Alli's Articles
INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS, CULTURE PIECES, MUSICAL RAMBLINGS.
Being in school on the night you're seeing the concert is intense. On one hand, you still haven't accepted that you're going, so you're chill in a way. Sometimes, you don't have any TIME to acknowledge it because your trigonometry teacher is taking forever to explain something and oh my God did she just say I have six pages of homework tonight??? Not doing that. I forgot this strangely numb feeling of stress and anxiety that I had before Hippo Campus up until Tuesday, the day I saw Arcade Fire. Planning and getting stuff done for this concert was so hard that I barely had time to be excited for it until I stepped into MSG. I had to scramble for people to go with, sell tickets, tell my coach I couldn't go to practice, tell my art studio I couldn't go to work, and delete 50 million applications off of my phone. All in like, a day before it even happened. So let's skip all the class stuff because they were all irrelevant in that moment. Of course, I had a student gov meeting right after school so I had to sit there while everyone discussed events happening in NOVEMBER LIKE WE HAVE, LIKE, YEARS TO PLAN IT WHY NOW??? I rushed out of there and to home as soon as I could, finished my physics homework, got dressed and did my hair, and left for Manhattan. I LOVE walking around the city, it's one of my favorite things to do ever. We were pretty early and had a lot of time to kill, so my mom and I ate at this nice little pub place four buildings right of MSG. The lady there was so nice to us and called us her girls. EX: "Hey my girls, need any more water?" I had the BEST cobb salad that I've ever had in my entire life. Mom got fish and chips, and the chips were amazing. We sat next to hipster millennials going to AF too. After we ate, we still had a half an hour, so we went into Starbucks and I had my first Pumpkin Spice of the season! It was delicious. I was extremely excited about it. More excited than I probably should have been. Does that make me a basic white girl now???? Anyway, while sipping on the delicious caffeinated fall drink, I got a little anxiety. What if my phone dies? Runs out of storage? What if I sit next to a pretentious snobby dude that questions my age and my Arcade Fire trivia knowledge? I also missed Sophia and Liah who couldn't come. I missed them a lot. But I was still going to try to enjoy this as much as possible, for me and for them. For I was an ambassador of the Mr. Q group chat, and I needed to experience as much as possible at this event. We finish our coffee and walk to MSG. While we walked, we noticed something. Three people carrying obscure instruments heading in the opposite direction. Who were they??? Backup players??? Oh my God. I think I bumped shoulders with one of them by accident. Am I famous yet? After that encounter, we walked in, did the whole security and tickets shabang, and I bought a shirt and a pin of an arcade machine literally on fire. Then, we found our seats. Literally as soon as we sat down, the opening band started playing. They were called The Preservation Hall Jazz band and they were the lit-est jazz band I have ever heard ever. Like, I want to listen to them now. I want to join the fandom. I have never heard a jazz band that wasn't at a coffee shop somewhere, or one that actually made me want to party. After them, Grandmaster Flash came on. My mom was very excited because she loves him and wanted to hear one specific song, White Lines. "My life would be complete," she said. He came out to this whole intro about his life, gave a shoutout to The Bronx where he lived, and explained his whole crayon to vinyl schtick. Everyone was pumped up and excited to hear some GMF songs..... ......but then he started DJing. Like, actual DJing. He gave tributes to artists that passed such as Bowie and Prince, but no original songs by him. Just songs by other people. Every time he played a new song a slide would appear on the screen of a picture of the artist that was literally made in iMovie. It was a cool party, but kind of disappointing. After that was all over, it was time for the party to begin. They walked on the stage, which was designed like a boxing ring, in a wrestling fashion. "Weighing 2,000 pounds collectively, 20 Grammys, 3 Kids Choice Awards, and one shocking Oscar loss, Arcade Fire!!!" They opened up with Everything Now and Nothing Now mattered, besides this. Honestly, I can write full paragraphs about some of the highlights, but I'm just going to do it in bullet point fashion: - When Will almost fell off the stage during Rebellion (Lies) - When Will waved the tambourine around creepily during Creature Comfort - Every time they showed Will on the screen and I took 3.4 billion pics - Willllll. ❤ - When Win yelled something about supporting immigration and everyone cheered - When they played The Suburbs for Houston after Hurricane Harvey (almost made me cry) - Every time Régine sung anything - Every time my brother's friend from baseball's dad texted us from the pit conspiring about commercialism - The couple that looked like Fred and Carrie from Portlandia that smelled really nice that it covered up the weed smell and I was tempted to ask them what perfume they had? - When they played No Cars Go, my first and favorite AF song and I transcended to Heaven up above - At the end where they played Wake Up and went into the pit after the song ended and played with the PH Jazz band again This whole article doesn't even do this concert any justice. So much happened and it was a legendary show. Totally look up the setlist, or you can even find it on my Concert Setlist MasterPlaylist. I hope you have a good weekend guys. I'll probably post videos where I'm NOT singing on the Insta, so keep your eyes peeled and your hearts ready for that.
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*Sighs* ....Hippo Campus. Round Two. You know what they say: sometimes when you're too nervous to meet a band, there's possibly a chance that you might see them again when they're actually selling tickets where you can meet them without having to chase them down. I don't know what troubled individual besides myself has said that, but it's true in this case.
The school-part of this Tuesday was stressful, I almost fainted in health class because we were learning about periods and I'm not good with that stuff because if they're talking about pain I START to feel the pain even if it's not there and ok typing this out I sound like an insane person and I need to stop. So basically, almost fainted, still kind of felt on edge the rest of the day. When I got home I literally did that thing people do in cartoons where they spin and they get changed into different clothes. In under 20 minutes of getting home from school, we were back on the road to Philly. The ride wasn't bad at all. I was so excited when we got to Philly because I haven't been there since I was 7 but honestly, all that excitement went away when we got there. Philly, or at least the area where Union Transfer is, is SCARY, and ABANDONED. New York is a dirty city, but at least there's, like, LIVING PEOPLE everywhere. The people outside Union were vaping, and this guy who claimed he worked there knocked on our window and told us where to park but I'm pretty sure he didn't work there at all. We parked behind Liah, who was just as scared as I was. We considered turning back, but we didn't. We ate at this hipster place across the street called Llama Teeth. The food was good, but I was too stressed because we had to be back across the street to get to the V.I.P. area in like T-minus 5 seconds. People were lining up in front of the place all while we were eating, but it turned out we could skip them ALL because they weren't even V.I.P.! So ha, vapers. As soon as I walked into the quiet, peaceful lobby, all my stress went away. My hands were shaking all day so when I went up to buy some merch and take a pic with Julia (a.k.a. @joolabird, her Instagram which she's known for), I was a wreck. I picked up a patch. "I-I'll take this," I muttered as all of my money, my school I.D., and my entire life savings in coins fell out of my wallet. She was surprisingly chill about my life spilling on the table and didn't mind when my shaky-ass hands took a selfie of us. I miss her. After that, Hippo Campus, live and in stereo (yes, 13 Reasons Why reference), came out. And Zach ran into my mom. Like literally. She was right there. It was an iconic moment. We were second on line. Right as the people in front of us were finishing, Liah screamed. There. Was. A. GIANT, BUG. ON. MY. CARDIGAN. We collectively freaked out and all 10 people inside were staring at us. A guy that we made friends with behind us managed to swat it off of me. I was relaxed for a second, but then it was time. Even though I had nightmares about it going wrong the night before, meeting Hippo Campus was actually the chillest thing I've went through that day. We talked about a variety of topics. We told them about how we lowkey stalked them at Saint Motel and we all had a laugh about it as they tried to recall us. I got complimented on my Cardigan, I talked about how I'm from NYC but I couldn't come to the show there because of a Sweet Sixteen (that Friday, also best night of my life), our Panic! concert, annoying weed smells, and the blog! We gave them stickers! They signed our tickets, and even put Death Cab lyrics on mine ("the glove compartment is inaccurately named.") Julia took some fire pics, including the one featured. At this point, I was so happy. We got to enter the stage early, and we got BARRICADE. Magic City Hippies came on, and they ROCKED IT. I even got the setlist, and said thank you to the singer, Robby, who looked like an old teacher at my school who left last year ;'). The rest of the show was on fire. I got pushed back a little bit, but honestly I didn't care. There was this girl, a superfan, that was dancing like crazy next to me and knew ALL OF THE WORDS TO ALL OF THE SONGS. I was very impressed. I jammed with her. I kinda broke the rules. Jake told us mid-show to put our phones away, but I took one last pic during Violet, their encore. Come on. Zach was wearing this ridiculous beanie and it was iconic. I won't post it because I'm nice :). I was SO SAD when it ended, and when I woke up all I knew was that I met my dudes and I had a signed poster. So glad I took off from school that Wednesday. So, yeah. If I could tell October me that this all happened, I would. Never lose hope on the fact that your dreams may one day come true, kids <3 This is sad because this is probably one of the last ATOCs for a while. I want to do a Saint Motel one, but honestly, you guys know what mostly happened already. I mean I guess Liah can do one, or we can do one together, but I just don't feel like writing it over for what feels like the 100th time. Anyway, on with Twenty One Pilots! A couple of my friends were actually going to this concert. We didn't meet up, but we did wave at each other across the rows. It was cool. I got a pretzel, a water, and sat down and enjoyed myself. I can really just skim over the opening acts, since I explained them in more detail in the opening acts story. You know, Chef'special, cute singer, conga line, Mutemath, everyone hated them but I thought they were cool, guy stood up on piano, pretty interesting and chill. This was probably the strangest concert I've been to, just because of the environment. In front of us we had this girl who I played softball with, and behind us we had these really entertaining drunk college-age guys who have never heard any other Pilots song besides Stressed Out. A lot of people (cough cough Liah) roast Twenty One Pilots constantly, mainly because of their fanbase (I don't blame them sometimes) but you have to admit, they really know how to put on a show. They made the crowd excited, they played all of the songs people wanted to hear, and they even brought out Chef'special and Mutemath near the end to sing Twist and Shout, reenact the Titanic scene (Josh Squared!) and even do the worm! (my brother got a video, it's legendary.) I mean, they're also so sweet and fmaily oriented. Tyler even brought out his brother to sing Kitchen Sink, and everyone cheered. Aw. They had a lot of interesting videos and shorts they played. One of which has Josh's face floating around in space, where his mouth kept on getting bigger and bigger. Eventually, he swallowed the screen. Fun. There was this one scene where there was this demon who gave Josh a drink of water. For some reason the drunk guys were laughing behind us screaming "That is NOT water!" You know what, why don't I just put some of thier quotes here. "I'm gonna be mostly sober by the end of this" "So these guys were yelling at us on the train" "no they were yelling at the girls" "oh yeah" "PLAY RIDE" "Dude were totally cheering for an encore" "Is that my prom date??? Oh no that just looks like her" "That is NOT water!" "For my going away party I am NOT going to a concert two opening acts is ridiculous" "Dude no one knows the words to your song..did he just say the best monk??" "YEAHH GRANDMA" "This is like high school all over again" *loudly screaming the words to stressed out* "ENCORE ENCORE ECNORE" *loudly screaming the yeah yeah yeah part in we don't believe what's on tv* Ithink that's a perfect conclusion. So yeah, great concert, great hype, fun family event. Definitely would see them again, and I think I am! Okay, this is going to be the longest episode of AToC, just warning you now. A lot happened. This was Liah and I's first concert together! We met up at PNC, and we got ices. They were real good. Since we had VIP tix to MEET Weezer, we were allowed to check everything out there before anyone was there. They took us to this garden place and WEEZER WAS THERE. The line to meet them wasn't that long, but it felt like an anxiety-filled eternity. Liah tried to keep me chill but that all changed when we went up to them. The guy in charge was all like "Ok, you guys can see them now," but the guy in front of us was still talking to Rivers about BEING FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK. For the first picture, we told them we wanted all of us to do finger guns at the camera, which was funny. We were SO CLOSE TOGETHER, LIKE SQUEEZED. AND ALSO. I. AM. TALLER. THAN. RIVERS. The second picture was kind of rushed because we had no idea what to do, so we just said we were doing a "will smith pose." You know, that one picture of Will Smith and his wife. When we had to go, Brian Bell told us that "we were fun," and I won't ever forget that. Aww. He's so nice. When we were done, it was still 5, and the show didn't start until 7. Also, we were kind of without parental guidance. We sat in this area right next to the lawn, which we WEREN'T ALLOWED TO LEAVE. It is now dubbed as "The Weezer Jail." We got shirts and custard, and looked through various celeb twitters, so it wasn't that bad. They finally let us go, so we got a spot on the lawn. We didn't really have a towel to set our spot, so a lady came and literally PUT HER TOWEL OVER OUR FEET. I wanted to say something so bad, but we managed to get a seat right next to her. We were reunited with our fam, so Liah moved down to her better seats outside of the lawn area. My Muse Pal, Mary was here too! We sat together for Andrew McMahon, as you guys know from my Opening Bands article. Not going to go into detail again, but it was a really fun part of the show. Panic! was amazing as well. My brother and I sang all of the words and watched as the man next to us vaped and the middle schooler in front of us snapchatted about how hot Brendon Urie was. The sun set as they covered Bohemian Rhapsody, and that was just magical. My aunt was there as well, and she was impressed by them. As soon as Panic! walked out and the sun went down, everything changed. Mary left and so did all of the people our age, so all the weed-bearing college students who were ready to see Weezer moved up. My mom went into full panic mode (no pun intended) and moved us away, all the way to the back. Liah and her awesome dad were kind enough to let me sit with them in the way-front. My phone died midway, but I really didn't care. It was the closest I ever was for a concert, and it just felt so...real. I will never forget any of it. All of the songs they played were a part of my childhood, and the past few years. I was so sad when it was all over, but the thing is, I didn't have PCD. I usually get PCD when I feel...almost unsatisfied with the pics/videos I got, but I have way too many from this night. Best concert. 10/10. It's a pattern for me. Every time I see a band I love live, I end up falling in love with the band(s) who open for them. I'll dance to them, record a million videos of them, and then I'll go home and google all of their songs. The first instance of this was when I saw Imagine Dragons and Halsey and Metric opened. Halsey looked like a cool girl and I really liked her songs. Now, she's playing Prudential Center as the MAIN act. I wanted to buy a shirt form her, but I had no money, and now I regret it. It was a really cool shirt. Metric was good too, I knew them from before, but I never really became a large Metric fan. Then, it was Blur and Courtney Barnett. I still listen to her often, she's really really cool, and she was pretty awesome live. With Muse, everyone knew X Ambassadors because Renegades by them was a popular song at the time. I heard a song from them a long time ago, but they were amazing. One of the guys was blind, and that just amazed me so much that I stalked all of their social medias the day after and my mom bought a bunch of their songs. Weezer and Panic!'s opener was special for me because it was Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, who I loved from last summer. I admired him a lot when I found out he overcame cancer and now has a daughter (the Cecilia who inspired Cecilia and the Satellite, if I'm not mistaken). When he preformed, he came up RIGHT NEXT TO US ON THE LAWN. I wanted to reach my arm out to him but I didn't want to creep him out or anything in case i accidentally stroked him or something so I just stared at him walking past me in amazement with my left arm out. Missed my chance at meeting another band that night. During Twenty One Pilots I realized and fully embraced my opening band love. Chef'special and Mutemath were the names of the two bands, and they. were. great. First of all, C'S were f o r e i g n and really cute. They acknowledged us multiple times and thanked us for coming early and partying with them. There even was a conga line in the pit! Mutemath were good too, but no one really loved them. I don't understand why. Their beats were really sick and the singer...LEVITATED on his piano at one point. Really cool. Also, the two of them CAME ON WITH TØP AND SANG JUMP AROUND/TWIST AND SHOUT/THE TITANIC SONG WITH THEM!!! THE CHEF SINGER EVEN DID THE WORM!!!! ONE OF MY FAVE CONCERT MOMENTS EVER!! For Saint Motel (our most recent concert) (I'm working on the concert stories for them and tøp) Hippo Campus and Weathers. Weathers were so unexpected, honestly. I knew nothing. Absolutely nothing. About either of them. I was kind of expecting them to be more emo, but they were really upbeat and poppy, and the singer had a Macklemore-like fur coat. "I guarantee you guys think he's cute," - My Mom. We wanted to meet them after the show, but alas, it was too crowded. Hippo Campus. Wow, um. I don't know how much I can write about them without giving everything that I was gonna say in the Concert Adventures article away. OK, here's a basic summary. They come on. They're all adorable. Heart melts. Only records 5 short videos because I was just staring at them the whole time. After show. Stalk them lowkey. Almost say hi. They're 5 feet away. They leave. I internally cry. Well, yeah. You guys understand my problem now. If you're an opening band for any artist I like, I love you. Ever since I was a tiny child, my favorite track ever to play on Guitar Hero 3 was Knights of Cydonia. Years later, I got into the band that sung that jam by a YouTube Poop. Yes, a Youtube Poop. Muse is a pretty extreme band, so I was fearful for my eardrums when I got tickets to see them this January. They're already pretty damaged from me jamming my earphones in them everyday. The cold, misty morning of January 29th was a strange one. I had a Spanish Midterm. I was pretty stressed, but then again, I couldn't focus at all because I was just so excited to see my bros, Matt, Dom, and Chris later. I finished it as fast (but as carefully) as I could, and I rushed home to get ready. I showered, straightened my hair by myself (which resulted in some second-degree burns), and finally put on the outfit I was planning for weeks; a flannel, a simple black Muse tee, some ripped jeans from Garage, and my mom's old Timberland boots. My mom came home and we headed to the stops we had to make before heading to Prudential. We got some dinner (I got a nice Mediterranean panini) and picked my best Muse pal, Mary, up, and we were on our way to Jersey. The ride wasn't bad, like traffic usually is. We were extremely early, like, there were only a couple of people waiting outside. It was the most random assortment of people, honestly. I think there was a dad with two kids, a guy who looked a little bit older than us, a PDA-crazy couple, a middle-aged party mom. I might not be remembering some of these correctly, but it was something like that. When the doors finally opened, it took a little bit of wandering to find our seats (even though we were there less than a year ago for Imagine Dragons, as you recall) so we could get settled for the opening act, X Ambassadors. We were in the VIP Section at one point, and a nice worker helped us find our spots, which I think were closer than we were originally supposed to be. Of course, this...interesting..man sat next to us, wearing these colorful overalls who leant over and whispered to me, "Is this your first Muse concert?" "Um, yes." He turned back and smiled. "You'll survive." I was spooked. Was there anyone who has died during Muse? Now I was even more concerned for my eardrums. X Ambassadors were the best, honestly. Did you know that the keyboardist is blind? I didn't know either until I quickly google searched them right before they came on. He. Was. Amazing. I love him. I miss him. Shoutout to Casey Harris, the coolest dude ever. Half of my videos were of them, honestly. Oops. When they came off, they were playing the same 3 waiting songs (one of them was Dangerous by Big Data, that I remember). 5 minutes before they came on, the music stopped, and Straight Outta Compton started BLASTING throughout the stadium. My mom, along with the other white people in out area, knew all of the words and were rapping them loudly. THERE WERE CHILDREN! Finally, the three men we were waiting for came on, and, I'm gonna be honest, most of it was a blur. We were screaming all of the words, freaking out over Dom's biceps ("They're bigger than my future!"), and getting so dehydrated that we had to sit down during The Globalist and drink up. I just watched the frat dudes in front of us snapchat videos and post them with the caption "Muse with the dudes." At one point these giant..orb..spaceship..drone things attacked the crowd. Scary. Is this what the overalls guy meant by dying? I'll tell you this, though. There is nothing more exciting than Chris's harmonica solo before Knights of Cydonia. Or Matt's Guitar Noises. Just in general. Overall best hype for a concert I've ever been to. So lit. Also, at the end, Dom came out in this leopard hat that someone in the crowd gave him and thanked us all for coming! I CRIED. Pictured below. Blur. I've been a fan ever since I heard Song 2 on lego rock band and was very confused by the cover art. Where is that guy running to? Is the person on the cot ok?
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