Current mood:

crushed

My last Get Up Kids show...
Sorry if you're sick of hearing about this (well, no, I'm not really sorry). I can't even begin to describe how much The Get Up Kids mean to me, so I won't. I'll just talk about how much fun the show was.

Oh, wait... the opening bands. Nightmare of You was up first. I know a little bit of their stuff. No real complaints. I don't even know who the second band was, but it was easily THE single most excruciating 45 minutes of my life. And many other fans' lives. WTF was THAT?!? Not only was that insulting to ME, but it was the biggest insult I could possibly imagine to The Get Up Kids. From what I understand, Hot Rod Circuit dropped off the show. Now, I don't particularly LOVE Hot Rod Circuit, but I'd much rather have seen them and sung along to stuff I know and don't mind hearing. I'd rather them than... that... total garbage. W. T. F.

Songs played, in no real particular order (other than the first three and last one):
Coming Clean
Holiday
Action & Action
Martyr Me
Woodson
Shorty
No Love
Don't Hate Me
Out of Reach
I'm a Loner Dottie, a Rebel
I'll Catch You
Overdue
Let the Reigns Go Loose
Red Letter Day
Never Be Alone
Campfire Kansas
Walking on a Wire
Close to Me
Beer for Breakfast
Mass Pike
10 Minutes

Our New Jersey date was the last show of the "tour," besides their own home-town shows coming up. So yeah, it was kinda like an "ending" :P. It just plain ol' rocked. They opened up with "Coming Clean" (first song on their 1997 full-length, Four Minute Mile), which immediately brought me back to high school. It was just so amazing to hear the song live that I forgot how sad I was about it being over. The next song was "Holiday" (the first song on their 1999 full-length, Something to Write Home About)... and that's when it hit me. I was seeing The Get Up Kids for the last time in my life (probably), and they're playing the opening song off of the biggest album in my life (thus far). So yeah, I starting tearing up a little bit.

The only other times I started getting weepy was during "Mass Pike" and... I think "Ten Minutes" (which they closed with).

They pretty much played any song that I wouldn't have been able to live without hearing live one more time. They only played two songs offa Guilt Show (their last real CD, released last year), which kinda stunk... I really liked the CD... would have enjoyed hearing "The One You Want" and "Sympathy."

It was obvious when they played songs off of On a Wire (their 2002 full-length). People just didn't have any energy. Of course, most of the songs off of that album don't have any energy to begin with. Now, I must admit, I thought the album totally sucked for about three years. It's only recently that I've been going back to it and REALLY starting to get into it. The song writing is MUCH more personal and artistic ("Overdue" is a song about Matt Pryor's father and their shitty relationship, but it's TOTALLY not done in the today-typical Good Charlotte fashion... it's pretty well hidden). I can't say I like the song "Let the Reigns Go Loose" (though meritot says she liked it the instant she first heard it live back in, like, 2001).

Hearing four songs off of Four Minute Mile was just crazy, since they hadn't been playing anything other than "Don't Hate Me" the last couple years. High school, whoa!

So, highlights of the show:

- Anything involving James Dewees
- Anything involving James Dewees and pizza
- Jim throwing Ryan's favorite tambourine into the crowd and telling them to keep it
- Ryan diving into the crowd to get back his tambourine
- Jim and James starting up a Coalesce song while Ryan tried to bargain with the guy holding his cymbal
- Hearing "Mass Pike" one last time live
- Err... all of it.

Ya' know what, I'm too lost in my own thought about it (and trying to drown out the depression of it being over) to type anything else. They went out on an amazing note, it meant the world to me to see them one last night, and I'm glad I was able to share it with meritot. F%@k, I'm going to miss them.

"All good things... have endings..."