Monday, July 16, 2012

The Wonder Years Tour w/ The Early November Review

I'm really behind on updating this blog, but in May I had the exciting opportunity to see The Swellers, The Wonder Years, and The Early November at Irving Plaza in New York City. Now, I think we've established that The Wonder Years are my current fave, so I could not have been more pumped to see how they performed live.

We got to the plaza a little too early, but I like live music in general so watching the local opening band was fine with me, although I don't remember much about them. The Swellers were up next; I had downloaded a few of their songs prior to the concert, and found out I actually enjoy their music. I wasn't running to load up on shirts at their merch table or anything, but I could easily sing along and be into their set. Then again, I rarely visit merch tables...there comes a time when you're just too old to be sporting band tees everywhere you go.

The Wonder Years came out and put on a spectacular show. I was singing along with every song, although I held back because the friend who went along had never been to an indoor punk show before and I wanted to hold in my secret weirdness. The crowd went crazy for songs like "Melrose Diner" and "Local Man Ruins Everything," and also "Coffee Eyes," which surprised me because it really hadn't been one of my favorite songs by them. They closed with "Came Out Swinging," and I finally went all-out. I pushed my way to the second row and sung along loudly. It was one of the best concert experiences of my life when the entire crowd sang the soft part towards the end, and then the harder part came in, the lead singer jumped into the crowd, and everything went banana-sandwich crazy. I happened to be close enough to make my way over and support the lead singer in his crowd-surfing endeavors, but unfortunately most of the crowd had the same idea, and everyone fell over as a group. After a few desperate seconds trying to get back up, I finally accepted death-by-trampling as a certainty and my life flashed before my eyes' I barely had enough time to think, I'm too old for this shit. Then, some kind, large, soul grabbed me under my arms and pulled me out of the crushing mob before it was too late. I quickly composed myself by pulling my shirt back on--not sure how it fell off--and found that I had lost an earring and nearly a shoe. Oops. I made my way back to my friend and acting as if nothing had happened. I should really go into acting.

We then went upstairs to find comfortable seats in which to watch The Early November. I liked this band a lot, and still do, although I'm not one of Ace Ender's fangirls. We didn't end up staying for the whole set, and unfortunately I can't give the excuse that we wanted to avoid traffic. It's New York, we were walking, bitches. We were just old, tired, and hungry. However, the half-set I saw was pretty great. The crowd wasn't as enthused as they were for TWY, but then again November isn't exactly the moshing kind of band anyway. All in all, I had a spectacular time watching these three bands at Irving, and I'd recommend going to see any of them, if you like them...because sometimes concerts suck if you don't know the music. Or maybe you should start listening NOW so when they come to your town you can avoid this problem. Just a suggestion.

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