The Sandlot

In a given discussion about great rock bands, you might hear a lot of names. One name you probably won't hear, is that of Jimmy Eat World. Its not as if they're an obscure band either, just that they are severely under rated. This past Friday I was lucky enough to go see them for the first time at RIT in Rochester. Accompanying me on this voyage was Jon Parr himself. Here is the account of our most buddy adventure.


We departed from subway at about 5:45 pm, after a scummy ass day of work, with nothing but the sun and my Garmon GPS as our guide. The GPS can get a little trixy as it computes the fastest travel time which often leads you into parts unknown. This trip was no exception. The first hiccup came when GPS said go straight when normally I'd turn right onto RT 63/77 to get to the 90. So straight we went. We're in straight up cow shit town now, even seeing a large dump truck just filled with cow shit driving around on a farm. I figure GPS is gonna take us to Batavia to catch the 90 there, wrong. GPS sends up around Batavia through more cow towns and we catch the 90 on the other side of Batavia.


We exit the 90 after 1 exit and hop on the 490, the preferred route to Rochester. However, GPS has more surprises in store for us as it directs me to exit in Chili (not pronounced like the food I'm told). We drive around in the suburbs for about 15 minutes as the our calculated arrival time approaches. GPS then announces that in .2 miles I'm to turn right on Lomb Memorial Drive, which is the road RIT is on. At this point we're in a forest somewhere with no college or collegesque environment in sight. But low and behold there's RIT, right where GPS said it would be. I'm sorry GPS, I'll never doubt you again.


Its 715 pm and we meet up with Dianna, her boy friend and 4 of their other friends and head inside. The show is at the Gordon Field House, aka, large ass gym. And the place is fucking packed. The bleachers on the 3 sides of the gym are pretty full and the floor area is packed like sardines. The reason? In addition to Jimmy Eat World, there's another band on the bill. An up-and-coming insanely popular group called Paramore who are just breaking out with their latest CD Riot!. Judging by the droves of 17/18 year olds, most of them are here for Paramore. I like Paramore myself, having been turned onto them by Ron a couple months ago so I was glad to see we made it there before they went on. There was a third band that played, Deer in the Headlights, but we missed half their set and I'm guessing it was nothing special.


We decided to go down to the main floor and fore go the comfort and safety of the bleachers. We all wanted to get up front but seeing how packed it was, it became clear a group of 8 was going nowhere and that the best chance to make it up front would be to go it alone or in groups of 2. So cakes and I headed in. We made it about half way to the stage from where we had originally began by the time Paramore came on which was fine as I figured a lot of the kids would not stay for JEW and we could resume our push to the front during the set change.


Paramore was pretty good. They played for maybe an hour, and played more songs from their first CD that I thought they would. If you don't know, they have a female singer, who's like 19 or 20, and shes got some pipes. As a band they sounded excellent as well, very tight and clean. My only complaint was that the girls banter on stage was definitely geared towards the 16-18 year old crowd, which I can understand because shes only 19/20 but some of it was little cheesy and long winded. Solid performance overall though. If they can avoid a flop on their next CD, I predict big things in the near future.


As I thought, a lot of people began filing towards the back after Paramore's set ended, allowing cakes and I to ride the wave of humanity all the way to the front. We ended up about 3 or 4 rows back from the security rail. It was hot as fuck up there and everyone were sweaty piles. Little girls were constantly being pulled over the rail by security as they were on the verge of passing out from heat stroke. At last the lights went out and JEW came on.


As with most all-ages shows, the people in the crowd were a bunch of dunces. Constantly pushing, jumping up and down and of course, crowd surfing. Crowd surfing is basically the worst thing you can do at a concert and is the one thing that infuriates me most of all. Not even getting peed on like at Arizona's makes me as mad as people crowd surfing. Usually I just try to yank them down as they go by but there was too many people in such a small space for that to happen so I did the next best thing. Throw them as hard and as far as I could. Being that it was mostly tiny 18 year old boys and girls this strategy worked out rather nicely as I repeatedly launched the little fuckers several feet in the air, causing them to somersault or fall on their dumb faces. The high light maneuver being the Ultimate Warrior back-body drop that some poor soul was unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of. Then there was the girls who were trying to battering ram their way up through everyone. I totally just paint brushed the one girl straight to the ground with my right arm. Serves you right you uppity bitch.


Somewhere in all this chaos was Jimmy's set, which was glorious. When not having to dodge feet to the back of my head or tossing crowd surfers, I was treated to a great performance. JEW played probably 4 songs from each of their last 4 Cd's, which made for a nice mix of new and old material which was all equally well received. They were a little bass heavy as far as the sound went but it wasn't bad enough to ruin the show. The highlight of the set was when they played Dizzy, from their latest CD(which is my favorite track from said disc) then followed it up with 23 from Futures. After the sweet ass guitar solo in 23 the crowd really kicked up its song along for the final verse, making for a nice moment. They ended with a sweet 3-song encore wrapping up with The Middle and capping off a great show.

After the show, Cakes and I left RIT and made the 15 minute trek to Kelly's house where we were to be spending the night. Once again GPS took us through some sketchy part of town, where we stopped at a 711 to re-hydrate. We learned that 711's are all scummy, no matter where they're located. After finding a parking spot moderately near Kelly's place we headed off on a short walk to a bar. Ended up at some place called the Sports Page, where we watched the hockey game and paid $21 for four drinks. Aside from the ridiculous prices the place was OK, though the people were hella buddy and I'm glad we only stayed for two drinks before getting picked up and going back to Kelly's for some delicious Sam Adams.