Jimmy Eat World

Thursday was a short day at work for Craig and I – we headed out to an MSDN event for the afternoon. I was most disappointed that the demos were done in VB.NET (instead of C#), and even more so that I didn’t win the iPaq door prize, but we still found out some interesting stuff.

Of course, that was just the prequel to a much more exciting evening – my first concert in America! And who better to see than Jimmy Eat World? They were playing out at Rutherford (NJ) with a band we’d never heard of – Taking Back Sunday. So, after the MSDN event, we walked up to the bus terminal, and after about 20 minutes or so, we were there!

We were a bit early for the show so we wandered around the arena for a while to observe the crowd (and buy a tour shirt, of course . It seemed we were a bit out of place – the average age of the crowd wouldn’t have been much more than 16… it was just like a Blink 182 concert! The lady on the door also thought we were a bit odd, and even asked Craig if he had come to drop off his kids!

The first band came on, and we presumed it was Taking Back Sunday. They were ok, they played a short set and were off the stage pretty fast. The roadies reset the stage, which meant it was almost time for Jimmy to come on. The lights dimmed, the crowed roared, and there they were! They totally rocked out! As expected, they played a lot of their biggest songs – Work, The Middle, A Praise Chorus, Bleed American, etc – as well as a number of lesser known tracks from their earlier albums. I would have liked to hear them play Polaris and The Authority Song, but I guess you can’t always get what you want.

Jimmy was an awesome band to see live – unfortunately for us though, we were so far away from the stage, and so high up, that the acoustics were just terrible. There was a lot of echo and it was very difficult to hear the singer. Even the volume level was affected – I’ve taken to wearing ear-plugs at most concerts now, but at that altitude it just wasn’t necessary. Talk about the nosebleeds!

Anyway, we were disappointed when Jimmy left the stage after about an hour of playing. We thought they were just doing the encore trick, but as it turns out the show was a joint tour with Taking Back Sunday – each band was only playing a short set. What a gip! Worse still, Taking Back Sunday weren’t the first band that had come on – that was some other support band that we also hadn’t heard of. Taking Back Sunday were playing second! And Craig and I were just about the only ones that hadn’t heard of them – everyone else was totally into it!

Since we had to wait until the show was over before the bus would leave, we were stuck there watching them. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have minded, as they seemed like a pretty rockin’ band, and the lead singer had some very impressive microphone tricks… but since the acoustics were so bad, it was hard to enjoy the music. We bailed about half way through and managed to get on the first bus back to Manhattan.

I always think that a concert experience is judged by how you feel about the band the next day. Suffice to say that Friday’s playlist consisted of all the Jimmy Eat World songs that I have, and that I’d take any opportunity I could to see them live again. Next time though, I’ll buy the tickets a lot earlier, in the hope that it gets us a better position to enjoy the music.