The Record Crate

I’m going to preface this post by saying the city of Hartford, CT was on drugs when they designed their amphitheater. Anyone who thinks it’s a great idea to have patrons walk a mile to a concert clearly has no concept of enjoying one’s self after paying a decent amount of money for a concert ticket. Furthermore, we spent more time in traffic on our way to the concert than we spent actually in the concert. It was because of this traffic that we missed the first two openers Chester French and Taking Back Sunday. We got to the show right as Weezer played the opening notes of “Island in the Sun.” Half of the time I thought they phoned it in and the other half of the time I thought they were truly enjoying themselves on stage. Clad in bright green jumpsuits, the band-which included Josh Freese on the drums and normal drummer Pat Wilson on guitar-the band brought the house down. Although we only saw them perform a few songs, I will go on record to say that the audience enjoyed the Weez more than they enjoyed Blink.

Then it was time for the headliners-Blink 182-to take the stage. I was a little apprehensive about even going to the show, as I believed that it might have been canceled due to the loss of one of Travis’ great friends and collaborators DJ AM. Considering how much AM contributed to the scene and the music industry as a whole, I would have completely understood if the show was rescheduled. I wondered how they would honor DJ AM without making it painfully obvious. This was answered during the stage change between Weezer and Blink when they played TRV$DJAM’s “Fix Your Face Vol. 2” in the background. However, the lights came down and played almost the exact same set as they did when I saw them in Mansfield (minus “Adam’s Song,” which probably was due to AM’s real name being Adam Goldstein). Another interesting quirk about this show, was that Travis did not do his show-stopping drum solo where he rocked from side to side. I know that he hasn’t been able to perform his solo in some venues because the venue could not support his rigging, but I wonder if that was the case or not last night. Instead, he did a prolonged and improvised intro to their song “Violence.” The fart jokes were back last night-at least for Tom. During their last song before their encore “Anthem Part 2,” after every chorus Tom would say something like “I want to go down on Oprah!” or “I am going to give Brad Pitt a hand job!” Out of all the sadness that could have overwhelmed last night’s show, I was glad that the performers found some joy in what they were doing. I am going to leave you with this video from the concert last night. Listening to Mark somewhat eulogize DJ AM is proof that this man was not just another face in the music scene. In fact, in so many ways, he was the music scene.

Tell the people around u that u love them. Randomly. (via @petewentz)