A tale of two moments…
I arrived at the venue in a completely déjà vu fashion. I crossed Sunset Blvd. amid Friday rush hour traffic. In an almost mirror encounter from five months prior, I was greeted by Tom Keeley from Thursday. After thirteen years, he now knows me as a regular at shows on both coasts. We discussed the last few days on tour in California, and I warned him of the weather awaiting the band in Tempe, Arizona.
As we approached the tour bus, a young woman approached us. She asks the two east coasters if we are attending tonight’s show. Tom and I immediately looked up from the clueless one, stared at each other, smirked to our little inside joke, and Tom awkwardly responded to her inquiry with, “Yeh, I think I’ll be in there.”
Then Little Miss Oblivious asked if either of us had any extra tickets, to which we both apologetically sad no. I actually had a spare ticket in my pocket, however, due to the young lady’s musical faux pas, I pulled a little snobbish move and rather than give her my golden ticket, I deemed her unworthy, and kept the extra all to myself.
As we parted ways, Tom wished me a happy birthday, and I called to him saying I’d see him inside, adding a little additional singe to the ignorant girl’s clandestine burn.
____________________________
I was twenty years old all over again.
Eight years ago, a year after releasing “Tell All Your Friends”, the five founding members of Taking Back Sunday split down the middle. “TAYF” could be considered in the East Coast, and more specifically, the Long Island hardcore scene, one of the essential and most important albums of the great emo/post-hardcore movement of the early 2000s. Adam Lazzara, Eddie Reyes, and Mark O’Connell kept TBS alive with several line-up changes over the next eight years, while John Nolan and Shaun Cooper went off (with John’s sister Michelle) to start the equally amazing Straylight Run.
Eight years we watched both parties enjoy incredible success, but nothing matched the earth shattering effect their combined efforts brought about back in 2002. I wasn’t lucky enough to catch the original line-up back then; they divided by the time I made my Taking Back Discovery.
Then last night happened.
History.
I was twenty years old all over again. Standing there I watched in amazing as Taking Back Sunday took the stage and the crowd proceeded to lose its fucking mind. It brought me back to the days of basement shows and VFW halls. People sang so unbelievably loud, it was reminiscent of The Beatles performance on Ed Sullivan.
I haven’t seen five gentlemen/musicians have that much fun on stage in a very long time. Adam Lazzara owned the stage, dancing around inch of it like a young, however morose Mick Jagger. He spun the mic around the room, either throwing it out over the crowd, before reeling it back in or letting it curl around his throat like an electrical noose.
On the flip side, John Nolan was the straight man TBS lost for a very long time; the calm collected counterpart to Lazzara’s psychotic persona. After hearing John and Shaun Cooper reclaim all of the hits, I’m finding it hard to go back and listen to the songs written in between their tenure with TBS. As I listened to Adam and John go back and forth on excerpts from “Where You Want To Be” and “Louder Now”, the lyrics seemed to take on a whole new meaning. “I’m gonna make damn sure that you can't ever leave… No, you won't ever get too far from me” now read as Lazzara assuring John he won’t let anything get in the way of their friendship ever again.
One of the more beautiful moments was when John and Shaun “lent” one of their Straylight Run songs to Adam, Eddie, and Mark, and the five brothers brought the house down with the re-imagined “Existentialism On Prom Night”.
Towards the end of the set, Lazzara ventured into the crowd, walking across spectator’s hands to the rear of the House of Blues Sunset, eventually scaling the sound booth to the balcony, screaming out “Cute Without The ‘E’ (Cut From The Team)” as he hung upside down, and the entire room, myself included, screamed along with him. I was twenty years old all over again.
Taking Back Sunday closed the night sending Adam abroad to the bar I was leaning up against, kneeling a foot from me, where he lifted up his voice to sing:
Best friends means I pulled the trigger… Best friends means you get what you deserve…
