4/17/01

As I was finishing my geography test this afternoon, two words raced through my head in rapid succession. matchbox twenty matchbox twenty matchbox twenty... I had spent most of the day, and even most of the previous week, suppressing the notion that I would be seeing MB20 in Charlotte, NC, today. Really, it was the only way I could get any work done. Like that stupid geography test. I handed it in and headed out the door.

My roommate, Anne, was waiting for me in the canteen of the classroom building. By then, I was chanting matchbox twenty matchbox twenty aloud. I so didn't care if anybody was staring.

We raced out to my car. We grabbed my MB20 CD wallet out of my backpack, (I have a full 24 CD wallet AND overflow of MB20 official and bootlegs CDs). Then it was onto the road. Tabitha's Secret, Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication and Lifehouse were our music choices on the close to two hour trip from Columbia, SC, to Charlotte, NC.

We got there early enough so that parking was not a problem. I parked right in front of the Cricket Arena, (formally Independence Arena), and I didn't even have to pay the $5. I thought something about that HAD to be wrong, that my poor baby car would get towed while we were at the concert. Hey, my car's a fan of MB20 too, with an MB20 sticker affixed to her rear window!

No, my car wasn't towed; it's free parking if you come early enough. Needless fear.

On the way up the street, we had seen a group of people hanging around, sitting on the grass across the street from the arena. We joined them. We approached these two girls, who were SO friendly, (I seriously haven't met an UNfriendly matchbox twenty fan). They invited us to sit with them, by this short fence. Behind it were tour buses, but I cannot tell them all apart.

We sat around talking to the girls, who didn't even have tickets to the concert. They were planning on talking somebody like a roadie or something into letting them in. Anne had to go find a bathroom, and the girls decided to go somewhere to warm up, (it was fairly windy, but nothing for a Yankee girl like me). So my party left me. There was a second group sitting there, but I didn't know how get talking with them. I just sat by them. There were two guys and four girls. One of the girls actually appeared to be one of their mothers.

Then a white Dodge Minivan drove up to the yellow gate behind me and to my right. It just sat there, in front of the area where the tour buses were. The doors opened, and who should jump out but Jason, Sergio, and Diff of Lifehouse. Stupid me, I just sat there staring. One of the guys from the other group approached them and said hey to Jason. He and Jason seemed to already know each other.

Jason, Sergio, and Diff wandered off, toward the buses. And I'm sitting there, cursing myself for not having said hi, or taken a picture. Jason did wave in the general direction of those on the grass, and I waved back. I actually saw Jason at the last concert too, in Worcester, but I hadn't been a Lifehouse fan yet. They SO rocked at that concert that I bought the CD and played it enough to learn most of the words. Really, if you haven't checked out Lifehouse yet, I'm recommending it.

Anne returned, and I told her what she had missed. The minivan was still sitting there, and we knew that they had to come back to that area anyway.

That's when that guy approached us, the one who knew Jason. He had noticed our MB20 clothing, (I was wearing my matchbox 20 stole my baby shirt, and Anne had on my matchbox 20 wind breaker). I asked the guy how he knew Jason. He said he'd met him in an airport, before they had a record deal. He barely knew who they were when he met them too.

Two tour buses showed up not long after that, and the group headed across the street, toward the lot in front of the arena, where the buses parked. Anne and I blindly followed them, asking only when we got there whose buses those were. They said everclear. Turned out it wasn't. That became clear when Rob hopped out of the goldish/beige/whatever colour that bus was. He was wearing sunglasses. He saw us all by the roadside, watching him, and he waved. We all waved back. Anne got a picture of the back of his head from, like, 100 feet away, and Rob was too fast for me to get ANY shots of him. Then Sophie, Paul's dog, pranced out, attached to a leash. Paul was holding the other end. He hung out on the side of the bus while Pookie snuck past him, into the arena after Rob.

"Paul!" I yelled to him. Yes, I didn't have the nerve to say hi to Lifehouse when they were right there, but I could yell out to Paul. Maybe it's because I'm obsessed over MB20. Maybe it's because I met him at the last concert. Whatever the reason, I called his name. He turned my way, and I waved. He waved back with a cute little smile. He wasn't wearing a hat, and he didn't wear one during the concert either. His hair is getting a little long. Not like Adam length or anything, but enough for it to look crazy in the wind.

We figured that Kyle and Adam HAD to get out of one of the buses, but the other van, the black one, turned around so that the door was facing away from us. They must have got off. We stood around waiting. We met these two guys who had a knack for getting backstage all the time for any concert they attended. They said the trick was to pretend that you belong there. The guy doing most of the talking was a big guy, and I'm not sure a lot of people would want to question him! It seems that everyone has a way for getting backstage too. The two girls we met earlier did so because they were gorgeous. These guys did so by acting nonchalant, like they work there, and it worked since most of the roadies are guys, and because they had GUTS!!!

The guy with the one talking to us was on the phone, then the first guy was talking on the phone too. Apparently, his roommate was standing right there, among the buses, and nobody had questioned him. The guy just hung around there until he decided to wander across the street, to the other buses. His objective was to waltz over to the everclear buses and ask for backstage passes. We watched as he went past the fence, where Anne and I had been waiting earlier. Later, he returned without luck.

Jason, MB20's bodyguard, came out to talk to people who truly had backstage passes, to tell them how to pick them up. While he was talking, a few people were walking past him. Then I realised that Lifehouse was hanging around over there. This time, Anne got pictures.

everclear's bus showed up, and we saw Art get off the bus. He was talking to three guys, right in front of the bus, much closer than any of the matchsticks had been. Craig got off the bus and went straight in; I didn't see Greg at all. Art noticed the people by the roadside, and he approached us. He was shaking hands and signed some autographs. I had my Lifehouse CD, and I had my Australian import of the Mad Season single. But, this time, unlike last, I didn't have ANYTHING on me that was everclear. I didn't really mind though. Anne got a picture anyway. Besides, after the Worcester show, I had lost some respect for everclear. I really wasn't excited at all to see Art right there, just weirded out. I didn't end up even shaking his hand.

After a while of standing around and no action, it was close to 6:30. Anne and I called it quits. We were standing there with two other girls, who also decided nothing else was going to happen. I bought a Lifehouse T-shirt and MB20's stills booklet. At the last concert, I had bought a MB20 tour shirt for this tour, so I decided against it this time, especially since I'm going to have money problems this month.

We sat down. We had floor seats, equivalent to row 17, on the right, (Adam side seating). The arena is fairly small, so it really wasn't bad seats at all. When Lifehouse began, people mainly remained in their seats. I didn't care. Lifehouse rocks, and I was ready to groove. After the first five or so rows, I was the only one boppin' to the beat. This time, I was more familiar with Lifehouse as a band. I know that they started off with Cling and Clatter, went on to Quasimodo, then Sick Cycle Carrousel. AMAZING songs! I remember last time, they did do Quasimodo; the name is easy to remember. They slowed it down for their fourth song, Everything, which is the last track on their album.

People were not half as responsive as they were for everclear, and not a quarter of responsive as for matchbox twenty. Small clusters of people really got into the music, but others just sat around. Nevertheless, those guys were pouring themselves into their music. I noticed it especially in Jason; it's easiest to spot sincerity from singing, I think, than from instruments. Maybe it's just because I can't play an instrument but can (or at least daily attempt) to sing.

There were a few times when the whole band was jumping around, which was cool to watch. They had two additional band members, besides the three I mentioned previously. One of them didn't play for every song though. As with the Worcester show, Lifehouse's finale was Hanging By A Moment. They were on stage from seven to seven-thirty, not long enough at all.

I wasn't stoked to see everclear, I'll say that right off. Honestly, their performance in Worcester hadn't impressed me. Art seemed really angry at everything and appeared to be hating every moment of the concert. He also came off as egocentristic. I was just hoping they'd be quick so I could see matchbox twenty.

Everclear redeemed themselves. I was holding something against the entire band for Art's actions, which I guess wasn't fair but true. When they first got on stage and performed the first track off Songs from an American Movie Vol. 1, then Everything to Everyone, I was standing up, but basically only so I could see. I was clapping, not hooting and hollering as I did with Lifehouse and was prepared to REALLY do once MB20 got onstage.

I don't know. Maybe Art was just in a bad mood in Worcester. Whatever the case, my perception or his true attitude, it wasn't so tonight. He did invite people onstage again for Rock Star, his "everclear dancers". He booted two girls for not dancing, but he didn't make a big deal about booting them this time. Nobody flipped him off, so I guess that made him happier. It was obvious that they were all putting so much into their music. I noticed this drummer, not Greg, but a guy who wasn't wearing a shirt, (Art later referred to him as "the scary, half naked man"). He was standing the whole time to play drums. At times, he used these drumsticks that had extra weight on the ends. He was throwing his body into every beat, and it was cool to watch him play.

Part of what made everclear better to me this time was that Art and Craig seemed to be getting along. At the Worcester concert, they ignored each other. But, at this one, Art asked for applause for Craig, and he spent some of the time on stage singing right by Craig.

I think a highlight of everclear's performance that will show up in ANY review of this show was when Art got offstage and walked around the arena, around the parametre of the floor seats. He was still singing AND playing his guitar, but he wandered through the crowd. He just walked right offstage and was escorted by a couple security guards around the arena. He sure knew how to work a crowd, because EVERYBODY was going insane! I think the idea of the everclear dancers also works to hype the crowd, but only at first. Once Art selected those dancers, the rest of the audience became rather sedated, just staring at envy at those onstage.

[ADDED LATER: Anne reminded me about another thing about the everclear dancers. A couple of them brought signs onstage with them. One was white and had "Happy Birthday, Art" written in black marker. I don't know if it were really Art's birthday; Anne says the signholder "could have been pulling a Rob Thomas" (saying it's somebody's birthday when it's not, like he did in Worcester). A girl onstage had a colourful sign that said "I love Art", (a heart actually drawn in the middle, instead of the word love). She left the sign onstage, and Art picked it up off the floor later. He said something like his wife was going to kill him if she saw that sign. Then he said that a guy had made the sign. He was holding it up and looked rather pleased with it. The whole scene was cute.]

As they wrapped up with I Will Buy You A New Life, everclear had redeemed themselves. I know it doesn't mean anything really but to me, but I respect them now again.

MUCH bigger gap between everclear and matchbox twenty's performances than between Lifehouse's and everclear's. I think I spent most of it chanting matchbox twenty as Anne and I watched everclear's set being removed. BTW, earlier, when we'd seen Lifehouse's stuff being taken away, we saw dark blue bags with a neon green rectangle on the front that said "Lifehouse". Just a small note.

Anyway. The arena eventually went dark. And a white sheet descended from the ceiling, in front of the stage. Lights played across the sheet as the music began. The light show continued for about a full minute, before shadowed figures took their positions onstage. And the sheet fell. matchbox twenty broke into Crutch. That's when the jumping around began! The whole arena was a swamp of swaying and bobbing bodies, and shrill screeches and screams pierced the air, several of which emitted from my lungs.

I highly recommend learning about Zen before going to a matchbox twenty concert; that's what I did. This morning, in my religions of the Far East class, we discussed my professor's book, especially a chapter on speaking and breathing. My professor believes that, when he inhales, he receives life and gives life when he exhales. And that speech is consciously formed exhalations that are a purposeful giving of ones soul to another. This made me scream even louder, from the depths of me, because I wanted to give matchbox twenty all that I could, screams that scraped by trachea and throat for everything I had within me. As matchbox twenty performed, that's what they were doing too. With every exhalation, they were breathing life into their audience.

I was zenning out over matchbox twenty.

They were crazy tonight too! Apparently, everybody in the arena wanted to give matchbox twenty a piece of themselves, and cheering permeated every square inch of breathing room. This life from the audience fueled the band.

They played for two hours, so there's no way I'm going to sequence this right. I figure I should go through every song they performed and recall all that I can about each one. Off the first album, they did Real World (second to last), Long Day, 3 AM, Push (finale), Girl Like That, Back 2 Good (the CLASSIC!!!), and Argue (close to the beginning). Off the new album: Angry (toward the end), Black and White People (their pseudo-finale, where they took a break in between), Crutch (opener), Last Beautiful Girl, If You're Gone, Mad Season, Rest Stop (second pull-out-the-piano song), The Burn, Bent (their second or third song), You Won't Be Mine (first piano song). As for cover songs, I'll mention them as I go.

As for clothing, I'm not incredibly observant. But Rob was wearing a black fitted T-shirt and blue jeans. Paul was wearing a white T-shirt, and his hair was still everywhere. He kind of looked like he had just rolled out of bed. I am so ashamed! I don't remember what Adam, Kyle, and Pookie had on! I might go looking through other reviews, after I write my own. Somebody else may have noticed. [ADDED LATER: Anne thinks that Adam and Pookie were all in black, but I thought I remembered Pookie wearing a shirt that had some deep red in it. We remember that Kyle was wearing something loud, and Anne thinks it was beige.]

Toward the beginning of the concert, Rob said that we were all in the arena to have fun. The doors in the back, he said, were to be closed and locked up tight so that nothing from out there would affect what was in here. He said that we left everything out there outside. He listed politics first in a list of things we left out there. With matchbox twenty on stage, who COULD remember what else existed in the world, besides who and what they saw before them?

They did an extended version of Real World, where in the middle, Rob and Kyle started singing the first and second lines of the song. It was cool and sounded so familiar. Either they did it in Worcester and I failed to mention it before, or I have it on bootleg and forgot I did. The first is more probable.

Long Day was not extended.

During 3 AM, they had pictures projected onto the background. I think I said this before too, but I don't know what they were of.

Girl Like That: Rob did that "and over" repetition thing again, like he'd done last month. Last month though, he was jumping as he repeated himself, and he said it countless times (basically, I didn't count). This time, he said it two extra times, and the crowds went WILD!

During Last Beautiful Girl, they showed those pictures again of those girls, the same one as before.

Something that Rob was doing the whole time was twirling his microphone stand. And he did that propeller thing again with his arms, where he was rotating them in circles from his shoulders.

You Won't Be Mine was the first piano song. Paul and his drums were brought up to the front of the stage, and Adam and Pookie sat by them. Kyle was leaning against something, off to the side. Adam, Pookie, and Kyle were moving around for Rest Stop though. After the piano portion, Paul moved back to the riser behind Rob, and the extra instruments were taken away. I LOVE You Won't Be Mine, and they didn't perform it last month in Worcester.

They did their first cover song around that time. I was told that, in Raleigh last night, they performed the cover song Lonely Weekend and Tabitha's Secret song Dear Joan. I was wanting Dear Joan, but it didn't happen. But MB20 did three cover songs, above par, so who's complaining? Rob said they were happy to be in the South. He also said that he's always had a thing for southern women. I'm standing there, wishing I was one, but I'm a New England girl. Perhaps I'm a northern southerner now, but I still don't think I qualified.

Anyway, he said they were going to do a song they wish they had written but hadn't. Anne thought that, after he had talked about being in North Carolina, they would perform a song called Carolina Girl. Instead, they pulled up a song I never expected to hear from them. Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama.

"They're doing Skynyrd?!?" I exclaimed to Anne, who was stoked. She's a Skynyrd fan, has the CD, and sings that song more than the average bear. Rob got everybody singing the "Oooo Oooo Oooo" parts, which is funny when everybody's got a twang. He made it into one big southern-style sing-a-long, having people fill in lines, (which I didn't know; I only know the chorus). People went nuts over that song! Rob said something afterwards that he didn't want to offend anybody by bringing in Alabama when we're in North Carolina, but that it's a southern song. [ADDED LATER: At some point in the show, Rob proclaimed, "This is southern rock night!"]

The pseudo-finale was Black and White People, an extended version of the song where Rob starts singing something else in the middle. He sang about being outside and wanting to go inside, then inside and wanting to go outside. It actually reminded me of two girls I used to babysit who would want to go to the pool, then would want to go home, never content with wherever they were at the moment.

After Black and White People, they went offstage. The disco ball overhead rotated, and silver sprinkles of light danced across the arena. Of course, I stood up in awe and watched, at the same time drumming on the seat in front of me, joining in with others who were doing the same. Everybody knew that, of course, matchbox twenty was not done!

Rob came back onstage and said he was going to do a song that his wife likes. He said it was a song that people his age, and maybe as young as 22, would identify with as a song from growing up. I'm like, (and I said it to Anne), "What about 21 year olds!!!" I was surprised when he started playing Time After Time, because I had heard that they rarely ever do that one anymore, because they've overdone it. But, if his wife wants it, does that mean it'll end up back in the rotation?

Kyle showed up in the middle of the song, and a second spotlight shown on him. What's cool is, before the instrumental section of the song, Kyle stepped backward, into the onstage mist, and disappeared into it. He does the same thing on the Australia video. It's just neat. What's funny though is then you see this red dot hovering in the air, when Kyle inhales on his cigarette. Does he always smoke during that song? I guess he does because it's really part of the band's break. It's only him and Rob, and they're being mellow.

I'm not really sure at what point they played it, but they did If You're Gone. Really, they didn't do anything specific in the song that I can recall. Something about it though, the whole aura around it... I cried. I've never cried at a concert before, and I'm not certain on where the tears came from, what specifically about the song hit me right then. It might be that, next month, I'm graduating with my bachelors degree from USC and going on for my masters. It could be that, in doing so, I'm moving, that this could be the last time I hear matchbox twenty in the South, their "natural habitat". It could be that I'm originally from Massachusetts, am going home, and a lot of my life right now really seems to parallel with that song. Maybe it wasn't anything specific, maybe there didn't need to be anything like that. Maybe the soul of the song performed live just connected with mine. Or perhaps it was because I wasn't moving about during that song, just standing and listening, not giving, only receiving, and it's a lot of creative energy to accept when you're not returning any of it.

I don't know.

They also did Back 2 Good. If I were to guess which song performed live in concert would make me cry, I would have guessed this one. Different matchbox twenty songs fit different times of your life though. Tonight, it was If You're Gone, not Back 2 Good. Things change.

Toward the end, Rob announced that his father was there tonight and that he wanted to do something special. He did a 70's song that Anne says the classic rock station here plays all the time, but neither one of us know the name. The energy level in the arena skyrocketed at this point! Rob disappeared behind the stage and came back, standing right behind Paul. He held over their heads a pair of drumsticks, and he began playing Paul's drums, on the right of Paul. It was just weird to see Rob playing drums. SO cool! Then Rob left the drumsticks by Paul and jumped off the riser, almost into the line of the Pookie shuffle. Pookie was sliding on by in front of the riser, toward Kyle's end of the stage, and was only about a step ahead of where Rob landed. Rob brushed against him too. If he had been faster, or Pookie a little slower, surely a catastrophe would have occurred. They were wild, and the audience was ecstatic, though it appeared most people didn't know the song. I really don't know what Rob was up to next, but Kyle was right there, and Rob put his hand against Kyle's back and nudged him to the centre of the stage.

Rob ended up hanging around Adam about three times. During the whole concert, not this song. The first time, it looked like Rob was going to do a flip over Adam's back. He leaned against Adam's side, and Adam was leaning forward. At one point, Rob sang a line of a song right to Adam, and Adam nodded with a cute little smile on his face. Another time, they were just grooving by one another.

I don't remember when he did it, but Rob was using a tambourine during the show too, for one song. He made his rounds around the back of the stage with it, played it by their three-person strings section, then by Paul.

Toward the end, perhaps during Push, Rob announced the names of everybody on stage, including the four other matchsticks, which I've never seen or heard of him doing. When he got to Pookie, he referred to him as Brian "The Pook" Yale.

As soon as they started into Push, I knew the concert was coming to a close. An AWESOME concert! As Push began, I was cheering, but then I turned to Anne and said, "Wait! Why am I cheering? This means it's over!"

Looking around the stage, I spotted Rob in the foreground. Kyle was to his right, getting down with the music. Pookie was strutting his stuff to the left of Rob. And Paul was at it on the drums.

"Where's Adam?" I asked Anne. We scanned the stage, but he was nowhere to be found. Then, he raced into view, from the back of the stage, past the right side of the drum riser. Just in time to do back-up for the chorus. [ADDED LATER: Anne told me that she hadn't heard what I said, so she wasn't looking onstage for Adam.]

Rob thanked everybody for coming out and, when the song ended, they were gone.

Anne and I had planned to go hang around where we had been before, in case we could see the matchsticks. But, you know, I was so stoked, SO much had happened, and everything was SO awesome! If anything else had happened, it probably would have been overload. So we went home instead. The parking lots were insane getting out, but sitting in the car wasn't bad. We started talking about the concert a little, but more so once we got on the highway. What we mainly did, sitting in my car in the parking lot, waiting to move, was listen to my bootleg copy of a Boston MB20 concert from before Mad Season. With that on up high, we attracted a street vender who sold me an unofficial MB20/everclear T-shirt for $10. People were really nice, letting me into the line of traffic on the way out of the arena.

And why were they nice?

Because MATCHBOX TWENTY FANS ROCK!!!