Did You Get What You Deserve?

(Even though I'm probably the only one.)

Sister to Sleep

Jack the Ripper (live)

I just got a text message from My Chem's website mailing list letting me know that the U.S. premiere of Teenagers will be on MTV.com today.  I haven't bee able to find it there yet and they didn't give a time, but I thought I'd pass the news along.......

Saatchi & Saatchi/London has a new print/poster campaign in the U.K. that cleverly employs four dead rock stars – Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, Joey Ramone and Joe Strummer – as Doc Martens endorsers.  “We wanted to communicate that Dr. Martens boots are ‘made to last,’ ” explains writer Andrew Petch, “and we discovered that these idolized musicians wore them. Showing them still wearing their Docs in heaven dramatized the boots’ durability perfectly. And, as images, they feel very iconic.”

Sure.  They feel very iconic.  Iconic and wrong.

On a lot of levels.  And it sorta makes me feel icky.  Did any of them ever endorse anything?  I haven't done my homework, so maybe I'm missing something, but I can't see any of those guys jumping at the chance to back a corporation--especially after they shut down their UK factories and shipped their production to Thailand. 

I mean...I like my Docs and all, but I don't know about this one..........

So, I totally just geeked out over an old video from one of Pencey Prep's practice sessions, circa 2001.  (And when I say "just geeked out," I mean its still playing in the background, for about the fifth time.)

Its posted on their MySpace and as much as that place frightens me, its totally worth braving the blinking, flashing, computer-crashing wilds to watch (not that their particular MySpace has ever done anything to offend me, but still).

I have, sitting in my inbox, two pit tickets to Projekt Revolution.  Spitting distance, baby.

They just cost me more than I make in a week, and you know what?  Worth. every. penny.

Can't WAIT to see My Chem again, and wouldn't want to do it with anyone with my bestest friend!

The Day I Played Drums for My Chemical Romance

Just a random, cute journal article from a magazine journalist who interviewed Bob.

On Thursday afternoons, I go into a day care center to teach creative movement to groups of preschoolers.  Most of these kids are freaking adorable, but every once in awhile they'll do something totally priceless.

Yesterday, we're standing in a circle, dancing to this stupid, cheezy song.  Its called The Body Rock, but there's nothing rock and roll about it.  Its flag is firmly planted in the kids song camp.  During the song, the kids are supposed to move different body parts depending on what the song is singing about.  Everybody put that rock & roll in your arms, and they flop their arms around.  Put that rock & roll in your legs, and they kick their legs.  I've done this with them before, and it was all business as usual.

But when the song got to the line "everybody put that rock & roll in your hands," I hear these little voices going, "Hey!  Look what we can do!" 

I look across the circle, and these two little four year old boys have totally thrown up the horns and are shaking their hands over their heads.

I was so proud.

Just for the record, because I know sometimes these things can be unclear:

Blueberry Cobbler flavored coffee creamer?  NOT a good idea.

If someone had told me months ago that I would have spent a weekend living and breathing My Chem, I probably would have laughed at them. After actually doing it for a weekend, I'm ready to do it all over again and not at all ready to come back from it.

Christine rented a car on Friday morning and met me in D.C. to get ready for the show at Merriweather. Because the tickets were general admission and we didn't want to wind up stuck in the field sitting in the mud and watching the show on the screens, we showed up at about 3:00 to wait in line. Judging from the crowd, we figured we were probably safe to count on getting Pavilion seats--in our great and infinite wisdom, we had decided we didn't want to be in the pit--so we were glad we showed up when we did. That opinion was reinforced when hordes started to appear in line behind is about a half hour later, probably because school was out.

Despite standing in line for three hours, we weren't bored for a second. It helped that the line frequently moved forward, so it felt like we were actually gaining ground towards the gates, and that there was a great crowd of people to watch. There was a father behind us with three boys who couldn't have been much older than 12. In general, I was amazed at the number of parents who were there with their kids (or vice versa), and at the huge age range of fans.

We managed to get decent seats, about halfway back in the center, and then sat around and waited a little more. We learned pretty quickly that Merriweather is really just not equipped to handle a general admission show. They didn't bother to mark tickets or hand out wrist bands or anything else, so after a point when they decided--apparently based on a visual survey--that the pavilion and pit were full, they just stopped letting people in. What that meant was that for those of us who had gotten in early and gotten a good spot, we were stuck there until the show ended around 11:00. I managed to get out and back in with food just before the cut off, but by the end of the night, everyone around us was hating the Potty Police. It really just seems not okay to stand in line for hours for a good spot for the show, but not be able to leave it for fear of being stuck back in the field. A girl who was probably about 14 was sitting in front of us with her Dad, who wound up rocking out to the music just as hard as everyone else and delighting me to no living end.

By the time the show started, we forgot to be annoyed about it, and the time freaking flew by. We were close enough to the stage that we couldn't see any of the finer details, but we could definitely see the bands without being forced to rely on the screens, even though they were how we watched most of the concert.

Muse opened with Knights of Cydonia, and it took about thirty seconds for me to realize that the band that I thought was just a'ight based on listening to them on my iPod was, in fact, freaking amazing. I didn’t bother to do my homework going in, so I seriously had no idea what to expect, and was (and still am) astounded that all that music comes from three guys. Holy cow. Most of the time, I find myself using an opening act to kill time before the main band, but I was in no hurry for them to leave the stage.

The downtime between bands was impressively short, and before we knew it, the familiar Beep...beep....beep....was playing over the sound system and the shadowy figure of a stretched was moving across the stage, and everything after that was a blur. I know that My Chem hit the stage a little before 9:00 and the show ended a little before 11:00, but that's the only reason I have any concept of time passing. I've been to a decent number of concerts, and I've seen some pretty big rock bands live, but I had never experienced a crowd that had so much tangible energy as was in the pavilion at that show. Christine and I were on our feet, singing along with every word, screaming along with the crowd, dancing around, and generally and all around lost in the music and watching the band. Just when you needed a break, the song would slow down, and just when you had time to catch your breath, it would pick back up again. One second, we were being greeted as "Marilyn, Marilyn, sweet Marilyn" and before we knew it, we were being warned that the "wicked, evil Black Parade" only had two songs left and then we would have to deal with the likes of My Chemical Romance, with their terrible language and bad fashion sense. We decided that maybe we could tough them out.

The My Chem set was like watching a different band. Gee was mouthier, Frank and Ray were more animated, and the energy in the pavilion climbed to an even higher pitch. Again, one second, we were hearing the familiar "We are...My Chemical Romance," and half a minute later we were being told that there were only two songs left, so we should "make them count" and "get a little sexy." The energy was still high when the last notes of Helena faded with Ray deciding to make a guest appearance on the drums and everyone else jogging off the stage.

We headed back to D.C., raspy voiced and hungry and found someplace to deliver pizza at 1 a.m. and rehashed the night and finally decided to head to bed around 2:00. Neither one of us got a lot of sleep, and by about 10:00, we were ready to head to Williamsburg. I was trying to make room for the cloves in my purse and pulled out a handful of cards and papers and my ticket stub from the night before. Now, every Ticketmaster ticket I've ever seen--and they've all been for shows in Maryland or D.C.--had been blue. This one was grey. Huh, I thought. I looked at the ticket...and saw that it was for William & Mary and not Merriweather. Now....what the crap? Sure, it was a little silly of us to grab the wrong tickets for the Maryland show, and bless the ticket-rippers little heart for not making us go back to the car to get the right ones and wait in line again and get stuck in the field....But they LOOKED at the tickets, and then ripped them. How did they not notice that they weren't for that show? How! How? We decided that the very worst thing that would happen was that the people at William & Mary wouldn't understood what happened, and we'd have to buy new tickets, so off we went.

Now, for as long as I can remember, I've had a curse regarding concerts. I cannot find my way to them without getting lost, and if I don't get lost, its probably because I'm going to be late. Late, or lost. Those seem to be my options. This trip did not let me down, but in all of my sheer awesomeness? I managed to get lost IN MY OWN CITY. No joke. First, I thought I missed my turn (a turn that, for the record, I make on a regular basis), turned around and started over, only to realize that I hadn't missed it after all and had turned around for no reason. Score! Then, I screw up an exit out of a traffic circle and wind up in Arlington instead of on the road I needed, and couldn't figure out how to fix it. Awesome. We managed to find an alternate route without doing too much damage, and I think Christine's road trip karma balanced mine out because we made it to Williamsburg faster than I've ever gotten there in my life.

Our first stop was the hotel, where I found out just what a $40 hotel room is like.  Train across the street, no blankets and no one at the desk until you call on the phone to summon them from the back room.  It was all kinds of classy.  We dropped off our stuff, fixed our makeup so we could go sweat it off, grabbed lunch (we noticed that the concert made the front page of the local paper) and headed to William & Mary to hurry up and wait.  We found a parking spot from which we could see the tour busses and found a spot to sit on the steps leading to the building.  Again, we managed to get ourselves there a little before 3:00, but there weren’t nearly as many people there.  I ran our ticket fiasco by some of the event staff and they assured me that it should be fine as long as we get in towards the beginning before the ticket taker people start to get overwhelmed.

And so we sat, and we sat and then about 90 minutes before the doors were supposed to open, everyone randomly decided to stand up and crunch in towards the doors.  I have no idea what that was about, but it sucked, particularly since we were surrounded by people who thought it was a great idea to chain smoke while they were shoulder to shoulder with people and were also next to the doors used for will call folks to get in and out of the building during the final hour before the show. 

We had floor tickets for this show, and were torn as to whether that’s really where we wanted to be, but once we finally were allowed inside and saw how close we could be to the stage, there was no question, and we bee-lined down and parked ourselves in the floor three people back from the rail.  Again, we wound up sitting near very cool people, and chatted with the women in front of us for a good while, happy to be able to be sitting down for awhile.  About twenty minutes before Muse was supposed to go on, again, everyone decided to randomly stand up.  Seriously?  What do people in Williamsburg have against sitting?

The instant the music started, we forgot all about the standing and the ticket fiasco and the annoying smokers and for about two hours, existed in a complete vacuum that was the arena.  It was seriously like nothing existed outside that room, and was a totally different experience than the night before.  At Merriweather, in the stands, it was like watching a really incredible performance.  In Williamsburg on the floor, it was like being a part of it.  We got knocked around plenty during Muse and I couldn’t see a thing, but I think after about a half a second of being disappointed that I couldn’t see Matt and the piano, I forgot to be upset about it.

What we COULD see was The Black Parade.  For some reason, the roadies took the curtain down almost as soon as Muse left the stage, and somewhere amidst wondering what was going on, Christine grabbed my arm to point out just how freaking close Gerard’s microphone was.  The first set this time opened with the band just walking to their places on stage, but even without the stretcher and the curtain drop, the opening didn’t lose its effect and even knowing what to expect from the show, it was amazing.  The crowd got a little less moshy, which was strange to me, but I wasn’t complaining.  Just meant more attention that I could pay to the stage instead of not getting knocked over.  Being that close to the band was surreal.  You could see every tiny detail from facial expressions to dripping sweat and you could literally look up and into their eyes when they paused in the right place.  You could feel the heat from the flames during Mama (poor Bob!) and we got drenched in confetti from the confetti cannons, and all I’ve really got for it all is wow.  And possibly?  Holy shit.  It was awesome.  I can’t say that enough.  There’s just something about being that close to that many people, all in the same place for the same reason, screaming the same things and moving to the same music that really makes you feel like you know what life’s all about.

When are they coming back?