I intended to write a review for Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live, which I finished two nights ago. I can’t just yet. Why? It’s because I heard "Helena" on the radio on the way home. I decided I needed to tell the story of two young women who went on their first concert road trip together and realized that there was something special happening. It’s been a year since that memorable concert road trip and you, reader, should know how this shit began.
J and I are two women whose paths have crossed a couple of times in the past. Once was at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in the late nineties, where we both took an upper-level literature class. Then after parting ways for a year or so, I waited on her and her husband at a restaurant where we gave each other cliff notes of what we were doing. Soon after, I interviewed for her and she hired me. We both ended up moving to the St. Louis office and took a few long walks after work. Most of our conversations were free therapy: we would unleash all of our angst about life, work, and the transition from Huntsville to St. Louis. I did most of the talking, as usual. For me, my life was work and my cat, so it was great to have a friend in whom I could confide. It had been a tumultuous couple of years and so having her to talk to was a life saver.
OK- so during this time, we discovered our shared love of music. J suggested we head to Chicago and see Oasis, with Jet opening up for them. In 2004, I had spent three months traveling and working out of our Melbourne office and so I had heard a lot of Jet. I immediately signed on. Plus, Oasis’ music was a fixture on the music scene when I was college. I loved them.
We drove up to Chicago and met up with Aunt B. and Mel, both childhood friends of J. It was the first time meeting Mel and Aunt B. I had met Aunt B once before, but I was really loaded at the time and for various reasons don’t really want to consider that the first time I met her. She knows why.
Anyway, so we headed to the venue and sat down. The auditorium contained a microcosm of college youth and people like us. Nothing special, really.
Jet played all the hits that I knew and we enjoyed them during their relatively short set.
Afterwards, the roadies came on to build Oasis' set. I was sitting on the aisle and got prepared to hear some great tunes that would take me down memory lane. We were hot. It was a little humid in the UIC Pavilion.
Two petite guys came walking down the stairs past me dressed all in black. J leaned over and said “look, Good Charlotte just walked in”. As soon as I looked down at them, they had stopped in the aisle about six rows down, I went cold. I noticed Mikey Way first. He has hair and glasses that you can’t mistake for anyone but Mikey Way. Next to him was a goth kid who had a mop of black hair under a black and white trucker hat. I grabbed J’s knee and said “that’s My Chemical Romance”. J looked at me and laughed as though I had just cracked a joke. I wasn’t joking. She looked at me and asked, “how the hell did you recognize them from behind?”. I may not always remember how to set up reports at work for my customers, but I sure as shit remember details of my bands. Let’s not analyze how I know them from behind. That’s best left unsaid.
Now, I had been a growing fan of theirs and had tickets to see them at Warped in St. Louis the next day. A few weeks before purchasing my ticket to see MCR at Warped in St.L, I had brought to work the May 2005 Spin magazine with them on the cover. I stepped into J’s office and threw the magazine down on her desk telling her we need to watch out for this band. (Ok, that sounds really dramatic, but I remember it like that.) I had already become obsessed with the band's music and videos. I especially had an affinity for the oddball lead singer, Gerard Way. That goth kid standing next to Mikey was Gerard Way. I almost shit myself.
They started coming up the stairs and were now one row down from me, taking the seats in the aisle across from me. “GERARD!”, I said and he looked at me. I stood up and shook his hand and introduced myself. I think I said something like “I’m going to see you at Warped in STL tomorrow. Good luck- blah blah blah”. I don’t know what I said, really. He grinned the whole time and was very gracious. I suddenly felt very awkward and something odd happened. I didn’t want to out them any more than I had. Of course, they weren’t that BIG yet, but to me they were. I ended whatever rambling I did quickly and sat down. Aunt B and Mel thought he was some old friend, but J quietly explained that Gerard was my Dave Grohl. With that, they understood immediately what was happening. I was meeting my number one guy. J told me I should have asked the guys for a ride to St. Louis. She even offered to rough me up a bit so that I looked desperate for help. Pathetically, I actually considered it for a couple of seconds.
I don’t even remember Oasis for most of the show. I just remember that since Gerard and Mikey were in between us and the stage I spent the duration of their presence watching Gerard’s every move.
Somehow, Gerard’s bad posture and incessant nail-biting didn’t turn me off. Every now and then I would look at J in disbelief. Her reenactment of his nail-biting still cracks me up.
At some point, Gerard went up to the concession stand and J followed. When she came back I grilled her for details. She observed how uncomfortable he seemed in his own skin and how he and she almost knocked into each other by accident. She thought he was very unassuming. I think that after observing someone from a safe distance you can get a feeling for bullshit. Gerard isn’t a bullshitter. When he says he was the oddball kid who spent a lot of time in his head, it was painfully obvious that this was true. We got it.
They didn’t stay for the whole set. They left right before Oasis performed “Don’t Look Back In Anger”. J and I were both relieved because now we could both focus on the show. Having had a most serendipitous encounter with Gerard Way, I sat on the back of my chair and put my arm around J while we sang that song back to the band along with the audience. It was one of those moments that you can’t explain. To say that I felt connected to J is true, to say that I felt connected to the universe is true, to say that someone was giving me something to be happy about for the first time in a hellish couple of years is extremely true.
We decided to drive back to St. Louis that night. We drank Red Bulls and talked music and life the whole way back. We came up on several band buses that we figured were carrying the bands to St. Louis for Warped. One of those was MCR’s bus, I knew it. We drove alongside them for a lot of the road trip.
We listened to a lot of David Bowie, which seemed perfect for a nocturnal drive. It wasn’t all cathartic and emotional. We listened to some Misfits, Foo Fighters, and Queen. At some point the sun was rising to J’s left. I looked toward her and said “Oh my God, J, look”. She grinned a crazy grin and said “YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TO TELL ME WHAT, ‘COS I AM NOT LOOKING AT WHATEVER HORRIBLE THIING IS OUT THERE!”. It was just the rising sun! HAHAHA Two Red Bulls each and we were already paranoid and strung-out coke heads. I love it.
When we got back home J went to work and I got ready to see MCR for the first time at Warped. As that morning became day, we had completed our first concert road trip together. It was the beginning of a blog waiting to happen.
-K
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