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March 18, 2002: Phantom Planet live at the Metro (Chicago)
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Going to a concert on a school night presents two major problems. The obvious problem is being able to go to school the next day without sleeping and/or dying, but it's also hard to make it through the day of the show at school without freaking out with anticipation for the show. That was the case on this mild weathered 18th day of March. It was a Monday. Deadly.
I had simulator in driver's ed, and I had to watch a boring video in photography. These did not by any means made the wait any easier.
Finally the day was over and I met my friends Mandi and Heather who were coming to the show with me at the front of the school. They had never seen Phantom Planet before so they were as anxious as me, but in a different way. They didn't know what to expect. We went to my house where we watched my video of the various late night shows and other things that Jason and the band have been on recently to get ourselves pumped for the show. We left around 4:00 and picked up my brother's friend Mike who was also coming with us. He is an American HiFi fan and came to that show with us back in October and he is now a PP fan. On the way to the show we listened to The Guest (obviously), the bonus disc, and the live EP to get ourselves pumped even more.
When we got there we were very surprised to see that there was a midsized line outside of the Metro. Mandi, Heather and I got spots in the line while my dad and Mike went to get disposable cameras. It was a cold and windy evening, very reminiscent of a normal winter day, which us Chicagoans hadn't had much of in the past few months. Strange.
The cold got to us. We started getting a weird sense of humor. After a long time of waiting and deciding that Mike's name was Matt or Ferd, my dad and Mike came back to join us in line. We were also joined by Brian, James and Fred and some other guy who came with them who's name I didn't get.
Finally we were let into the building and quickly bounded up the stairs to the stage area and got to the best spots we could find which was slightly to the right of the center and in the third "row" of people. It was good enough, and since I was used to standing on the left side for Metro shows, it provided a different view for me.
There were two opening bands called Monovox and Sleeping at Last. Monovox played first. I liked a few of their songs, but overall I didn't find them especially fantastic. They didn't suck though and I was grateful for that. I had heard that Sleeping at Last wasn't exactly the epitome of rock and roll, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were pretty good. Their songs could have used a bit more energy and variety, but overall they were good to watch.
The wait between Sleeping at Last and Phantom Planet seemed like forever. I was very surprised when I saw both Alex and Jason come out at the beginning because I was used to Jason coming out first and playing the opening to "Shadows" and the rest of the band coming out later, so I was afraid they wouldn't open with "Shadows". They did open with it though, and it was fantastic as usual. The guys seemed as surprised as I had been at the amount of people who had come. It was packed!
The show was really amazing. The guys all seemed really energetic and happy to be there which always helps. I don't remember the exact order in which they played the songs, but these are the songs they played: "Shadows", "In Our Darkest Hour", "Recently Distressed", "Please Apply Yourself to Me Sweetly", "Always On My Mind", "Happy Ending", "The Guest", "Nobody's Fault", "Wishing Well", "California", and "All Over Again". For the encore, Alex came out and talked to the crowd for a minute and then played "Something is Wrong" by himself. Then the rest of the band came out and they played "Sabotage".
During the end of "All Over Again", after Alex crowd surfed, he climbed up this little scaffolding that held one of the spotlights and started hanging from it by one hand and one foot and I thought he was going to fall. At the end of the song he jumped off. That child is insane. The whole band was going nuts during "Sabotage", and so was the crowd. It was excellent.
After the show we went down to the lobby to see if the band would come down before they went to the meet and greet. The deal with the meet and greet was that you could get a pass to go up to the balcony to get stuff signed by the band if you bought The Guest. My friends and I obviously already had The Guest, so we were pretty upset since we had bought it when it came out which presumably made us more hardcore fans.
The guys didn't come down.
We started talking to the guys in Sleeping at Last and telling them good job etc etc and they were really nice. They are from the same town as me so we had a laugh about how it isn't exactly the rock and roll center of Illinois. We were talking to the bass player and complaining about the meet and greet being stupid and we jokingly asked him if he could take us backstage and he said he didn't think so, but then he gave me his pass to the meet and greet because he bought the CD but he had already met the band before the show. I was like "Oh goodness thank you so much" etc etc. I didn't want to ditch my friends though so I decided to go up and see what was going on and how many people were there, and there was this huuuuuuuge line of people waiting to talk to them and they were sitting at this couch by the stairs. There was no way I was going to leave everybody else downstairs for that long, so I went to the side of the couch that people were leaving from and Jacques was sitting at the end so I was like "Hey Jacques!" and he looked up and I asked him if they were going to be coming back downstairs later and he said yes, but I gave him the Ricky Martin sticker valentines I brought for everybody just in case.
I went back downstairs and told my group what was going down, and we hung out for a while talking to Sleeping at Last until the security guard started getting really mad that we wouldn't leave and kicked us out.
We waited around outside and met some people and hung out forever and ever. It was soooooooo cold outside I thought I was going to die. I was wearing layers too. There were a lot of people waiting when we got outside, but as time went by, more and more people gave up and left. People were slowly trickling out of the building from the meet and greet and we were getting very frustrated. Just when I thought my hands were going to fall off, I saw Alex walking towards the door. I told my friends that they were coming and they were all excited since they've never met them before.
Alex came out and said that he had to put his guitar on the bus but he'd be back. My dad followed him to the bus though because he wanted to tell him that "Wishing Well" sounds a lot like a song called "A Salty Dog" by a band who's name I will not even attempt to spell, and he says that Alex told him that it was influenced by that song. I thought that was funny. Then Jacques came out and was immediately bombarded by everybody who was standing outside, but we hung back because we knew that he wouldn't be able to sign our stuff for a while.
Sam came out and we asked him if he would sign our stuff but his hands were full (one with a cigarette if my memory doesn't fail me. Hmm....) so he went to the bus but said he would come back out in a minute.
By then Jacques was finally given some breathing room so we went up to talk to him. He was very nice, as usual, but seemed pretty tired. I felt bad because we had all this stuff for him to sign for our friends who couldn't come, but he assured us that it was no problem. We didn't get a chance to ask him if we could get a picture with him, but oh well. Next time.
Darren came out while we were talking to Jacques and he was talking to a couple girls who we had met earlier so we waited patiently for him to be finished. The girls left and so we went up to chat and he turned around and saw me and said "Hey!" and gave me a hug. I introduced him to Mandi and Heather and he shook their hands.
Then he asked "Where's your father?" and I told him that he was over somewhere talking to Alex. Darren then said "Oh, did he get my email? Because I emailed him back!" and I told him yes. It was great.
We had him sign all of our stuff after struggling to find somebody who had a Sharpie, and chatted for a little bit. When he was signing the picture I brought for my sister Katie (who is in England and is responsible for the two monstrosities that are the December 5th reviews) I told him that it was for my sister and he said "Oh yeah, where is she?" so I kindly told him that she was in England for the semester and asked him if they were going to be playing any shows while they were over there but he said he didn't know. Then we got a picture taken with him, which turned out very insterestingly. We're all laughing except Darren who is making what I call a "pimp face". Whether that was intentional or unintentional, the world may never know.
After that we went over to where Alex was by the bus and waited for some people to get pictures with him. This one guy was doing a photography project and had Alex (and I think the other guys too) write a message on a piece of paper and then have his picture taken holding it. He wrote "don't arrest me". It was highly amusing. We had him sign all of our stuff. He started saying how cold he was and we were like "We've been out here for like an hour!" and he told us we were troopers, ha ha. Then got a picture with him. My dad was about to take it and then he said "Alex, aren't you going to smile?" and he said "I am smiling!" but we didn't believe him. He's giving kind of a half smile in the picture, ha ha. As the picture was being taken Mandi was saying something and she said that we needed another one because she didn't want to look weird. We all got back together, and Mike even joined us for this picture. Alex told us that he was going to make his "Euro emo face". It was funny.
At some point my dad asked him if he would like to be called Alexander from now on because in the booklet of The Guest it always says Alexander, and he said "Either one is fine. Alexander is my God given name... or my mom given name at least". It was great. Then he was saying something about how it was so cold outside again, and much to my shock and horror, my dad asked him if his nipples were hard. I was like "Dad!?!?" and Alex started laughing. I was like "Yeah everybody. That's my father." and then Alex said in a kind of girly voice "Oh my God dad you're embarrassing me so much!". Ha ha. Then I said "It's okay. I love you daddy." and gave my daddy a hug and Alex said "See, there's a good relationship!". It was interesting, ha ha. We told him that we liked his sweater and he told us that he got it for five dollars at some store in LA that I had never heard of. Right before he left I asked if Jacques had given him his valentine and he said no, so I told him to ask him about it because it was Ricky Martin stickers and not to be missed and he started laughing.
By then Sam had gone to a bar or something so we didn't get to talk to him anymore, and nobody had seen Jason come out yet so we waited.
After about fifteen minutes he came out and apologized for making us wait. He came up to my group and started talking to my dad, ha ha. He said "Bill, I saw you in the crowd but then I kept losing you!". It was great. We told him great show etc etc and had him sign all of our stuff. We were having everybody sign this Taco Bell chihuahua for my friend Brittany and he drew a heart on it, ha ha. As he was signing it I said "That is for my friend Brittany who isn't allowed to go to concerts on school nights" and he looked shocked and said "You have to go to school tomorrow?!?! Let's hurry this up!".
I introduced him to Mandi and Heather and he said hello to them and then I said "And you met Mike once before" and he said "Oh yes" and shook Mike's hand. Mike said "How's it going?" and Jason said he was fine and they had a mini conversation, ha ha.
My dad asked him when his next movie was coming out and he said "I don't know if you're going to want to see it. It's pretty dirty!" and I said "You're going to take me to see it right daddy?" and then my dad asked Jason when the Al Pacino movie was coming out and he said that he didn't know because there was a lot of digital animation stuff they had to do for it.
A little later we were still talking to him and he turned to me and said "So you're wearing lenses now?" and I at first didn't think he was talking to me because I had no idea what he was talking about. I said "What?" and he said "You started wearing contact lenses?" and I realized what he was talking about. At all the previous shows I had been wearing my fake Rivers Cuomo-ish glasses but a couple months ago I stopped wearing them so I obviously wasn't wearing them. I was really really surprised that he remembered that. I said "No, those glasses were fake. I told you that once before!" because the first time I met him he asked me what my prescription was, ha ha. He said "Oh yeah! That's too bad, I like those glasses. Why aren't you wearing them?" and I told him "Because they leave weird marks on my face and get crooked all the time" and then my dad said something about how if he really liked them we could send them to him, but he said that he already has a lot of glasses but they don't look good on him. Then he said "I'm actually wearing frameless glasses right now".
Then he asked me if I saw myself in the "California" video and I said that I thought I saw the side of my head but I wasn't sure and he said "Oh you're definitely in it! I promise!" and we told him that he was in it too and asked him if he was proud and he said "Yeah! I was in it a couple times!" My dad asked him how he liked being on the late night shows and he said it was great. I asked him how he liked being on Last Call and Jason said he thought it was funny and he had lots of fun. I was disappointed because I thought Carson was a big jerk, but oh well.
Then it was time for us to go and Jason agreed because he wanted us to "do good in school" and he gave me and Mandi and Heather hugs. We then left and went home and slept and tried to survive the rest of the week in school.
So that is the story of Monday, March 18th, 2002. I hope everybody enjoyed it.

Written by Claire