New Jersey rockers bring flamboyant show to the Crystal Ballroom
By Sarah Bigelow
Few bands can claim as strong ties to 9/11 as My Chemical Romance. Frontman Gerard Way was working as an animator for Cartoon Network when he watched the towers fall before his very eyes. The tragedy inspired "Skylines and Turnstiles," off of the band's debut album, "I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love." Following 9/11, Way left animation to pursue music, inspired by the urgency to find meaning that characterized the post-9/11 era.
Standing in the Crystal Ballroom on Tuesday, surrounded by raucous, cheering fans, most of them probably under 21, I was struck by how important MCR's genesis is to understanding their appeal. Most of the people at that concert will define their lives by 9/11 and have only fuzzy memories of a time free of terrorism-inspired paranoia.
MCR connects to this niggling, ever-present fear and inherent sense of tragedy my generation now recognizes as status quo. Whereas their first two albums, 2002's "Bullets" and 2004's "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge" can be faulted for lacking some restraint, MCR's most recent album, 2006's "The Black Parade" is an elegiac masterpiece, embodying all the insecurities and anxieties of modern life with an artistic flair adapted from David Bowie.
Tuesday's performance was less theatrical than the rock-opera imagining of "The Black Parade" that MCR brought to Portland last spring, but this absent carnivalesque did not detract from the concert. Instead, the small Crystal Ballroom provided a much more intimate setting, hearkening back to the basement concerts that launched MCR in the early 2000s.
Way is a born showman and constantly engaged the audience in the performance, often allowing the crowd to begin a song for him or encouraging them to sing along. After each song, he usually paused to relate an anecdote or ask a question of the audience.
The band was also forced to pause mid-song about halfway through the concert, when the drummer, Bob Bryar, broke his bass drum petal.
Way lofted the broken pedal into the air, waving it around as the tech guys rushed to find a substitute.
"This has never happened before," he remarked. "If it's fixable, that means you can't have it," he added, reminding the audience that these things cost money, you know.
Though the pedal apparently wasn't fixable, Way decided that he probably shouldn't throw it into the audience, and promised to decide who would receive the prized pedal later on. When the drum was repaired, the group picked up exactly where they left off.
MCR sounded amazing, providing an authentic concert-going experience. They didn't sound exactly like they do on their records (a flaw many critics have charged other groups with in this digital age); both the guitarists and Way himself improvised as they saw fit. Way even prefaced "Desert Song," the song left off of "Three Cheers," by informing the audience that he planned to alter the lyrics to those he liked better than the originals.
At times, however, I couldn't tell if Way was improvising with the lyrics or not because the bass and guitars drowned out his vocals. A couple of times I didn't even recognize the song until the chorus. The problem seemed to be partially a fault of the theater itself. Anyone standing close enough to the stage to actually see the band was too close to really understand the lyrics while anyone far enough away to hear was too far to see anything well.
The opening acts were also excessive, running for an hour and a half, far longer than necessary. The first act, Drive By (an up-and-coming band that, like MCR, hails from New Jersey), was eager and energetic and also played some catchy tunes, but the second act had more talent in their name (Billy Talent) than in their entire set. In general, their lyrics were unintelligible, their orchestrations lacked any real musicality, and, perhaps most damning of all, every song sounded like the one before it. Their 45-minute set felt as though it would never end, and, unfortunately, served as a poor prelude to the much more capable MCR.
But I forgave Billy Talent the pain they inflicted on me when MCR took the stage. There is just something so genuine, so real in their music. Unlike many of today's big names, who have their songs manufactured for them, MCR writes their own songs and pours their hearts into each and every one. Before beginning "Famous Last Words," for example, Way confided in us that it was the hardest song he ever wrote.
Their music distills the uncertainty of the everyday into something relevant, beautiful even, that encapsulates the sorrow and the joy of life.
And that, whether you're 18 or 81 or somewhere in between, is something everyone can relate to.
