If there is one thing you need to know about me, it is that I love live music. I have so much energy, all the time. With music, I can release this energy and dance and scream and sing until I pass out standing up. The most anticipated concert of summer 2016 was like a teenagers wet dream. In Chicago for one night only, A Day To Remember and Blink-182 were sharing the stage and my young rockers heart was going to explode from a happiness overdose.
This post won’t be surprising to you if you’ve read some of my earlier posts, as they mention my forever obsession for the pop-punk band, A Day To Remember. Throughout my greasy teenage years and young adult life, I’ve seen A Day To Remember in concert all over Chicago and Milwaukee. September 9th 2016, was no ordinary A Day To Remember concert, as practically every young twenty-something will tell you, they were touring with Blink-182, only the most notoriously, beautiful pop-punk band from the nineties and so on! With the bands long hiatus after their release of Neighborhoods in 2011 and the drama of Tom DeLonge leaving the band to pursue other interests, this tour was definitely one of the hottest tickets of the summer. The breakup is absolutely disappointing, considering Blink-182 was always and still always be Travis Barker, Mark Hoppus, and Tom DeLonge, yet Tom’s replacement, Matt Skiba from Alkaline Trio, is the perfect fit and has fans forgetting that Tom ever left.
With the Blink concert being at the end of my summer, I was looking forward to this show since March, when I first purchased tickets. I bought two tickets for my boyfriend and me, which make this show our first concert together so YES, so happy that our first concert would be a Blink show.
Our tickets came out to be around $36.00 each, which was great considering the venue was Tinley Park Amphitheatre, This venue holds a lot of memories for me considering Chicago’s Warped Tour is hosted here. Well, come concert day, it had been raining all day. Any avid concert goer knows that live music + rain = MUD. Mud is fun. I like mud. When I attended Chicago’s Riot Fest 2014, it had rained all 3 days and it felt like a reincarnation of Woodstock (at least that’s what I imagined). The mud at this concert made it especially difficult to walk through because the venue was half indoors and half outdoors with a very, slippery hill. We had lawn seats and watched the show outside. Although it was raining all day, as soon as we got to the venue, it stopped! The concert God’s were watching out for me that day! It was a bit disappointing as I had to take off my fashionable garbage bag that I was rocking instead of the traditional poncho.
The All American Rejects played first, followed by A Day To Remember and Blink-182 headlined. The show was amazing. We had a Keystone or five before the show and purchased Bud Lights Strawberritas at the venue. Have you ever had these things? The margarita flavored drinks are juice for adults. You get drunk, quick. With that said, I had two 160z strawberritas, which made for a great night.
A Day To Remember brought the energy and played some of my favorite songs, including “Heartless”, “Have Faith In Me”, and “The Downfall Of Us All,”. They released an album just six days before the concert, but only played one track from the new release. When Blink-182 came on the stage, it had felt like no one else was in the venue but me and the band. The nostalgia was unreal as I was witnessing them live for the first time in my life and they played fan favorites like, “What’s My Age Again”, “All The Small Things”, and “The Rock Show.” When they performed “Adams Song”, the venue turned off every light and all you could see was a sea of cell phone lights powered by the audience. The show was memorable, yet the adjective to describe the night is nostalgia. Fans will debate and argue that this Blink was hardly the real Blink with the exit of Tom DeLonge, and I can agree, but either way the show was still amazing and the threesome were incredibly in synce. After performing for over twenty years, I’m sure performing could feel rather tedious. This is so incredibly false for these three guys has it looked like they were performing for the first time.
The music, friends, drinks, the dancing, are what I love about live music. If you haven’t been to a concert in a while, checkout some local shows, scroll through LiveNation, download Bands In Town and see who’s playing in your area! I love nothing more than the vibrations from the speakers going through my body at a live show. It’s great feeling and I urge you see a show soon!
–Shonetothebone
ShonetotheBone 