A month or two ago, I bought a few concert tickets. First, tickets for the MMRBQ, then for Paramore at the Trump Taj Mahal. Stone Temple Pilots waits until the end of May, but the Paramore concert was this past Friday night.
We made what seem like convoluted arrangements for the kids to be picked up by my mom, so that they could stay over Friday night while we were out at the concert. I left the house early to pick up Berta at her office for the ride to Atlantic City, which would take about an hour and a half, giving us just enough time with a dinner stop to get there before the concert started. Yeah, that didn’t quite work out as expected.
With traffic on various roads, we were two hours late. I didn’t expect there to be opening bands, and I didn’t expect the Taj to be a huge venue - after all, the last concert we saw in Atlantic City was in a smallish room at the Borgata - so I was sure that we missed the thing entirely. So we checked into the hotel first, then made our way over to the arena. As it turns out, two hours was exactly enough time to miss only the opening acts and none of Paramore. Win!
One disappointing thing about the venue is that it wasn’t exactly clear where our “seats” were. I had paid the cheapest price, expecting to get general admission tickets, in my mind “standing in an open space in front of the band.” As it turns out, the tickets I thought I was buying were more expensive than the tickets I got, which were bleacher seating. This was wholly disappointing. Oh, well.
The band was great. There was some concern that any Paramore concert would be ruined by teenage Twilight fans, and sure, there were quite a few of those in the audience (the smell of teenage girl - that weird too-much-hair-product and girlie perfume odor), but… Everyone was having a good time. It would be one thing if the fans only swooned over the songs that they used in the movie (I don’t even know which), and left the rest, but it wasn’t like that at all. This was the same energetic crowd that I’ve seen at many other concerts, enthusiastic about a band that they’ve grown to love, regardless of the method in which they’ve discovered them.
The band put on a good show. Not only are the musicians talented - Hayley Williams’ vocals are what initially drew me into the band - but they’re entertaining on stage. At one point during the performance, he bassist, Jeremy David, did a back-flip over Taylor York, the rhythm guitarist, while they were both (presumably) playing their guitars. Pretty crazy.
There were a few interesting audience interaction moments during the show. During one song, Hayley made this hand gesture and the music came to an abrupt and awesome halt. She started saying something like, “I don’t know how you can fight at a Paramore concert. There’s these two girls fist-fighting here in the middle of the crowd. How can you do that?” The fight wasn’t really of interest to me, but the idea that they could stop the show so quickly like that, and then with just a few taps on the high-hat, the last few bars of the same song finished up. Pretty crazy.
There was some girl holding up a sign saying it was her birthday, and Hayley made a point of saying how great it was that someone would come to one of their shows for their birthday, and had the whole crowd sing happy birthday to her. That’s gotta be pretty neat. And then at the end of the concert, they played Misery Business
There were a couple of guys sitting behind us who seemed to have been to a few Paramore concerts before, saying how “she always says that”. I expect that there are a lot of shows like that. Like when we saw Imogen Heap in December, Imogen basically gave word-for-word the same story about Aha!
They didn’t play the song I was hoping to hear. This always happens to me. I come to know a band by a certain song that I discover first, I grow to love the song and identify the band by it, but it’s not one that they’re known for, so they don’t play it in concert. I guess I’m doomed to disappointment there. Here’s the song
After the concert was over, Berta and I funneled out into the casino, and headed over to the Hard Rock cafe for a late snack. I messed with Foursquare a bit, and ended up ordering more beer than I had expected to.
Saturday morning, we wandered around on the Boardwalk, got some taffy for the kids, played with Foursquare some more. I didn’t manage to unseat the mayor of the Taj Mahal. Still working on the logistics of how mayorship works. I’ve checked in there more times than the mayor, so I’m not sure what the deal is. As I noted in one my tweets over the weekend, having been to both places in person, the Trump Taj Mahal doesn’t look anything like the real Taj Mahal in the slightest bit.
We decided to hit the road before too late in the afternoon, since the traffic was uncharacteristically bad on the trip in. But it was a fun overnight trip and another great concert in the books.
