Myvana

On Thursday night, September 17th, I got to see a show I had been waiting for all summer. Since February at the Grammy’s. Since I was a teenager. At 23, I experienced “a place or state characterized by freedom from or oblivion to pain, worry, and the external world” (from Dictionary.com), I experienced nirvana.

Blink 182.

First, I have to point out that Weezer kicked ass. This is a band of uber-nerds in white jumpsuits and male pattern baldness, and I still fell in love with lead singer Rivers Cuomo. I mean, they had a *trampoline* on the stage! They had a constant stream of hits that night, and while a lot of the crowd was too young to remember some, I almost cried when I heard “The Sweater Song.” Weezer is one of the bands that I first heard when I found out that there was music *other* than shitty bubble-gum pop. A lot of what I do today, and my taste in music, is due to these guys.

Blink 182 broke up a few years ago – before I ever got to see them live – because of childish behavior (and they even admit it). Mark, Tom, and Travis, the best of friends, suddenly couldn’t stand to be in the same room together. Tour catering turned into a high school cafeteria, with separate tables for those in the Mark/Travis camp and those close to Tom. A year ago this past weekend, drummer Travis Barker was in a plane crash where he was one of two survivors (the other being DJ AM, who died recently of an apparent drug overdose). After his near death experience, all three realized that life is short, they were best friends once, and could not remember why they weren’t anymore. This February at the Grammy’s, they confirmed they were getting back together.

And thus the come-back tour was born.

Blink had a pretty big stage show, with lots of fog and a backdrop entirely made of lights and videos. But their energy stood up to the stage set-up: quite surprisingly, the production didn’t upstage the band. And even with all the space on stage (and the history of anger and fights), the small, three member band was one unit, not three individuals (something Fall Out Boy failed at when I saw them a few years ago in a similarly sized venue).

However, what made this show wasn’t the stage show or the sound. It wasn’t the on stage toys or the banter. What made this show great was being transported by music. For a few hours Thursday night, I was a teenager, sitting in my room, letting my stereo drown out the rest of my world. For a few hours I didn’t care about my current money problems or homework concerns of yesteryear; I didn’t worry about how much sleep I was going to get before work, or how much sleep I could sneak during school. For a few hours, I was listening to my favorite band, in my perfect world, my nirvana.