Who: Jump Little Children • Red Wanting Blue
I invited my sister along with me to this show. She was just coming off of an Incubus concert experience down in Kentucky, and while she was all pumped up on Brandom Boyd, I promised her that she would enjoy the boys of Jump infinitely more. Joanie's car had been worked on while she was in college in Kentucky, and she claimed that the "punks" down there messed with her alignment, so I drove home from college to pick her up while her car was at our hometown dealership gettin' a good once-over. I was wearing a tie when I picked her up. I was wearing a blue tie and a blue skirt. Joanie called me a lesbian. But I allowed her into my car anyway, and I drove us to Cleveland. I told her about all of the shenanigans surrounding the show: the plans that fell through involving my riding up with Jenna and the Huff sisters who I met in Cleveland, the plans that fell through involving a romp in the bathroom with an older man, and the plans that fell through involving my friend Chicago Mike, who wouldn't come along because he thinks that Joanie hates him. (You'd hate him, too, if he called you Joanie, Joanie Macaroni.) She told me stories about her Japanese roommate who doesn't know enough English to survive and whose friends told her that her belly button piercing turned red because it got infucted, a word that she later repeated to all of her teachers. We listened to a whole, whole lot of Jump on the way up, since Joanie is only familiar with Magazine-era stuff. Yeah, that's right. We're those people who listen to the band we're going to see as we're going to see them. Hey, at least we don't wear the t-shirt of the band we're going to see. (You do that. Don't deny that you do.)
After an outrageous delay thanks to the wonder that is Ohio construction, we made it into Cleveland and parked outside of the Rascal House, a pizza joint that we decided to give our dimes and nickels to. As we made our way toward the entrance past a giant window facing the street, I noticed that Ward, guitar-player extraordinnaire, was sitting inside, chewing on some pizza and acting as if he isn't Jump's resident heavy metal god. I relayed the situation to Joanie under my breath as if there was any possibility of his hearing me through the glass, and she whispered back, "What are you going to do?" as if this was something for which I had to carefully map out a plan. We first went to the bathroom so that I be isolated while I thought of something terrifically witty to say to him (and by while I thought of something terrifically witty to say, I mean so that I could expel the cranberry-apple juice my bladder had been so politely holding for me for three hours). When we emerged, we saddled up to the counter and ordered garlic sticks and pizza. The cashier thought that I was hilarious, clearly mistaking my social ineptitude for planned cuteness. Honestly, when I used to go places with my mom as a teenager, I would think, "Why did she just tell that person that totally unnecessary piece of information?" But now I find myself doing it. I told the cashier, for example, that we were from out-of-town and it was our first time experiencing the joys of the Rascal House. Unnecessary. Totally. And then when my eyes landed on the words garlic sticks on the menu and I decided a venture with those, I asked, "What are garlic sticks?" But before she answered, I told myself, "Sticks. With garlic." And she thought that was funny. She called me "silly", in fact. I swear, I must be the goofiest-looking person EVER, because you don't laugh at things like that unless you're actually laughing at the person they're coming from. Especially if they're deformed in some way. Haha. Deformities. Yeah, they never cease to amuse me. In that really horrified sort of way. Am I babbling?
When I ordered my junk, I walked toward Ward's table and left Joanie to exclaim over the Tahitian Treat in the Rascal House's cooler. (Tahitian Treat, in case you don't know, is the absolute trashiest of all soft drink-related beverages. It's like Hawaiian Punch with carbonation. And it's so good. So good, in fact, that Joanie actually cried, "Tahitian Treat!" when she saw it. Yeah, we Etts know what to get excited about.) As I neared Ward's corner of the restaurant, I realised that Ward wasn't there anymore but that Jay the Singer had taken his place and was batting around a grease-spotted paper plate in his absence. He noticed my presence, mumbled the word oh, and began scooting over as if he thought that I was one of the band members come back to claim my seat. Jay then looked up, the look on his face told me that he recognised me as that girl from the other northern concerts. I shook his hand and told him that I had always heard about people seeing bands in random places as they were hanging out before concerts but in all of my concert experience, it had never happened to me. He just sort of chuckled and nodded his head, because well, what are you going to say to that? I did all of the usual telling him to have a great show and such and then went back to the cash register, where I escorted Joanie to a table across the room so that Jay would know that I wasn't all about attacking him.
As soon as I sat down, though, I noticed that Jonathan the Upright Bassist, the band member I've talked to the most, was attempting to enter Peabody's by way of a set of massive gray doors that connects the pizza joint to the club. The doors were locked, though, so I had him cornered. (Cue evil laughter.) I approached him to say hello and wish him a good show and such, when I noticed that Ward was right beside him, playing an arcade game. I didn't want to interrupt him, though, so I just said my bit to Jonny and began walking back to Joanie, at which point I saw that Evan the Drummer had just left the token machine and was walking toward me. He said, "Hey!" as I passed him, but rather than grabbing him by the knees and hauling him back to the table with me, I just nodded and smiled as if I was only mildly interested in his existence. Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.
As I was approaching the table, I grabbed a copy of the Cleveland Free Times and noticed that 10 feet to our left, Matt the Mandolinist was sitting with his back to us, reading the very same newspaper. I thought that he might be deep in thought as he perused the nasty album reviews, and I didn't want to intrude on his alone time as he was no doubt crying over the fact that the Gordon Lightfoot show is sold out, so I left him to himself and ate my sticks with garlic at a speed at which I've never eaten sticks with garlic before. Jay and Jonny both passed the table several times to throw away trash and such, but every time they spotted me, they quickly looked away. At first, I was worried that they were frightened of me, as if they thought that I'm one of those girls, one of the thousands of 20 year-old girls who stalk them to all corners of the earth, begging for a ride in the Park 'n Fly and a chance to be impregnated by one of the band members. Must be horrid to have a fan base that's 15 years younger than you are. But after mulling over the situation for a moment, I concluded that saying hello to me repeatedly would have been just as odd as looking away quickly, so I thought nothing more of it. So, while the band continued with their arcading, Joanie and I walked next door to Peabody's.
Inside, the doorman complimented my tie, asked for my driver's license, and went on about how October is the best month in which to be born. He then slapped an UNDER 21 stamp on my hand and moved on to my sister. Just as he was looking at her licence, though, a large group of guestlisted people came in, and in all of the commotion, Joanie was let go without a stamp, making it appear that she's older than I am. And actually, I'm sure that she looked older than I did with all of her hoochie make-up and such, but it's the principle of the thing. As I looked around for a moment to see if I could locate Jenna and the Huffs, Jenna and I spotted each other at the same time, so we walked over to her spot directly in front of the stage, and the introductions began. A girl named Shane who had been at the Jump show in Columbus recognised me, and I remembered her as "the girl with the digital camera". A few stories were exchanged, and then we readied ourself for a little band whose name we didn't quite catch at the beginning of their set. They had two male guitarists, a male drummer, a female bassist (named Angel, no less), and a female lead singer. I don't like female singers. Alanis Morissette and Courtney Love are all right, but that's only because they're angry and androgynous. This lead singer was not angry nor androgynous, but she did have a roll of fat slumping over her jeans that her too-small tank top couldn't conceal. I spent the majority of the band's set wishing that she would pull her shirt down just a tiny bit; that's all it would have taken to make me happy. But no such luck.
The band wasn't half-bad, really, as far as opening bands go. The singer was very confident in her singing abilities, despite the fact that she was working with rather cliché lyrics. They also had a really talented guitarist who was totally unaware that an audience was watching him and kept his eyes glued to his guitar through the entire set. But they were dorks. All of them. And it's a well-known fact that I'm all about dorks who revel in their dorkiness, but these folks were trying to mask their dork-like tendencies with sunglasses, flared jeans, and bad, bad dancing. One thing that I'm not at all into is the lead singer who doesn't play an instrument, because then he or she is left standing during instrumental parts with nothing to do. And when lead singers have nothing to do, they always end up tossing their hair and yelling whoo! and spinning around onstage. This lead singer evidently thought that she was super sexy, because she took her hair out of its ponytail and flipped it around as she glided to the front of the stage and thrust her hips out in a manner that I would have appreciated had she been the least bit attractive . . . and preferrably male. I do not want to think about your vagina, let alone have it jammed in my face, thank you. Oh, and did I mention the band's name? Monkey Love. Monkey Love was their name. Awful. Just awful.
However, I enjoyed their set for one reason--hoochies. These particular hoochies were Red Wanting Blue fans (no surprise there), and when we arrived inside the club, we found them lounging all over the front of the stage, securing their place in front of Red Wanting Blue's lead singer in order to give him a large hoochie gift that they were carrying in a little hoochie bag. They had on the usual hoochie fare of halter tops, faux-faded jeans, too-tall sandals, and hightlighted hair, so I was less-than-pleased when Jenna and one of the Huffs began talking to them as if they expected hoochies to be capable of forming complete thoughts. Once Jenna and the Huff realised that it was a lost cause, they left the hoochies to do some hoochie dancing to one of Monkey Love's particularly rockin'-out-type ditties. This wasn't your usual head-noddin', toe-tappin' concert dancing, though. This was hoochie dancin', the kind of thing you find on any given night at any given club where any given techno remixes of Jennifer Lopez songs are being played. One girl got behind the other and began working her hands around the other's hind quarters as the other crouched down with her hands on her knees, and oh, how they giggled. Now, Joanie and I are all for some good, old-fashioned hoochie dancin' in the privacy of our own home, but there was underage children at this show! Children with virgin eyes who should have never been subjected to those sort of horrors at only 16 and 17 years of age! Not knowing that the hoochies had any other playmates, Joanie and I backed up with our hands held out in front of us in disgust, only to see the hoochies beckon to their friends in the back of the venue a moment later. The back-of-the-house hoochies must have beckoned back, because the stage hoochies ran to them and undoubtedly heard that Joanie and I had been mocking them, because they returned with scowls on their faces directed toward us. Ahh, the sweet wrath of the hoochie.
While this was going on, a boy in a straw hat neared us with his little lady in tow and pointed at me as he passed in front of us. Frightened, I looked away but soon returned my glance when curiousity got the best of me. The boy clearly recognised me, so I stared for a moment and recognised the couple as Ben and Nicole, whom I met in Youngstown at my first Jump show back in February. We spoke for a moment about the state of the free market economy in Yugoslavia, and then split as Jump began bringing their gear onstage. I've never seen them have so much crowd interaction during set-up as I did that night. Jenna and the Huffs, Shane and her crew, Ben and Nicole, and Joanie and I were standing in the space between the area of the stage where Ward and Matt would be doin' their thing, so Matt posed for the scariest picture ever, answered some questions, and had a staredown with Allison Huff that I thought just might end in a throwdown. See, this show was Allison's 50th, and she and her posse had driven up from their homes in Georgia in order to see Jump open. Apparently, they informed Matt of this before the show and were called weird in response. Now, knowing Matt as closely and as personally as I do (and by that, I mean that I've talked to him thrice now), I imagine that he meant that in a "how can you possibly like us that much?!" sort of complimentary way, but the Huffs had not taken the comment as such and were committed to not speaking to him for the remainder of the night. Allison was pleased that Matt had taken the time to give her the evil eye, though.
After Jump finished their bit, Jenna and the Huffs moved to the designated counter to work merch while Joanie and I moved to a table in the back to force ourselves through a few minutes of Red Wanting Blue. We had only been sitting a moment, secretly snapping pictures of the the man with The World's Hairiest Neck™, when I was tapped on the shoulder by a certain Kinship Julie and her friend Katie. Kinship Julie is (gasp!) in my Kinship, which is the small group portion of the massive church that I attend. Kinda like a Bible study; kinda like a fraternity. Kinship Julie and I spent two years never saying a word to one another. I took Kinship Julie's shy silence as hatred of the world and was further convinced of this when she gave me a shocked/appalled look the first (and only) time I ever hugged her. However, Kinship Julie and I bonded one Thursday night as we played the name game at Kinship. The name game is not a game at all but is merely the part of the night in which we introduce ourselves to the group and then answer a question about our favourite kind of tree or what animal we would be if an animal we were. This particular Thursday of bonding (or bond-age, if you will), we were to name our favourite song. I, of course, discussed The Beatles' Hey Jude and how really listening to it for the first time in 8th grade music appreciation class made me turn from country and folk music to classic rock, which led me to alternative and college rock, which led to me to indie rock. And then when Kinship Julie's turn came, she named a Dispatch song, which caused me to gasp and say, "You know Dispatch?!" And she replied, "You know Dispatch?!" So after Kinship, we discussed the band and how we came to know them. And since I came to know them through Jump, Little Children, I told Julie about the Cleveland show and made her download some songs until she was as enamoured of Jump as I am. Kinship Julie just happened to be visiting a Cleveland friend the night of the show, so they popped in to see the band but just missed them. I relayed some of the details while she and Katie sat down with us.
A bit later, I saw Ben and Nicole following Matt around Peabody's until he stopped in the middle of the club and talked to a few adoring fans for some moments. Rather than joining them, however, I decided to save my fawning for the end of the show and enjoy my Red Wanting Blue (cough). And I actually did enjoy some of their set. Because I genuinely like some of their songs. And they amused me somewhat, because before they launched into their first song, Lead Singer Scott held up a sign that read WE ARE RED WANTING BLUE. I liked that. And I also liked the songs Decorator and Audition. Audition is one of my Top 100 Songs of All Time™, in fact. And Scott's voice is one that's meant to be heard in concert. He's absolutely a rock-star-in-the-making. All of the things that made the chick in Monkey Love look ridiculous made Scott look hot and delicious. And I'm not even remotely attracted to the guy. I like that I've seen them live a few times now, because I'm getting to know the funny things they do in between songs and the fact that Scott loves nothing more than singing, "This is a song about sex!" over and over again during the instrumental section of a particular song.
I hate the Red Wanting Blue fanbase, though. Just absolutely despise them. They're all drunks. All of them. All of the men are college-aged Abercrombie boys who jump around a lot and point their fingers at Scott while they're singing along. All of the women are either 16 year-old hoochies, 20 year-old sluts, or 40 year-old divorcees. And have I mentioned that they're all drunks? All of them. I just get annoyed when I believe that more than half of the fans only like the band because it's made up of four very good-looking men. They're good for a laugh, though, especially when the tall drunk men plow over the short drunk women on their way back to the bar. Ain't nothin' can stop a Red Wanting Blue fan when he wants his Corona. But Audition really did sound great, so I'll do no more mocking.
Toward the end of RWB's set, I made my way back to the merch counter to buy a Jump shirt from the Huffs and then went through the massive gray doors to the Rascal House to use the restroom, where I found Jonathan playing arcade games again while Matt sat at a table with Ben, Nicole, and some other fans. I made my way back to Joanie for the last song, and then we headed out through the Rascal House to say goodnight to Ben and Nicole with a stop by the merch table to wish Jenna and the Huffs a safe trip to their next Jump shows. I didn't really want to say anything to the band, for some reason. I stopped at Matt's table for a moment to give him the usual great show whatnot, waiting until he was done discussing the state of the free market economy in Yugoslavia with one of the random fans. I seriously thought that it would take massive amounts of self-control for me to not sit down with them to talk, but you know, I just didn't want to be everyone else. Matt assured me that Jump will be back to Cleveland in the fall, I shook his hand, and then Joanie and I left for home.
And I felt so good about myself.
Where: Peabody's • Cleveland, Ohio
When: May 9th, 2002