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they say you should seize every opportunity. well this opportunity involved driving 5 hours traversing 3 states to see a concert. that's dedication. but then again, this wasn't your ordinary concert. i first found out about taste of chaos tour in november 04. kevin lyman, founder of warped tour, wanted to start a winter version of the tour in indoor complexes across the country and he chose the used to headline his excursion. i found out the tour dates the very day they announced them. of course they weren't coming to indiana. no one ever does. but they were going to dayton on a sunday and it looked like that was our best bet. eventually the lineup was released and included the used, my chemical romance, senses fail, underoath, killswitch engage, a static lullaby, and an acoustic stage. we waited until a week before to ask renee's mom if she could go and she said no. then i pulled out plan b and said that milwaukee's date was on a saturday and we should go there and she actually agreed. next step, buy tickets. they still had some available online at 10 that night so we decided to buy them at wooden nickel the next day. i checked at 11 and they were sold out. i started going crazy and looked at every possibility on ebay and even bidded on some. i was depressed all night and all the next day i laid in bed after classes. then renee called and decided that she was going to call the rave and bitch at them. so she calls them and then calls me back 2 seconds later and says OMG they have tickets left go get your credit card and call them! so i called and the lady said she only had 1 available but she was waiting on a credit card to go through so i should call back in 5 min. i called back and she said that she had found 2 tickets for me!!! pretty much, that means we got the last 2 tickets to the sold out show. major mood swing. so friday night i came home for spring break and saturday morning we left for milwaukee. we fucking went to wisconsin for a concert. we drove past the rave just to scope it out and all the buses were parked out on the streets and we saw into one of the used's buses. that was when it really hit us that we were there. then we went to the hotel and checked in and got ready. we went back to the rave about 4:00pm and everybody was standing outside. i absolutely love milwaukee. all the boys were hardcore kids. they're exactly the kids that i want to be best friends with. since it was freezing outside, we sat in the car listening to from first to last until 4:30 because i figured everyone was inside by then. we had to go to will call to get the tickets and i was so nervous that they wouldn't have them because of the whole fiasco we went through to get them. but they had them. when we first walked in, we were in the basement with all the merch set up. we're not there 5 minutes and renee sees brooke, josh hatfield's chick, the only other fort wayne person there. we decide to get out of that joint and head upstairs to check out the bands. the first floor is the rave bar. the second floor is the rave where the myspace acoustic stage was set up. there was a balcony around the perimeter of the room. nicky p was playing and we decided to venture further and find the mainstage. we followed the crowd up yet another set of stairs to the eagles ballroom. it's a 25,000 square foot room with a balcony around the outside of it. the balcony is like opera box seats with standing room behind the seats. we headed up there to check it out and waited for the first band to start. the floor was 1/3 full. finally my american heart came on. they were supposed to be on the acoustic stage so i don't understand why they played the mainstage. they were terrible, vocals and music. bleed the dream came next and they were also supposed to be on the acoustic stage. they're the band whose drummer scott was diagnosed with leukemia and they're out raising money for him to pay the bills because he wants to be out on tour with them so badly. they are an amazing band. they played acoustic because they just released an acoustic album. their singer promised that he would come back to milwaukee because they absolutely love playing there and he said it was honestly the biggest crowd he had ever played to. by then the floor was over half full. senses fail was next. they came in to some movie theme, i don't remember what it was. they opened with you're cute when you scream. tie her down, buried a lie, rum is for drinking not for burning, 187, irony of dying on your birthday, martini kiss. buddy was going crazy all over the stage and doing jumps and kicks. his singing kind of got strained as he kept going but amazing nonetheless. the guitarists climbed on the amps for effect on one song but didn't jump off synchronized. we rocked out like crazy to senses fail. the next band was killswitch engage who we had no desire to see. apparently though, the entire crowd was crazy about them. they were good for what they do but my type of band. it was very entertaining to watch the mosh pits because there were kids dancing crazy swinging their arms and legs and hitting each other. it was awesome. at this point i realize that if underoath isn't next, i missed them on a side stage. up next, my chemical romance. gerard came out last and everyone went crazy for him. they started with my song, helena, the one with the to-die-for funeral video. that made me so fucking happy and i was going crazy. thank you for the venom, give 'em hell kid, to the end, i never told you what i do for a living, cemetery drive, you know what they do to guys like us in prison, i'm not okay, and one from the first cd but i'm not sure which one. i was in heaven. i'm going to go insane in my indy crowd when they play warped tour this summer. when they started playing i'm not okay and the lights were going all around them, i got this vision in my head of when they played trl and i looked at the whole crowd going crazy for that song and i got really sad. gerard kept asking who wants to fuck me tonight? renee had already heard this little scheme from new jersey john but somehow she missed it every time he said it. i don't know how that's possible because he said it between practically every song. he also gave props to the rockin kids because they don't give a fuck what anyone thinks. then the next song was give 'em hell kid which says "we are young and we don't care." i am in awe of that band with every word that comes out of gerard's mouth, every chord that comes from their fingers, and every beat that comes from their hands. after their set, we decided to head down to the merch so that we wouldn't have to deal with the crowd after the last band the used played. very good idea because practically no one was down there. i really wanted an underoath jacket and the one they had was ok but they didn't have any small sizes. we weren't impressed with anybody's merch so we gave our money to scott from bleed the dream to pay for his cancer treatment. then we headed back upstairs to the floor to check out the used. we chilled in the back because although we absolutely love the used and they're so fucking amazing live, we just really didn't care about seeing them because we'd seen them before at warped 03. finally they came out and the first thing i saw was branden wearing the hat from the all that i've got video. that made me super happy. they opened with take it away. i caught fire, taste of ink, box full of sharp objects, all that i've got, listening, on my own, i'm a fake. for a box full of sharp objects, bert told everyone to dance, and not moshing, he meant dancing like swinging your arms and legs and everyone in the room better be moving and if the person next to you isn't dancing, you should kick them in the teeth. funniest thing ever, this 50 year old drunk guy walked by us and then stopped randomly about 10 feet away and started jumping up and down going crazy and yelling. everybody around us was cracking up at him. during on my own, they stopped playing and bert disappeared for a minute and i couldn't see what he was doing, then he came back and picked up with the line he had left off on. they finished with i'm a fake which is a stellar song. we headed out the door, grabbed some revolver mag programs, and took off running toward the car. it was so fucking cold and we were just wearing tshirts. by the time we got to the car, we couldn't even feel it putting on our coats because we were so numb. we didn't even run into traffic when we left. we made a pit stop at the mcdonald's next to the hotel and i got apple pies that said warning: filling is hot. no definitely not true. they were hard and not warm. but i ate them anyway because i love apple pie. then we went back to the hotel and one of the guys in the lobby was wearing an mxpx shirt. his friend was standing by the elevator and overheard us say we smelled like weed and he said hey that isn't necessarily a bad thing. then he invited us to his room 203 if we wanted to drink some beers. definitely wanted to. the car ride home was entertaining. renee wrote on my hand in pink sharpie "i |
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