PHOTOS BY JASON SPEAKMAN
I realize that there is some talk (ok, a lot of talk) about our generation only liking things that are “ironically nostalgic”
so that we don’t have to deal with the disillusionment we feel about the present blah blah Freud blah whatever. And maybe there was a part of me that heard about Taking Back Sunday’s 10 Year Anniversary Tour for their opus, Tell All Your Friends, and thought that it would be fun for a night to wander back into yesteryear and hear the emo songs of my past.
But it turned out to be a lot more than that. Sure, there were a ton of twenty-somethings there who probably (like me) initially got tickets for the nostalgia factor. But by the time Adam Lazarra came out onstage singing and throwing his mic around and doing that thing he does with his arm, all bets were off. It was no longer about remembering that we once liked this band, but why we liked them in the first place.
They put on a high-energy, hook-infested, raucous show, ten years on and counting.
The band not only played the entirety of TAYF (as promised) but also hits like “A Decade Under the Influence” and “MakeDamnSure,” which sent the entire sold-out House of Blues crowd into fits of rowdy excitement. It was still a close-knit crowd who screamed all the words enthusiastically, just like it was when we were 13.
Only now, we can all drink legally!
Sure, lyrics like, “You could slit my throat/And with my one last gasping breath/I’d apologize for bleeding on your shirt,” no longer had the emotional resonance they once did (or, actually, never did but oh well). But the feeling of discovering music that made us a part of a community bigger than our angst-y little selves (as many of us did when Tell All Your Friends first came out) could still be tapped into.
At one point, Lazarra jumped into the swarm and let people sing into his mic … it was electric. Plus, when he moved past where my friends and I were standing and we all put our hands on his shoulders, and
it turned out that feeling up the lead singer of TBS was the fulfillment of my still-thriving adolescent fantasy.
With that, I give you…
FOTOBOM!!!!
