If I was 14 years old, this past Friday night at Arco Arena would have been a ”nite 2 remmbr.” For the youtube set, Plain White Tees (PWT), Gym Class Heroes (GCH), and Fall Out Boy (FOB) playing together is, like, OMG.

But I’m 25 and this was an arena concert featuring an emo-acoustic, pop-hip-hop, and pop-punk bands.  In total, I only knew three of these band’s songs going into the show.

Not knowing the music beforehand was by far the biggest hinderence to enjoying the show.  Arco Arena’s famed acoustics drowned out most of the lead vocals over the body-shaking bass/drums and defeaning guitars.  Just about all the youngins around me were screaming the lyrics, so they probably had a completely different experience than I did.

Given the poor sound quality and my non-fan/wrong-demographic perspective, I’m actually surprised I enjoyed the concert as much as I did.  Maybe I was just channeling seeing NoDoubt/Bush back in ‘97 (?), maybe I didn’t want to be un-hip and say it was too loud, maybe the energy of the crowd saved it … I dunno, but it wasn’t awful.

And here’s my standard in-no-particular-order takeaways:

• A 17-year-old boy-girl couple mentioned to my friend and I that they’re glad to see some 25-year-olds at the show because they were worried “everyone was going to be 13.” 
• Arco Arena is actually pretty small compared to other basketball arenas I’ve been to.  Of course watching a show from 200 yards away is still unacceptable so I went down to the floor after the Plain White Tees set.
• I can’t recall anything specific about Plain White Tees’ set besides ‘Hey There Delilah’ (the one song of theirs I knew).  It was a fine rendition: just like hearing it on the radio with a couple thousand people singing along.
• Gym Class Heroes seem as fun in concert as they do in their Cupid’s Chokehold video (the one song I know) … but the Arco acoustics pretty much destroyed their set for me;  nothing was distinguishable.
• The most noteworthy aspect of Gym Class Heroes’ set was that they covered an Artic Monkey’s song (Leave Before the Lights Come On).  I love covers, but I’m much more accustomed to bands covering old songs, not current ones. [further: youtube video of the GCH cover from another show.  The user-recording is better than my first hand experience.]
• Fall Out Boy has a pretty ridiculous visual show: huge video screen, eight 20-foot flamethrowers, and a 15-ft raised platform for the drummer.  It’s all apparently in ironic hipster jest, so I guess it’s fine.
• Fall Out Boy’s set was much louder than the other bands.  I had to cover my ears a couple times to take a break from the pounding. 
• Even though I felt like Fall Out Boy’s set blended together just as much as PWT or GCH, I can actually remember four or five different songs from their set, which is much more than I can say for the other bands.  I knew Thks fr th mrms going in, and also sort of knew The Take Over, The Breaks Over … and largely because of the videos playing in the background, I can distinctly remember The Carpal Tunnel of Love and I’m Like a Lawyer with the Way I’m Always Trying to Get You Off.
• Speaking of videos, Fall Out Boy had a video for just about every song they played.  It’s a super-effective way to make the songs more memorable … but it’s disconcerting that the songs don’t deviate from the standard video much.
• That Lawyer song played against the backdrop of a video about Uganda.  I’m always skeptical of bands trying to do good just for the PR … but hey, at least it’s somewhat educational.  (further: check out the video on youtube.)
• The hightlight of the night was unexpectedly a FOB cover of The Killer’s Mr. Brighside.  Covering current songs still weirds me out, especially since FOB didn’t personalize it that much … but whatever, it was good.

And just to prove I was there, here’s a couple low-quality cell phone pics:

further exploration: check out youtube or mtv.