The Greatest Concert I’ve Ever Experienced
1 Comment// Posted in Blog by Sean on 09.01.09.
Sunday night I went to the Virgin Mobile Freefest. A heck of a lot of stuff went on that I want to talk about, so I’m gonna break it up into easy to read sections 
. Keep in mind this post is a mix between not just my experience at the concert, but my strong opinions about some things. I’ve taken the liberty to put my opinions in italics.
- Line Fail
- Taking Back Sunday and the Agile Bassist/What I Think About Extra Players On Stage
- Skydivers FTW!
- Weezer Opens With War Pigs and Closes With Keybard Cat
- Text Message Messages On the Big Screen
- Blink-182
Line Fail
When we got to Freefest at about 12:30, we walked around for about 10 minutes looking at the many tables giving away free stuff before realizing that there was a rather large line forming in front of the pavilion (the main stage where basically every band I wanted to see was playing). I didn’t want to ruin my night by not getting a good seat, so we got in line. At about 1 (I think), they started letting everyone in, which turned into mad-crazy madness. Everyone rushed to the front, destroying the line (at least where we were) and once anyone got into the pavilion they were running to a good seat, jumping over other seats to get there. By the end of the night it was probably the most people I’ve ever seen in one place at one time, though I could only see this from the skydivers’ (mentioned later) helmet cams, since we were inside. Here’s a photo that Melissa took of the screen (of the skydivers’ helmet cam). You can barely see, but the amount of people you see in the photo is about a 1/10 of the amount of people outside of the pavilion.
I did get a good seat, so I thought everything was all set for the rest of the night. A few minutes later I realized that I would have to sit in this seat for 10 hours straight without food or water. Okay I brought water, but later on I realized that the more water I drank, the more I had to pee (and gosh I had to pee so freakin’ bad by the end of the night). The more the night went on, that harder it was to get back into the pavilion. We kept seeing people leave and come back in a few hours later, but I didn’t want to risk my entire night for getting food or peeing. Luckilly, Nate brought us some food by handing it to Melissa over the railing a little later in the night. I’m pretty sure it took Nate about 3 hours of sitting in line to get into the pavilion (luckily he got in right before Blink-182, the single band he came for).
Taking Back Sunday and the Agile Bassist/What I Think About Extra Players On Stage
Taking Back Sunday was awesome. I’ve seen them before, but honestly I didn’t recognize any of them except for the singer and the fat, mexican-looking guitarist. Were any of the others even the same? Also they had three guitarists (AND a bassist), which really made them sound better.
I feel like every band should have an extra band member playing live with them just to play the extra music that their current member count can’t handle. Ninety-nine percent of music recorded has tons of extra instruments recorded over top of what everyone would usually play just to make it sound better; so why not bring in another person in to play that stuff? Taking Back Sunday and Weezer both did this (though I’m not sure whether the extra person in either is actually part of their actual “band” now), but Blink-182 didn’t, which I’ll get to later.
So back to Taking Back Sunday. Their bassist was crazy. He kept jumping around and playing around with the other band mates. And that is what I love most about seeing bands live (the playing around with each other part). When I see one band mate say or do something funny and then the other band mates laugh at it, or I see the band mates hug each other or just show their love for each other in any way, it makes my experience better. I love seeing a band just having fun on stage, acknowledging each other and just looking like they appreciate each other being there with them. I hate it when a huge band will just stand in one spot and play their music. Like when Weezer was playing, the singer kept doing hilarious things, but the other band mates seemed like they didn’t even notice, or care. There’s no love there.
So back to the bassist. On the last song, he literally ran all the way out of the pavilion while playing to see the fans and back in. I mean I’ve seen bands do this before, but the pavilion was huge. Anyway, Taking Back Sunday = awesome.
Skydivers FTW!
About half an hour before Weezer, the big screens started showing a camera on the ground watching a helicopter and another camera on someones head inside of the helicopter. I was wondering for a long time why the heck this was happening. I started realizing though that the editing was terrible, so clearly this was live. I was thinking that maybe it was Weezer or Blink arriving since I could see they were over top of the pavilion, but it wasn’t them inside the copter. Then I start to see one of the guys unbuckle his seat belt and I realized what they were doing. THEY WERE SKYDIVING ONTO THE PAVILION! EPIC! It was so unexpected and amazing to watch. They literally jumped out of a helicopter and landed directly above me. Granted, it would have looked way cooler if we were outside actually watching it occur instead of on the screen. But it was still awesome. A few minutes later, Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Group, greeted them with a bottle of champagne, which he shook and sprayed over the crowd below. Mark Hoppus later came up and drank the champagne with them.
Weezer Opens With War Pigs and Closes With Keybard Cat
Yes, Weezer opened with about a minute of War Pigs, and it was incredible. And it wasn’t a like Weezer rendition of War Pigs; it was War Pigs. They went into Hash Pipe with it, which flowed very nicely. The singer was crazy, jumping on a trampoline, throwing a football at people, breaking a ukulele. One thing I noticed is that they switched band members a lot. They played My Name is Jonas without the lead singer, until the very end where he showed up to play the harmonica solo. They played another song (I thiiiink it was Undone – The Sweater Song) with one of the guitarists playing the drums instead, and the drummer leaving the stage completely (I was thinking maybe this was how their band was before when the song originally came out?). For Island In the Sun, the singer actually played each instrument for a measure and recording/looping them so he could practically play the song by himself, with all of the instruments. The rest of the band later jumped in during the song. At the end of the show the lights went off and Keyboard Cat appeared on screen to play them off. So Weezer was freaking amazing. Without a doubt the best live experience of a single band I’ve ever seen, despite them not showing each other much love.
Oh yeah, and the singer of Weezer acts totally weird, and when he talks he definitely sounds like the main character on Revenge of the Nerds. Very cool.
Text Message Messages On the Big Screen
Throughout most of the festival you could text a message of photo to a certain number and it would show up on the big screens around the pavilion. I know this happens at many concerts now, but it just seemed why funnier this time. There were a lot of internet meems and movie quotes on the screen. Any time there was a “go [insert sports team]” message up, it would be followed by either a mass of booing or cheering. At one point it said “go steelers” and everyone booed, then that message was followed by “i love nachos” and everyone cheered. It was hysterical to me for some reason. Another time someone put “marco” and everyone yelled “polo.” Another time someone put “I’m just a small town girl…” and you know what came next. It was very smart, I believe, on Virgin’s behalf to do this. It kept the crowd occupied and their mind off the fact that they have to pee more than you can ever imagine.
Blink-182
It was pretty amazing seeing the band that I’ve wanted to see live for years and years now, hearing their songs on the radio time and time again. Blink-182 had a little bit of love showing. Definitely interacting with each other. One thing I noticed though, was that it seemed like Mark Hoppus had grown up but Tom DeLonge hadn’t. Tom kept making dirty jokes, saying “F***” as an entire sentence, and singing stupidly on purpose. But Mark was singing/playing normally and rarely made a joke unless seemingly provoked by Tom. Many people prefer either way of seeing Blink, but I personally would have liked them all to take Mark’s approach.
The bottom-line for me is that seeing Blink in person was amazing, and hearing them play the songs I’ve heard for years and years was equally amazing. But I really didn’t like how the music sounded, since they didn’t have extra people playing anything (except someone playing the piano on some songs), but I do understand and appreciate that they only had the three of them because that’s the core and that’s Blink. I also didn’t really like how Tom DeLonge was acting; I can see why the others thought he was a douchebag. I know I’m going to get crucified for saying all of this for anyone that actually reads this far…
All in all…
It was the most amazing concert I’ve ever been to, and it was free! (aside for the $12 terrible chicken tenders and fries I bought…)
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