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glitter_n_goreI slept only three hours last night. It was worth it.
If you somehow don't know this, My Chemical Romance is my favorite band. I saw them live four times in the late 2000s, folded myself into the amazing fan community they inspire, and was devastated when they officially broke up in 2013.
There have been rumors about the band getting back together pretty much since that day. My personal fantasy was that they would come back for a reunion show, sometime far into the future, and end the set with "Welcome to the Black Parade." Everyone fortunate enough to attend--and whoever was at home watching via livestream--would sing out every word of our emo anthem once again.
GIF: The Black Parade float with the boys on board
Source.
Last night, that fantasy came true. My mind is a little blurry since I was up WAY past my bedtime and I'm only just starting to come down from the high of knowing I now live in a world with My Chemical Romance back in it, but I will do my best to document my experience here.
This is gonna be a long one.
I've written about this reunion a couple times on my other blog, first just to flail about the news, so I'll try to keep this focused on what happened yesterday and late last night.
For me, the celebration started as soon as I woke up. This was the day! They were going perform on an actual stage, in front of a real live audience, in a matter of hours!! I logged into Twitter to see who was covering what. Some fans had been camped out for days, even though tickets sold out in minutes over a month ago. The band and some of their roadies went out to meet them the night before, handing out blankets and checking on everyone and generally reminding me why I love them so much in the first place.
I did have to work a short shift yesterday, so I blasted The Black Parade in the car on my way in, and Conventional Weapons on my way home. I also went to see Knives Out with Mom, which was excellent, but that's not important right now. I tried to pay attention to my immediate company through dinner, but it was hard. My adrenaline was bubbling over so much I could barely sit still.
And no, I wasn't actually there, but that hardly mattered. I was too happy for it to matter. I was thrilled on behalf on the younger fans who didn't think they'd be able to see this band in their lifetimes. I was amazed at the reach of this band's impact, thinking about this one girl who was also celebrating her seventeenth birthday last night, which means she wasn't even born yet when the first album came out. Understand I mean that as a positive. There were at least two, possibly three, generations of fans represented at the venue in LA. I have never been part of something like this before.
As the evening darkened, and more fans filtered in, various user accounts combined forces to keep everyone at home updated. Official rock channel RockSound interviewed several fans who were waiting in line, asking them what MCR means to them, where they were when they heard about the reunion, what song they imagined they'd play first--the really important questions. Alternative Press's Instagram planned to livestream the entire show, to varying degrees of success as the WiFi inside the concert hall proved patchy and unreliable. One Twitter user took the opportunity to tease Frank with this supercut of all the times he'd sidestepped the question of whether MCR was getting back together, and Frank, being Frank, teased right back.
The merch table gave us another heartwarming reveal: this fan artist had created a design out of pure fandom love, and the band contacted him personally, with generous compensation, and turned it into one of the collectible posters people could take home. For the record, this isn't the first time they've done something like this: the official video for The Kids From Yesterday is based on a fan video that they liked so much they contacted the maker--again, with generous compensation--to get the raw footage and recut it for the single.
Many social media superfans were involved in making this event accessible to those of us who couldn't be there in person, and I'd love to credit every single one of them, but there were simply too many to keep track of. However, I will send a collective shout-out to some of the MVPs who did their part to make us feel like we were there: Twitter users GWayFUN, MCRupdates1, and ChemicalFancast collected and reposted all the info they could find across the Internet, and goblin_city_ kept track of the setlist as it happened, putting a Spotify playlist together on the fly. Instagram user dietshampoo provided us with the sharpest, most reliable livestream of the entire show. Twitch user days_fade kept tabs on all the livestreamers, opening their channel up for those who didn't have Instagram (me!), and toggled back and forth between streams when one crashed so we wouldn't miss a minute.
Again, these are a mere handful of the heroes who kept us all connected. They came through to get us in the doors, and stuck with us after dropped connections, server crashes, and data overload.
When Twitter user TraceyJeanne_ started posting snatches of songs from the soundcheck, and that was the first time I cried. Hearing I Don't Love You, despite the muffled, indistinct quality of the sound, suddenly made it all real. Then the doors opened and we got our first look inside. A handful of celebrity faces, including Brendon Urie and Aidan Gallagher, along with family members of the band, were spotted in the rafters. Then the opening band, Thursday, hit the stage.
I gleaned from social media reactions that some of the younger fans don't know Thursday or why they were chosen as openers. Thursday were label mates with MCR back in the I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love era on Eyeball Records. They toured together, hung out in studio together, and Thursday's frontman Geoff Rickly was one of their earliest and most vocal supporters. Given Rickly's clout in the punk world, his blessing gave them a certain amount of credibility and positive word of mouth. You don't have to be a Thursday fan to appreciate that.
He told the crowd he was there for the same reason they were: to see one of his favorite bands take the stage again. Because of course Thursday put on a good show, and some of the people in the crowd were legit fans of theirs, but that's not really what this night was about.
When Thursday left the stage, I expressed some concern--mostly excitement, but also concern--about staying awake, given the fact that I had to be up at 6am the next day. Thursday hadn't started until 8:30pm LA time, which for me was 11:30pm, so MCR's set wouldn't start until well after midnight. So I was teetering. GWayFUN then said this to me: "Oh no Rhoda there is coffee for that this is history." That, more than anything, convinced me to strap in for the rest of the night. Because she was right: this wasn't just any reunion show. This was special. This was important. To me personally, and to a lot of people I cared about. I wanted to stay to the end. And anyway, there's no way I would've been able to sleep if I'd tried. So I lit a candle for the oncoming Solstice, and rallied.
The drop curtain went up. The lights flickered. Excitement mounted. We heard a medley of recorded sound clips, including Dr. Death-Defying's intro to "Na Na Na." In the last few seconds before the curtain dropped, I yelled, "OMFG I CAN'T BREATHE" into the Twitter-verse. And then finally, finally, THERE THEY WERE. They launched immediately into "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" and the beautiful chaos that is an MCR show began.
I took notes of the setlist as it happened so I could repost it today, and here it is:
I'm Not Okay (I Promise)
Thank You For the Venom
Give Em Hell Kid
House of Wolves
Summertime
You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison
Make Room!!! <---FIRST EVER LIVE PERFORMANCE OF THIS SONG! EVER!!!
Our Lady of Sorrows
Na Na Na
Sleep
Mama
I Don't Love You
Destroya
Teenagers
S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W
Famous Last Words
The Kids From Yesterday
1st ENCORE:
Vampire Money
Helena
2nd ENCORE:
Welcome to the Black Parade
I cannot begin to convey the rush of feelings that accompanied watching this happen. It's one thing to see video after the fact. It's another to see the polished, edited captures people are no doubt cobbling together at this very moment. It's something else entirely to go into it genuinely not knowing what it's going to look like or how it will sound.
And let's be clear, the various livestreams, even the best ones, were spotty. It was possible to hear the band, and Gerard's voice, along with the crowd shouting every lyric along with him, but it's not like the sound quality you'd get with a professionally recorded show like The Black Parade Is Dead! Some angles were better than others, some users were closer than others, and the one I watched the most had tilted her phone so that I spent much of the night curled up on my side to see it correctly. (This is one of the things those post-show edits will fix, I'm sure.)
But let's also be clear on this: It did not matter. The sound that came through was electrifying. The opening riffs of songs I hadn't heard live in almost ten years, including one that had never been performed before anywhere, plus the breaks when Gerard stopped to talk to the crowd, fed into this combined excitement and a strange sort of nostalgia. Like being pulled back into a dream I thought I'd forgotten and didn't want to wake up from.
Gerard kept describing the night as "magical" and talked about how much fun he was having. At the beginning of the night he said, "We didn't know if this was ever gonna happen again, so thanks for showing up tonight!" One of the things I find delightful about Gerard is how perpetually surprised he is by his own success. Every time we come out and remind this band how much they mean to us, he's like, "Wow, you guys still like us? Weird! You're so nice!"
Towards the end of the show, Gerard asked if there was anyone in the crowd seeing their first ever MCR show. I was hoping he would ask that, because SO MANY HANDS went up! Again, he seemed truly baffled, and went, "Wait, put your hands up again!" to get a better look. This is why I'm not mad about not being able to be there myself. If they launch a full-blown tour, I will absolutely be there. But their fanbase has DOUBLED since they left us. I want everyone to see them in person who possibly can, and I can't be upset about seeing kids literally half my age have the same incredible experience I did years ago.
The second time I cried was when they played "The Kids From Yesterday." The song starts with the line, "This could be the last of all the rides we take / So hold on tight and don't look back." It's like a farewell and a love letter at the same time, as if the singer is trying to reassure us that even after we part ways for good, the time we had together wasn't wasted. It's so bittersweet and beautiful, I get choked up even thinking about it. The song ended with the band members slowly drifting backstage as the lights went down, until it was just Mikey under a spotlight playing that closing bass riff while the crowd chanted his name, with their tour drummer (whose name I don't know yet, I'm sorry!) keeping time in the background.
Obviously they couldn't leave without playing "Helena" and "Welcome to the Black Parade," and we all knew that. Obviously they knew we knew, because when they came back out for the second encore, Gerard sort of smirked and said, "We have one more song for you. And I think you know what it is." I might be getting the phrasing slightly off (I want to watch this again), but that was the general idea. Then the famous "G Note" hit, and well, you can guess what happened next.
It was . . . a lot. In the best possible way. I am already forgetting some of the finer details. I'm not as exhausted today as I expected to be, although the adrenaline has mostly worn off. I know this post can't possibly communicate everything I was feeling watching this performance, but I had to try.
On that note: so long, and goodnight!
(Cross-posted torhoda_rants.)
If you somehow don't know this, My Chemical Romance is my favorite band. I saw them live four times in the late 2000s, folded myself into the amazing fan community they inspire, and was devastated when they officially broke up in 2013.
There have been rumors about the band getting back together pretty much since that day. My personal fantasy was that they would come back for a reunion show, sometime far into the future, and end the set with "Welcome to the Black Parade." Everyone fortunate enough to attend--and whoever was at home watching via livestream--would sing out every word of our emo anthem once again.
GIF: The Black Parade float with the boys on board
Source.
Last night, that fantasy came true. My mind is a little blurry since I was up WAY past my bedtime and I'm only just starting to come down from the high of knowing I now live in a world with My Chemical Romance back in it, but I will do my best to document my experience here.
This is gonna be a long one.
I've written about this reunion a couple times on my other blog, first just to flail about the news, so I'll try to keep this focused on what happened yesterday and late last night.
For me, the celebration started as soon as I woke up. This was the day! They were going perform on an actual stage, in front of a real live audience, in a matter of hours!! I logged into Twitter to see who was covering what. Some fans had been camped out for days, even though tickets sold out in minutes over a month ago. The band and some of their roadies went out to meet them the night before, handing out blankets and checking on everyone and generally reminding me why I love them so much in the first place.
I did have to work a short shift yesterday, so I blasted The Black Parade in the car on my way in, and Conventional Weapons on my way home. I also went to see Knives Out with Mom, which was excellent, but that's not important right now. I tried to pay attention to my immediate company through dinner, but it was hard. My adrenaline was bubbling over so much I could barely sit still.
And no, I wasn't actually there, but that hardly mattered. I was too happy for it to matter. I was thrilled on behalf on the younger fans who didn't think they'd be able to see this band in their lifetimes. I was amazed at the reach of this band's impact, thinking about this one girl who was also celebrating her seventeenth birthday last night, which means she wasn't even born yet when the first album came out. Understand I mean that as a positive. There were at least two, possibly three, generations of fans represented at the venue in LA. I have never been part of something like this before.
As the evening darkened, and more fans filtered in, various user accounts combined forces to keep everyone at home updated. Official rock channel RockSound interviewed several fans who were waiting in line, asking them what MCR means to them, where they were when they heard about the reunion, what song they imagined they'd play first--the really important questions. Alternative Press's Instagram planned to livestream the entire show, to varying degrees of success as the WiFi inside the concert hall proved patchy and unreliable. One Twitter user took the opportunity to tease Frank with this supercut of all the times he'd sidestepped the question of whether MCR was getting back together, and Frank, being Frank, teased right back.
The merch table gave us another heartwarming reveal: this fan artist had created a design out of pure fandom love, and the band contacted him personally, with generous compensation, and turned it into one of the collectible posters people could take home. For the record, this isn't the first time they've done something like this: the official video for The Kids From Yesterday is based on a fan video that they liked so much they contacted the maker--again, with generous compensation--to get the raw footage and recut it for the single.
Many social media superfans were involved in making this event accessible to those of us who couldn't be there in person, and I'd love to credit every single one of them, but there were simply too many to keep track of. However, I will send a collective shout-out to some of the MVPs who did their part to make us feel like we were there: Twitter users GWayFUN, MCRupdates1, and ChemicalFancast collected and reposted all the info they could find across the Internet, and goblin_city_ kept track of the setlist as it happened, putting a Spotify playlist together on the fly. Instagram user dietshampoo provided us with the sharpest, most reliable livestream of the entire show. Twitch user days_fade kept tabs on all the livestreamers, opening their channel up for those who didn't have Instagram (me!), and toggled back and forth between streams when one crashed so we wouldn't miss a minute.
Again, these are a mere handful of the heroes who kept us all connected. They came through to get us in the doors, and stuck with us after dropped connections, server crashes, and data overload.
When Twitter user TraceyJeanne_ started posting snatches of songs from the soundcheck, and that was the first time I cried. Hearing I Don't Love You, despite the muffled, indistinct quality of the sound, suddenly made it all real. Then the doors opened and we got our first look inside. A handful of celebrity faces, including Brendon Urie and Aidan Gallagher, along with family members of the band, were spotted in the rafters. Then the opening band, Thursday, hit the stage.
I gleaned from social media reactions that some of the younger fans don't know Thursday or why they were chosen as openers. Thursday were label mates with MCR back in the I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love era on Eyeball Records. They toured together, hung out in studio together, and Thursday's frontman Geoff Rickly was one of their earliest and most vocal supporters. Given Rickly's clout in the punk world, his blessing gave them a certain amount of credibility and positive word of mouth. You don't have to be a Thursday fan to appreciate that.
He told the crowd he was there for the same reason they were: to see one of his favorite bands take the stage again. Because of course Thursday put on a good show, and some of the people in the crowd were legit fans of theirs, but that's not really what this night was about.
When Thursday left the stage, I expressed some concern--mostly excitement, but also concern--about staying awake, given the fact that I had to be up at 6am the next day. Thursday hadn't started until 8:30pm LA time, which for me was 11:30pm, so MCR's set wouldn't start until well after midnight. So I was teetering. GWayFUN then said this to me: "Oh no Rhoda there is coffee for that this is history." That, more than anything, convinced me to strap in for the rest of the night. Because she was right: this wasn't just any reunion show. This was special. This was important. To me personally, and to a lot of people I cared about. I wanted to stay to the end. And anyway, there's no way I would've been able to sleep if I'd tried. So I lit a candle for the oncoming Solstice, and rallied.
The drop curtain went up. The lights flickered. Excitement mounted. We heard a medley of recorded sound clips, including Dr. Death-Defying's intro to "Na Na Na." In the last few seconds before the curtain dropped, I yelled, "OMFG I CAN'T BREATHE" into the Twitter-verse. And then finally, finally, THERE THEY WERE. They launched immediately into "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" and the beautiful chaos that is an MCR show began.
I took notes of the setlist as it happened so I could repost it today, and here it is:
I'm Not Okay (I Promise)
Thank You For the Venom
Give Em Hell Kid
House of Wolves
Summertime
You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison
Make Room!!! <---FIRST EVER LIVE PERFORMANCE OF THIS SONG! EVER!!!
Our Lady of Sorrows
Na Na Na
Sleep
Mama
I Don't Love You
Destroya
Teenagers
S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W
Famous Last Words
The Kids From Yesterday
1st ENCORE:
Vampire Money
Helena
2nd ENCORE:
Welcome to the Black Parade
I cannot begin to convey the rush of feelings that accompanied watching this happen. It's one thing to see video after the fact. It's another to see the polished, edited captures people are no doubt cobbling together at this very moment. It's something else entirely to go into it genuinely not knowing what it's going to look like or how it will sound.
And let's be clear, the various livestreams, even the best ones, were spotty. It was possible to hear the band, and Gerard's voice, along with the crowd shouting every lyric along with him, but it's not like the sound quality you'd get with a professionally recorded show like The Black Parade Is Dead! Some angles were better than others, some users were closer than others, and the one I watched the most had tilted her phone so that I spent much of the night curled up on my side to see it correctly. (This is one of the things those post-show edits will fix, I'm sure.)
But let's also be clear on this: It did not matter. The sound that came through was electrifying. The opening riffs of songs I hadn't heard live in almost ten years, including one that had never been performed before anywhere, plus the breaks when Gerard stopped to talk to the crowd, fed into this combined excitement and a strange sort of nostalgia. Like being pulled back into a dream I thought I'd forgotten and didn't want to wake up from.
Gerard kept describing the night as "magical" and talked about how much fun he was having. At the beginning of the night he said, "We didn't know if this was ever gonna happen again, so thanks for showing up tonight!" One of the things I find delightful about Gerard is how perpetually surprised he is by his own success. Every time we come out and remind this band how much they mean to us, he's like, "Wow, you guys still like us? Weird! You're so nice!"
Towards the end of the show, Gerard asked if there was anyone in the crowd seeing their first ever MCR show. I was hoping he would ask that, because SO MANY HANDS went up! Again, he seemed truly baffled, and went, "Wait, put your hands up again!" to get a better look. This is why I'm not mad about not being able to be there myself. If they launch a full-blown tour, I will absolutely be there. But their fanbase has DOUBLED since they left us. I want everyone to see them in person who possibly can, and I can't be upset about seeing kids literally half my age have the same incredible experience I did years ago.
The second time I cried was when they played "The Kids From Yesterday." The song starts with the line, "This could be the last of all the rides we take / So hold on tight and don't look back." It's like a farewell and a love letter at the same time, as if the singer is trying to reassure us that even after we part ways for good, the time we had together wasn't wasted. It's so bittersweet and beautiful, I get choked up even thinking about it. The song ended with the band members slowly drifting backstage as the lights went down, until it was just Mikey under a spotlight playing that closing bass riff while the crowd chanted his name, with their tour drummer (whose name I don't know yet, I'm sorry!) keeping time in the background.
Obviously they couldn't leave without playing "Helena" and "Welcome to the Black Parade," and we all knew that. Obviously they knew we knew, because when they came back out for the second encore, Gerard sort of smirked and said, "We have one more song for you. And I think you know what it is." I might be getting the phrasing slightly off (I want to watch this again), but that was the general idea. Then the famous "G Note" hit, and well, you can guess what happened next.
It was . . . a lot. In the best possible way. I am already forgetting some of the finer details. I'm not as exhausted today as I expected to be, although the adrenaline has mostly worn off. I know this post can't possibly communicate everything I was feeling watching this performance, but I had to try.
On that note: so long, and goodnight!
(Cross-posted to
rhoda_rants.)