We arrive at Maxwell’s at 1:30 and to my great delight they are handing out numbered wristbands! We don’t have to wait in line all day. We can wander the streets of Hoboken and come back at 5:00. Thus tagged #20 and #21 and hungry from our travels, we grab lunch at an awesome pizza place. When we walk in, a bunch of people are all yelling at each other in Italian. This must be the right place to eat pizza. We kill the next couple of hours walking, sitting in Starbucks, using the restroom at Panera, and chilling on a bench. When we return to Maxwell’s at 5:30 to get in line we hear stories of band encounters throughout the day. If we had waited there instead of wandering, we could have had the same stories, but I am so excited about the night’s show that I don’t even care. I know something special is in store for all of us. While waiting in line, I get to meet some lovely folks from all over the place, and we watch Worm and associate tossing a football back and forth until they get it stuck in a tree. The light rain, the brisk temperature, and the wind may dampen our hoodies, but not our spirits. Although it still feels unreal, the time is coming near. I run into Maxwell’s to use the restroom and am waiting in the hall when they start sound checking Teenagers. The stage is right around the corner from me and the door is open so the sound is crystal clear and as I take my turn in the ladies’/everyone’s restroom, the evening still feels unreal.

Shortly before we are let in, there is some drama regarding pairing up of ticket purchasers and their respective partners. But it wouldn’t be a proper My Chemical Romance show without bad weather, the venue giving the wrong information, and adversity in general. That seems to be the norm, at least for the nine times I have seen them up to this night. (Number ten - here we go!) So at 8:30 we file into the smallest venue I have ever been in. I have seen many small acts in dive bars and hole-in-the-wall joint, but I have never seen such a small stage in such a small room. As I stand in my spot and look directly up at Gerard’s mic, I still can’t believe this is real. Ashley says that she feels like we are waiting for a My Chemical Romance cover band, not the band themselves and I completely agree. At this point they announce that they are filming the show for the DVD. Could this get any better?

I count eight people across the front row of the stage. Eight. Line up eight of your friends and check it out. I am in the 2 ½ row. I say 2 ½ because I have a feeling that the lovely ladies in front of me aren’t going to be able to hang on for long up there. We have to open a lane every so often to let crew members back and forth. At one point, Matt Cortez and I exchange a completely inappropriate body drag due to our inability to make an actual path. This makes me laugh. We are also told that they will be bringing the band on stage through the crowd. When then time comes, they are actually brought on stage via a path made by the wall on the right. (See above: our inability to form a path). And so it begins.

They barely fit on the tiny stage. James has to climb over Bob’s kit to get back in his keyboard corner. This does not feel like the guys were performing for us. It feels like they are performing with us and it is like experiencing the band in an entirely new way. I have only ever seen them in halls, arenas, and pavilions, so this is an unbelievable experience. They start with Welcome to the Black Parade and the crowd goes crazy right from the first beats of the body of the song. It is insane. Ray gets up on the monitors with Gerard’s hand on his back. The two lovely ladies in front of me do eventually get pushed off to the side and I end up under Gerard (not in front of - under) behind only the two girls in front of me who have gotten shoved onto the stage on their arms and hands. I get covered in water, and Gerard’s sweat and saliva. But I only note this in passing because it is just a part of this amazing show. It is pure insanity. It is beyond intense. And I am loving every hot, sweaty, pulsing, jumping, squishy minute of it.

Gerard tells us that the last time they played at Maxwell’s was five and a half years ago. It was the only time that he and Mikey’s grandma got to see them play. She stood over by the speaker on the left. Gerard says, “I don’t know how she didn’t go deaf.” I wonder as well, seeing as my ears will be ringing for days.

Gerard gets a hold of a camera and films us, then turns the camera to himself. Then he says, “Oh wait!” and turns with his back to us, screaming into the camera with us behind him. I can’t believe all of this is happening. Gerard reminds us that they are opening for Bon Jovi tomorrow night, as if we could have forgotten. And he tells us that when he was thirteen he had a crush on a girl who had “Bon Jovi Rulz” (with a Z - he says) written on her binder and he’ll never forget it. There is more to his story, but I cannot hear him because Frank begins talking over him. I believe he said something to the effect of, “Actually, we’re just playing five songs and then Bon Jovi is coming out.”

Due to the intense squishiness, the show has to be stopped between every song to make room for the people in front. I am fine because I am up against the poor girls who have been bent over the stage. They are loving every minute of it but they are also in pain. Somehow a tiny girl ends up at the front and Gerard is concerned for her welfare - rightfully so as she will be squished shortly. He asks how old she is. To her reply of “thirteen,” Gerard responds “I wish I was that cool when I was thirteen!” A guy somewhere behind me yells “Me too!” And Gerard asks him what he was doing when he was thirteen. I can’t hear the exact response but I believe part of it involves playing Zelda. I want to shout, “I was listening to Bon Jovi!” but somehow manage to restrain myself and preserve at least one fine shred of dignity. So Gerard’s concern for the young girl leads him to pull her up out of the audience. She proceeds to get stuck so Frank runs over and tries to help. Gerard says, “Easy! Get her legs. We don’t want her to come out as just a torso. That would be bad.” Once pulled up on stage, Gerard has her go stand against the wall on Frank’s side. And then we are all once again thrown in to the thrills of the next song.

This is the best and roughest crowd I have ever been in at a show. It is awesome and I love it. A girl crowd surfs to the front and gets dumped onto the stage. Gerard just looks at her and says “I don’t know where you’re gonna go.” She jumps back into the audience and Gerard warns her to watch out for the lights, as the ceiling is so low. Too late. I turn my head in time to see the lights swinging and to join the crowd in saying “Ohhhhh!” During Teenagers, Ashley’s friend Lauren passes out. Gerard makes sure she gets out before continuing. Worm carries her out to safety. I spend half the show under Gerard. So much so that I can’t see half of what he’s doing because it is over my head. I try to scream lyrics at everyone, especially Bob. My only regret of the day thus far is that I didn’t get the chance to continue my conversation with him about World of Warcraft. I revel in my geekness.

By the time we have gotten to Famous Last Words, I am half on the stage but still in the second row. I’m being lifted off my feet as the crowd pushes me over the poor girls in front of me. One of them gets pulled out at some point but I think she doesn’t really want to go. The front row is collapsed on the stage. The girl in front of me has managed to turn sideways and half sit on the stage but I can feel her shaking. Even with my knee against the stage and my hand on the stage or on Gerard’s mic stand, I still can’t get enough leverage to get off of her at all. I feel really bad and want to help her but there is nothing I can do. Ashley has been thrown down onto the stage next to Frank and is going crazy. So he grabs her hand and pumps it up and down in time to the song for a few beats. I am so happy for her. As she pounds the stage in excitement, I can feel how ecstatic she is and I only makes the evening that much better. I yell out in glee and tousle her hair.

The only thing that saves the front row tonight is Gerard making sure everyone is okay and stopping between songs to back everyone up. He says “One of the nice things about playing a show like this is that we can take as much time as we want between songs. We like that. Do you guys like that?” Ashley, nearly falling over, grabs Gerard’s mic stand and yells at him “Can I hold onto this?“ He can’t hear her and puts the mic to her face so she can repeat herself and he says “Sure, that’s fine.“ Eventually, once it has gotten pretty bad up front and the guys can’t get anyone to back up, Worm and the other security guard barrel into the crowd and throw people out of the way. I end up getting tossed to the left so I am right behind Ashley. And Mr. Security guard sits down on the stage in front of us to try and hold us up. I am actually worse off after the tossing because of the way I get thrown and because I am now eating Ashley’s hair. I even miss the beginning of Give ‘Em Hell Kid, which is my favorite song live, because I am still getting myself oriented. I find myself mindlessly singing along for a few bars before I even realize what they are playing.

So now from my new position I get to scream at Frank more. He almost hits Ashley in the head with his guitar. He’s so close that when Ashley needs water, I hardly had to speak up to say, “Frank! Ashley needs water!“ There are moments of unimaginable joy when all of us - myself, girls around me, Frank, Mikey, and Gerard are all head banging at the same time. It is so intense I can’t believe it is happening.

Every now and then Gerard goes to one of the guys and says something to them. We’ll never know exactly what is said but it’s just one more touch of intimacy in this show. He says something in Mikey’s ear and then after casually dragging his hand across Mikey’s neck, says the same thing into Frank’s ear. To which Frank responds, “Alright, nut job.” He doesn’t actually say the nut job part, but it is definitely implied. And so in place of Jetset, they launch into Mystery Song. I run through my mental notes of possible cover songs and can’t come up with a recognizable tune. For a brief moment it sounds like a seriously hardcore version of  “Let’s See How Far We’ve Come” by Matchbox 20. That’s how well I can hear. I try to read Gerard’s lips to figure out what he’s saying, to no avail. Afterwards, someone yells out, “What song was that?” Gerard replies, “I’m not going to tell you cause then you’ll just bitch at us when we change it in a year.’ The crowd roars. We have just heard a brand new song.

The crowd gets even crazier during Mama and by the end of Helena, even the security guard is getting crushed. Gerard tries to help him but can’t get enough leverage with his arm so he sits down and shoves his feet against the guy’s back. And as Ray, Bob, and Mikey leave the stage, Frank sits down against the wall and Gerard announces that this is the last song; there will be no encore. Only a few bars into Cancer, I am filled with emotion as I remember my favorite aunt who just passed a couple of weeks ago. After the intensity of the entire show, my emotions run over and I bury my face in Ashley’s back and cry. I am hoping that none of the cameras can see me because I fear that a viewer would misunderstand the expression of my pain. Frank films the crowd at the end of the song as Gerard thanks us for believing in this band.

And I do believe, now more than ever.

I don’t think there will ever be another show like that again. I feel very lucky and privileged to have been there. Thanks for the memories. They will last a lifetime.

These are from Projekt Revolution in Noblesville, IN on August 31. I put a couple of videos on YouTube but the quality sucks so bad, I just put the files on sendspace instead. All of the links are below.

I'm Not Okay pt. 1 (sendspace)

I'm Not Okay pt. 2 (sendspace)

Give Em' Hell Kid (sendspace)

Gerard skips all the bases