7 -- Jimmy Eat World – Tuesday, October 30, 2007 – 9:30 Club – Washington, DC

Behind the Music

Looking back, it’s hard to think there had been a time I hadn’t been to the 9:30 Club. This concert, though, was certainly a strong introduction.

I left school late, consumed by thoughts of how my first Halloween lesson would work out the next day. The drive on 495 and Rock Creek added further unease because I kept thinking the band’s latest album, Chase This Light, sounded too soft. After subpar shows from Guster and The Shins, two soft bands, I was not looking forward to a three-peat.

I recognized this show would be different as soon as I walked in. Guitars pounded; red lights blared; band members visibly sweat. “Work” sounded much harder than the studio version, and “Blister,” a song I somehow had not heard before, was definitely a song I wanted to hear again. The hard rock high point was “Disintegration,” a moody breakup song with a killer drum beat.



Be Careful What You Wish For

Maybe my favorite lyric of all time comes from “A Praise Chorus”: “sometimes I just want to hear a song I know.” It speaks to the incredible comfort familiar songs can provide. A Ghost is Born got me through sophomore year, Pinkerton through junior year, and Stadium Arcadium through student teaching.



What I found out for the first time at Jimmy Eat World was that there is also a dark side to familiar songs. If a song you really connect with also happens to be one of the most popular, listening to it in concert can be uncomfortable. It should be more meaningful – the band is playing it right in front of you, as if for you personally. It ends up being less meaningful, though, because it is also the moment all the casual fans come out of the woodwork, pounding their fists, belting the chorus, pretending they know the same song you do. This interpretation is largely unfair, of course, and reeks of music snobbery, but that doesn’t diminish the feeling that you’ve been robbed.

This happened with “The Middle.” “The Middle” had been my England anthem – the song I’d listen after every unsatisfying Tube ride back to Mile End. It was driving, empowering, and unapologetic. It made it ok to be sincere.



Considering this, I was bound to be disappointed when “The Middle” was the final song. The posers who’d come to hear Bleed American finally got a track to scream along to. (It was only the second Bleed American song of the night.) I took solace in the fact that the band did not follow up with a Matchbox Twenty cover, which the most vocal “Middle” enthusiasts surely would have loved...

Overall

The concert cannot and should not be judged by my biased reaction to the final song. It was an excellent show, far harder than anticipated, and exactly what I needed on a stressful Halloween night.

Grade: A-