Madison Square Garden, New York City
Well the first thing I have to say is: WOW. OH MY GOD. WOW.
Even after seeing Whitney Houston and Santana (with Rob...) perform at the Arista Records Pre-Grammy party in 2000, I have to say that this was THE most amazing concert I have ever seen, and probably will ever see. I thought Amherst was great, but OMG, this was phenomenal....
Now that you know my real opinion... On with the review.. Sorry if it's really long.
So my friend Kristen (Kody03) and I met after school, changed in the bathroom (practically screaming we were so excited) and drove to the train station. There we met our friends at the train station and took at 3 o'clock train into Grand Central. We got over to T.S. Ma for our (separate from the GD) reservation. We walked in, Kristen and I with our passes on, and we saw some people in the back who acted like they knew us, but I couldn't see if they had passes on or not, so I didn't go over there, and I didn't want to ditch my other two non-GD friends. But finally after dinner, I figured out it was GD'ers (Artrec and her daughter, Britz and her husband, and one other person whose GD ID escapes me at the moment-was it rob_mb20_lvr? (I AM SO SORRY!!!). So we chatted for awhile and then my friends and I left to buy souvenirs. I bought the longsleeve black Mad Season cover guy shirt and the book of stills from the IYG video shoot and others.. WOW. It's AMAZING! there are pics in there of Rob straddling a chair, Pookie up really close (he looks really hot) and pics of all of them up close and personal. And the proceeds go to the matchbox twenty foundation, which is a nonprofit CA based organization. So it's for a good cause hehe. Then we went to find the will call booth for my FC tickets. We went up to the window and Kristen was gripping my arm so hard as the guy gave us our tickets....
::drum roll::
11th row, Adam side. We nearly went crazy... (It turns out that from the GD'ers who went to the concert, those were the worst seats of any of the GD'ers who bought FC tickets. But they were still good. Two reasons why they were good!? A) we were one row in front of Mari's family B) even with my glasses off (and I'm blind as a bat), I could see all of the guys crystal clear!!!!!!) But we ended up moving to 10th row, Rob, and then back to 11th row more in front of Rob, so it was okay.
So anyway. We got into the arena and I flipped out when I realized how [censored] close we were! I kept walking up and down the aisles of the floor because I was like "Look, look how close I can be... I can just walk up and touch the stage. This is [censored] Madison Square Garden and I am this close to Matchbox Twenty..." hehe.. So I met a few other people before the show, KIMTCHBX20, Val, AlixtheGreat and others. And we saw the drummer from Lifehouse milling around so everyone was getting pictures with him. The security guards originally came around and told everyone in the front floor sections that we couldn't take pictures during the show, but then about 10 minutes later, we found out that we could take pics during Lifehouse's set.
So finally Lifehouse came out, and let me say, they were REALLY amazing!!! I really liked Hanging by A Moment before the show, but now I'm going to go out and buy their CD. Jason Wade, the lead singer, is GORGEOUS.. hehehe. The played five songs, including Sick Cycle Carousel, Quasimodo and Hanging By a Moment (which they ended their set with). They had this big black plastic net thing with a picture of their album cover hanging behind their set. There were a few people standing for them, Kristen and I were snapping pictures because he is WAY too good looking to pass up! So finally they went offstage, after thanking Matchbox Twenty and Everclear. So they set up Everclear's stuff, inlcuding a black backdrop with the huge yellow frowning face. So FINALLY Everclear came out, and I have been a fan (but not die-hard or anything, I only own one CD) of Everclear for a long time, but god, their show was so good that I want to go out and buy the rest of their albums. They played about 9 or 10 songs, including (in this order, I'm sorry if these aren't all the songs, I didn't know all of the names):
Song from an American Movie (Art was wearing a shiny red jacket and pants with a black tshirt on and after this song he took the jacket off)
A.M. Radio (SO GOOD. I LOVE THIS SONG)
Rock Star (he called up people from the audience to dance)
When it All Goes Wrong Again
Father of Mine
Fire Maple Song
Wonderful
I Will Buy You a New Life (their last song)
Kristen caught one of Davey's (the guitar player on the right's) picks! WOW WAS HE HOT! hehehehe.. And when the people got up onstage to dance during Rock Star, some girl was grinding with Craig Montoya and with Art. It was hilarious. There was also some diehard Everclear fan up there that got to sing along Art into the mic, it was really cool for her! The one thing I didn't like was that Art didn't seem to realize that we could be matchbox twenty fans AND everclear fans. I mean, I know I'm not a diehard fan like I am about matchbox twenty, but it was kinda disheartening when he was talking about how there weren't any everclear fans on the floor... Oh well.. He was playing up the audience really well, getting us to sing along, stand up, be crazy. hehehe.. He talked about how great it was to be at MSG, and how it was the stage that Led Zepp played on..He thanked Matchbox Twenty and Lifehouse, etc etc... During their set, Jason was milling around chatting to people. I didn't get a chance to say hi to him though. :( I really wanted to... sigh.. Oh well.
So in between sets I met a few other people, including Chispa and I think it was matchboxgrl (whoever it was with the quilt)... Mari at some point came out and was talking with her family (I think her younger brother and some cousins and her parents) and she looked GORGEOUS (of course.) She was wearing a gold backless shirt and her pants were hiphuggers so you could see the "R.K.T." initials on her back. And of course, the requisite old school Michael Jackson was playing and I said to my friend that it was the last song that would play before they went onstage. And I was right. SO this white curtain thing dropped and the light were flashing so that every few seconds you would get a direct view of each of the band member's silhouettes, with a slow guitar riff in the background. At first we could only see Kyle and Adam and Paul, but finally Rob's profile came into view and then the curtain dropped and they started the show with Crutch. (I know this has already been said before, but I'll say it anyway). Rob was wearing a long sleeve blue, patterned silky shirt that had ONLY 2 buttons buttoned, so we could see his stomach and most of his chest. The sleeves were cut so there were huge slits so his arms were showing most of the time. He was also wearing black, stretchy, tight pants and black boots of some sort. Kyle was wearing the pink floral/palm tree shirt from the IYG video, with jean cut gray tweed pants. Adam was wearing a kinda sparkly black/silver shirt with black baggy pants and his Converses. Pookie was wearing exactly what he wore to the Amherst show, black leather pants and a red and black overlay shirt with some sort of Asian design on it. Paul was actually wearing pants (lol) with some sort of vintage shirt with his hair spiked crazily like it was in the Mad Season video. Rob, I found out from someone who was at the PLJ M&G, had just gotten his hair cut earlier that day. He looked great... It looked like a better version of his hair back in the YOSLY days. I loved it!
So they pushed Crutch immediately into Bent, which was, as always, phenomenal live. Then they went into Argue, during which Rob started talking to us. He first dropped to his knees, bent down and kissed the floor.. He started talking about how good it felt to be at the Garden, and how Kyle had said earlier that they could quit now, after the MSG show... So they pushed back into Argue. The rest of the set list went as follows:
Girl Like That
3 am
Last Beautiful Girl
The Burn
Long Day
You Won't Be Mine
Rest Stop
Angry
Mad Season
Real World
If You're Gone
Lonely Weekend
Back 2 Good
ENCORES:
Time After Time
Stop
Push
Black & White People
Rob said something about almost every song, about which album it was on, or something explaining about the meaning of the song, etc. Last Beautiful Girl, which is my namesake lol, I had been disappointed with at the Amherst concert, was AMAZING!!!!!! I was probably crying. Because they had 4 layers of harmonies in that song on the CD (after recording Rob's voice twice), they cut out the "Ah-ah"s after "Won't be the first.." etc. It was amazingly cool, and slightly edgier because there were less harmonies... OMG that is my favorite song. They cut immediately into The Burn.
They wheeled Rob's piano out for You Won't Be Mine (another sexy song) and he was like "Because I'm really bad with time, I'm gonna say that about a year ago, I was sitting right out there, watching Billy Joel" and he was talking about how it used to be cool to be the band on the radio, the ones that people wanted to see in concert, just to watch them play their pianos and their guitars etc.
Before Rest Stop, he was like "I couldn't do sports, I didn't know anything about cars, so I figured out the only way I was gonna get laid was by learning how to play the piano." So he continued by saying he was bumming around the Daytona and that this song was a true story. I looked back at Marisol's parents when he said the thing about getting laid. They looked hilarious! hehe
The funniest thing all night, though was when Rob came and carried his microphone stand to the front and said, before Real World, "This song is off our latest album." The other guys all looked at him and he was like "No it's not." And he carried his stand back and then said, "This song is about being whatever the hell you want to be." It was hilarious... THEN! After Real World, he carried the stand back to the front of the stage and was like "This song is off our lastest album." and laughed, and then went on to say that he had written it for his wife and that it was sort of their song, and he'd never intended to put it on the album, but then it was put on and then became one of their best singles ever and favorite songs to do. So they did IYG.
Then they did Loneley Weekend. Let me just say: OH MY [censored] GOD THAT IS THE SEXIEST SONG I HAVE EVER HEARD MATCHBOX TWENTY DO!!!!!!!!!!! WOW there is this line that says "Well I make it all right, from Sunday morning to Friday night, oh those lonely weekends" and the way Rob sang it, I nearly fainted I was getting so hot. lol I'm listening to the real version of it by Charley Rich. It's hilarious, it sounds kinda like Elvis, but damn when Rob sings it... OH MY GOD.. They kinda [censored] up the lyrics though, b/c the real lyrics are "Monday morning to Friday night".. hehe. I liked it better the way they did it.. WOW... Okay I'm calm now.
So they did Back 2 Good and the entire time, there was this light shining directly on me and I kept my arms in the air so Rob could see me.. hehe, I think he did... lol That is the most meaningful song to me, I was almost crying. So then they went offstage, and they turned a HUGE disco ball on from the ceiling and it was beautiful!!!!!!!!!! After like 3 minutes, Rob came back onstage with an acoustic guitar, and I was thinking, okay, he's gonna do Hang! YAY!.. So he's like "Hi." And the audience screams. He went on to say how they hadn't done this song on tour in a long time but that he'd promised his mother in law that he would do this song if they played at Madison Square Garden. I looked back at Mari's mother and she was so happy. It was adorable. And then they started Time After Time!!!!! I couldn't believe it. Kristen and I were crying.. I was so ecstatic that I got to see he and Kyle do that song.. It made my night even better. So then everyone came back onstage and did Stop, Push and Black & White People. During B&W, Rob jumped off the stage with Jason and a few other bodyguards and ran around the front perimeter of the floor and everyone one was grabbing his hands. Kristen and I booked it over to the side where we would see him, and all I have to say is that my left hand is NEVER getting washed again after I held Rob's hand lol. hehehehehhehe. SOrry. I know that's kind of obsessive, but I've still never met the guy, so it's the closest I could get. I actually didn't like that they were letting him do that, because i think it makes him seem like to much of a heartthrob, and it was weird, but I knew that if I didn't do it, I would never forgive myself. hehe. What really amazed me was that he kept singing while all these people were touching him. Okay anyway. So he chatted up the audience during the pause in B&W people and then they ended with this REALLY long instrumental thing, with Rob dancing around with his tamborine and smacking the trumpet player's ass with it, and playing the tambourine into Pauly's mike and all this stuff... And then he thanked everyone and that was it..... It WAS SO AMAZING I CAN'T EVEN CALM MYSELF DOWN! I am going through such major concert withdrawl right about now.. Sigh.. Well I will just have to wait until the next tour so i can see them again.. :)
Thanks for reading. Sorry it was so long!
Oh and BTW, they never searched my bag for cameras and I got away with using 3 disposable cameras for all 3 bands... They never took anyone's away, but there were some guards milling around telling us not to use cameras before the show.. But I just got my film developed and the cameras were so crappy that NONE of the pics came out.
::cries::
IF ANYONE HAS PICS PLEASE EMAIL THEM TO ME!!!!