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After road tripping to more than ten concerts or music festivals, I can officially say yesterday was both the least and most lucky trip I’ve ever experienced. But how can one day hit both sides of the luck pendulum, you ask? Because even my least lucky day usually ends up working out anyways — and so begins the story of the Motion City Soundtrack trip.

Let’s start out with my lost tickets. On December 8TH I bought two tickets from Ticketmaster. Those tickets never showed up. This was a first for me. I’ve always ordered and had my tickets delivered from Ticketmaster via USPS with no problems. After a couple phone calls and email exchanges I finally got my tickets changed to TicketFast so I could just print them out. Alright, obstacle one down.

Next up? The weather. This is only the second time I’ve ever assembled a group for a show in the winter, the first being The Matches opening for +44 at the same venue. There are good reasons to avoid winter shows, including but not limited to ice, snow, freezing rain, frigid temperatures, long lines in frigid temperatures, getting to the venue in the madness, and expensive coat-checks in which you gamble even getting your jacket back. So checking the weather for both Iowa and Minnesota became a twice-daily ritual. Again, we lucked out. Temperatures stayed above freezing. It was wet outside but not dangerous. Good news.

So we all committed to going. We meet up, we get on the road and we head west towards a town just off I35 to pick up another friend. A hour and a half later we arrive at a truck stop. Someone puts down a window. Said window doesn’t go back up. We try to guide the window up. The window falls off the tracking and is down for the count. Oh shit. It’s raining. It’s 35 degrees. What the hell do we do now? We procure duct tape and a garbage bag from the friendly truck stop. Doesn’t work. Fails catastrophically, actually, shortly after we’re back on the road. We search for another gas station and the second group following us saves the day with a towel. I kid you not, one of them gets out of the car and hands us a towel. Our ghetto cruiser officially becomes white trash.

We can make this work. So we’re off again, we spend a little more time on the road and then as we approach the cities we begin to get stuff ready. Some of us take a quick glance at our tickets to make sure they’re there. They are not. Someone is officially down one ticket. This is also a first. We often, believe it or not, have had extra tickets for shows. We’ve always had everyone covered one way or another. But we continue on. I’m confident things will some how work out. A little stressed, but confident.

We find a parking ramp a block away from the venue and park four floors up. Then we make our way to the elevator lobby and try attempt number one to fix the ticket fiasco, which is having the person that forgot their tickets call Ticketmaster to see if they can get the order changed to will-call. We’ve done this before, it’s a pretty simple process, and I’m certain it’ll work. It does not. After spending a huge chunk of time on hold, confirming he is who he says he is, and providing order numbers (his receipt, unlike his tickets, was still in the otherwise empty envelope), the jackass at Ticketmaster couldn’t press a few keys to assist someone who just traveled a few hours out of state. Awesome. I remain optimistic, though my confidence is admittedly shaken up.

We head towards the Hard Rock across the street from First-Avenue to grab some dinner before the show and avoid the growing line. People who stand in lines are suckers. I should know, I’ve frequently stood in lines. Once you’re inside a venue, you can make your way through the crowd to just about anywhere you want, but even then you’ll most likely bail on your awesome front-row, center spot when the crowd attempts to kill you. The energy will always be awesome, but it’s only tolerable for so long.

Two of our party split up to see if they can get a hold of a manager at the club, an unlikely chance at best. They do come across a couple of empathetic doormen who tell them they have a 50/50 chance of working with the venue and Ticketmaster in conjunction to get the ticket order changed, but they’ll have to come back after the doors open. They meet back up with us somewhat uplifted. 50/50 is better than 0/100.

We head to the venue slightly after the entire line has shuffled in. We wait inside the door while the last member of our group tries to reason with the front desk. He has his receipts and identification. The lady working the desk finally says he can purchase another ticket to get in. Hey — out another $18.50, but at least he gets in, right?

But no. Because this is both the least and most lucky day for a concert, it’s even better. Another lady taking tickets pulls him aside before he has a chance to buy anything, stamps his hand, and he gets in without any physical ticket what-so-ever. Thank you random stranger.

So in the end we caught awesome sets by bands I hadn’t been into (The Swellers, This Providence, and Set Your Goals) and a crazy kick off for Motion City Soundtrack’s tour in support of their new album My Dinosaur Life. MCS played stuff from all four of their full-lengths and even an earlier track from one of their first EPs.

And that stupid window? It came up on the ride home. Because everything works out in the end.

Motion City Soundtrack Set

Worker Bee
My Favorite Accident
Everything is alright
Delerium
Last night
Cambridge
Shiver
Disappear
Time Turned Fragile
Motherfucker
This is for real
Capital H
A Lifeless Ordinary
Make Out Kids
Her Words Destroyed My Planet
L.G. FUAD

Encore:
Even If It Kills Me
Throwdown
The Future Freaks Me Out

So much for the afterglow. Just shy of my 11TH birthday I got my first NOW! CD for Christmas. I played that disc until it literally cracked one day. I can sing a long with Harvey Danger, K-Ci & JoJo, All Saints, Tonic, Everclear, & Lenny Kravitz word for word to this day and I haven’t listened to some of those songs in a very long time. I got most of the Now! CDs up until 12 or 13 when I got less and less into contemporary pop. Back then we did a lot of traveling as a family, which was great because every new trip meant I could get a new CD to listen to on the road.

My music tastes have fluctuated a lot over the years, but I think I have a pretty open mind. I can judge pretty quickly what I like from what I don’t and I’m pretty opinionated, which I think gives the impression that I have extremely specific tastes. I don’t.

Growing up I listened to a lot of country. I also listened to the radio all the time. I picked up a lot of music interests from my family. I spent most of my childhood bouncing between one home in Independence, another home in Waterloo, my aunt’s home south of Jesup, and finally my grandparent’s home in Jesup, the last two being where I spent the majority of my time and were really what I considered my home. Now staying at my grandparents meant lots of bike rides, football at Pioneer park, & pink lemonade, but staying at my aunt’s probably had a far greater impact on who I am today. There was music blaring anywhere at any time over there. 70’s, 80’s, hard rock, R&B, pop, and country. From the garage, the kitchen, the living room and everywhere in between. Looking back, this was probably the single greatest impact on my music tastes. I was exposed to everything and I loved it. My cousins were way more like siblings to me than cousins. Lots of memories and firsts took place on that farm.

Lately I’ve been trying to get find new music to get into. It seems like I’ve been in a listening rut with the same stuff which prompted me to look back at some of the stuff I’ve loved over the years.

Anyways. My birthday is January 27TH. I’m not usually big on celebrating birthdays but this year I’m looking forward to it. Motion City Soundtrack is playing January 23RD at First-Avenue in downtown Minneapolis and I’m going with a decent sized group of friends. It”ll be their first show following the release of their new CD and in their hometown, so it should be a good time.

www.blink182.com

According to Buzznet, blink-182 will be touring with Weezer this summer on their first outing since reforming after a 4-year hiatus. Buzznet cites an anonymous source and few other details are available about such a tour. What we do know is that the tour will be prior to blink-182’s album due this fall and will contain songs from several of the band’s albums.

Most information currently available, with the exception of the Weezer announcement, is straight from bassist Mark Hoppus’ own lips, or perhaps fingers may be a more appropriate word. Hoppus has been constantly updating his Twitter.com account since it’s creation with ramblings of day to day activities. Entries on the musician’s micro-blogging page range from his erratic sleep schedule to working on remixes for bands like Fall Out Boy and his announcement of working with new albums as a producer for acts like Motion City Soundtrack, with which he worked on Commit This to Memory in 2005.

Tour Mockup

The man seems content to remain busy even through out the finalizing of blink-182’s album and in preparation for a tour. Other entries by Hoppus are conversations with Chris Holmes, who worked with Hoppus extensively on +44 during the blink hiatus, about the possibility of working with production while on the road with his own band. This would lead some to ask why not take along a lesser known band to give them exposure? To be honest no one knows if other acts will be involved on the summer tour, although you’d have to think the details would come out soon. Weezer may have been guitarist Tom DeLonge’s idea. DeLonge did a co-headlining tour with Weezer and his band Angels & Airwaves just last fall, when the rumors of a blink reunion were starting to formulate. Immediately after the announcement of a reunion and a tour rumors had already sprung about just who would be special enough to join along, including the mock tour poster that made it’s way on to AbsolutePunk.

Regardless of who’s on the tour, this summer is sure to turn every twenty and thirty-something out there back into a 15 yr. old kid laughing at fart jokes. And let’s be honest, we could use some of that.

Rehearsal List

As I mentioned in the last post, Sunday we hit up Warped Tour in Minnesota and, while it was an amazing show, I was a little disappointed that Say Anything was unable to perform. Max was sick. Max was also sick for the Chicago show, but they got a little something we didn’t. Like Justin from Motion City Soundtrack singing Alive with the Glory of Love. Check out the video below and look around on youtube for other guest appearances from singers from Reliant K, Norma Jean, Every Time I Die & more.

So hear this please
And watch as your heart speeds up endlessly
And look for the stars as the sun goes down
Each breathe that you take has a thunderous sound
Everything, everything’s magic

Late Sunday night/early Monday morning we finally got back from the Shakopee, Minnesota Warped Tour show and I’m not sure it’s completely sunk in.

Warped is an amazing place not just because you have the oppertunity to see so many up and coming bands, as well as more mainstream bands, but because of the awesome people there. Whether it’s just the random people you see walking by in their strange attire or the people trying to get people interested in a cause. I don’t like pushy people, but they don’t come across as that and it’s always nice to see people movitated for something they believe in.

Oddly enough, the guys from Adventures of Brad and Jordan spotted me prior to the Anberlin set. It’s always nice to actually meet the people behind the writing you enjoy – if you’re reading this, sorry I disappeared. I had to get some air. Catch you at another show sometime maybe?

This year’s Minnesota date was somewhat different from the last time I went in that the sun was practically non-existent for the majority of the day. It wasn’t cold though and the breeze made everything just about perfect.

When we first got their we almost immediately headed towards the Van’s merchandise tent so one of us could get some actual shoes (flip flops are the worst thing you can wear to something like this) and while over there someone affiliated with Motion City Soundtrack asked me if we’d like to get some stuff signed. I think my response was pretty much “Uh yeah, are you kidding?”. I grabbed passes for the three of us so we could head back to the merch tent later for the signings. Three hundred total passes were handed out so I think we were pretty lucky.

At somepoint between waiting for bands we ended up walking by the ModLife bus when none other than Tom DeLonge walks out of it and starts hugging kids by the fence. Unfortunately we missed out on hugs/hand shakes as we were just a bit late but Tom was nice enough to give us some nice photo ops from the top of the bus and . . . well, we were just feet away from Tom DeLonge. What else can be said?

I wasn’t sure how Angels and Airwaves would be received at Warped. I guess these days that some of the bands at Warped are considerably softer than they would have been ten years ago, but AvA is in a whole new realm, vastly different from the likes of blink-182. Any hesitations I had about the energy of the crowd vanished as I saw the people filling in the area in front of both mainstages.

AvA put on an awesome thirty-minute set and the crowd was very, very into it. The atmosphere was amazing even without the lightshow from the last Angels concert I went to and the energy was intense.

And the last big set for me? Motion City Soundtrack in their home state. Things had drastically changed since 2005 when they played one of the smaller stages. Nope, that wasn’t happening this year. Mainstage Left in all it’s glory. Again, a ton of people swarmed in front of both stages to get as close as they could. MCS played a nice variety of stuff from all three of their full lengths and had people singing back the lyrics. It was an amazing show and I can’t wait to see them on one of their tours sometime.

Overall it was an excellent show this year and I’m looking forward to next year’s stop. Now I’ve gotta go finish catching up on sleep. G’night.