Let us start you off on the adventure of this concert. We drove many miles to get to Connecticut where me and Drew were expecting to get photopasses and tickets to the show. As it turned out, we had only one photopass and no tickets. As you can imagine, we were not happy about that. But thankfully, after some explanations on our part, and due to the helpfulness and kindness of the staff at the box office of the Comcast Theatre, we were able to get two tickets to the show. We are very grateful for this and would like to thank those that helped us. We missed the first two bands (Chester French and Taking Back Sunday) because of the issues we were having. We also missed a lot of Weezer’s performance due to these issues, but thankfully we got some really good pictures.

First I’ll describe what we did see of Weezer. They were wearing what looked like yellow fireman’s outfits (we weren’t surprised after the many outfits they wore during their show at the Tsongas Arena in ’08). They got the crowd really riled up with their performance and did a lot of interesting things. There was a mini trampoline that was next to the drumset that lead singer/guitarist Rivers Cuomo bounced on for a large part of one song. And at the end of their first three songs, he threw his acoustic guitar into the crowd, something that our staff had never seen before. It was instantly torn apart by overexcited crowd members and there were shards of wood left over even after their performance. This was all we got to see, but we know Weezer well enough to say that they must’ve put on a great performance.

Alright, now onto Blink 182. First off we would like to say that they are some of the most amazing entertainers we have ever seen, and that they are incredibly strong people as well. The reason for this being that the day before, on August 28th, their close friend Adam Goldstein (better know as DJ AM) had died. They made note during several parts of the concert how difficult it was for them to be on stage that night, and it just goes to show how dedicated they are to their work and to their fans. Mark Hoppus started crying as he told the crowd that DJ AM “loved music more than anyone in the world”, and afterwards held a moment of silence in his memory. He was emotional throughout the whole concert, but even he was able to crack some jokes (at one point talking about who has insured his balls, and that they were a national monument).This death was a major event that impacted the concert immensely. Tom DeLonge explained to the crowd before one song how music is an escape from all the shit that happens in life. Throughout the concert he did a great job of getting the crowd out of the somberness of the death hanging over their heads (at times telling the crowd to “wake up”) and to use their music as an escape, a way to forget about the bad things and just have fun. He frequently replaced the lyrics in Blink’s songs with blowjobs, handjobs, rimjobs, swears, jokes, gestures, and often just incoherent screaming/moaning. It was so great to see Travis Barker, who never missed a beat, still performing at his very best during this concert. He did a miniature drum solo going into “Violence” (at least we think that’s what it was) that was simply incredible, but he did not do his elaborate flying drum solo after the encore like he did at the other Blink 182 shows. This is understandable because he was the closest to DJ AM out of the three, and it would have been difficult doing the solo because it is usually done to a lot of rap or hip/hop songs (which would remind him of his shows and times playing with DJ AM). After the concert he promptly left even when Mark and Tom stayed on stage, and was obviously upset.

Moving on to the setup of the stage and props involved, much of it was the same. They had the same screen setup in the back with the videos of the Blink bunny, random images having to do with their songs, and live video of them playing. They also had their giant Blink bunny figure on their amps. A new addition was a series of lights that came down from the ceiling during some of their songs. It was a nice effect that we had seen previously at the Creed concert and it was used well. They also had confetti shoot out at the end of “Dammit” to close the show, just like in previous concerts.

As a whole this concert was great, but it was also missing a lot. We’re pretty sure that Blink had a much shorter setlist, because the night went by fast and we got out early. It was missing Travis’s flying drum solo. The general mood of the concert was at times depressing and at times exciting but there was always a shadow of DJ AM’s death hanging over it. After all that they’ve been through, we really have to give Blink credit for getting up on stage and performing that night. It shows how much character and dignity they really have, how strong they are, how they can band together and get through times like this. It is something we respect highly. People that night got to see a side of Blink that they don’t usually see. A side of maturity and respect that contradicts their often immature nature, although that was of course present as well. We had an awesome time at this concert and we feel that, despite all that was missing, despite the mood and the emotion, everything was made up for in the way that Blink 182 stayed strong and stuck to what they loved. It was all about the music and for that reason we wanted to give this the same score that we gave the last concert we saw of them. Not only do they deserve it, but they’ve earned it.