April 6th saw myself and three friends head into the city for blink 182:
The Mark , Tom & Travis show.
The concert was held at
Melbourne park, in the
Rod Laver Arena.
The concert was originally scheduled for November of 2000, but one of the band members apparently came down with some sort of illness, and thus the remainder of their tour, including the Melbourne show/shows were pushed back to April of 2001.
My group had bought our $45 tickets before November, and were told to hang on to out tickets, so we could use them when they eventually got around to touring again. I'm not sure if that was such a good idea. Our seats were way up the back, basically the furthest from the stage. They were however dead on to the stage which mean that we could see all the antics of the boys once they started getting into it.
To my surprise ( mostly ), the average age of the fans would have to have been about 15 or 16, half of them looking as if they'd left home in one outfit, then peeled off a few layers on the way in.
The sound appeared to be quite good, which is something that I am always nervous about when going to listen to live music. I have heard enough distorted live music to last me a lifetime, so I was pleasantly surprised when the first band came on.
Motor Ace: I think someone asked me about these guys sometime in the last few weeks, and I had to admit that I was fairly ignorant of their work. I had heard some of their stuff before, but just hadn't realised who it was I was listening to. They sounded really good live, and played for about 45 minutes. Despite the fact that it was the first time I could put a name to the music, I recognised at least 4 songs that have been popular.
After a brief interlude, the next band came on stage, to the obvious approval of the fans.
Bodyjar: Bodyjar fall into the same listening category as Motor Ace for me, a few songs that I know, but don’t know the name of. These guys seemed really into the show, after a warm-up song or two they launched into a 5 or 6 song marathon of dancing around on stage, it was exhausting just looking at them.
The sound quality was a little worse for them, maybe just because they were playing a lot harder than Motor Ace were, either way, a little distortion didn't ruin an otherwise great performance.
After a much longer break, blink 182 came out to a huge roar from the crowd.
The group played for about an hour and a half, picking from at least 3 albums worth of material, and delighting the audience with their on stage antics. Even from the back row, the energy and enthusiasm were evident, and the pranks and jokes and even the introductions to the songs kept everyone entertained during the breaks.
The main problem I had with the concert was that I didn't know most of the songs that were played, some were intentionally aimed at the older fans, but they can hardly be blamed because some of the fans dont know the words.
Amusingly, they warned the crowd ahead of time that they would be going offstage, but demanded that instead of yelling out 'encore', we were to yell out 'Arseholes' ( 'assholes' for the Americans ).
It was during this encore that they finally played the song I had been hanging out to hear... 'Damnit'... the crowd went absolutely wild as they started into the song..
All in all, the concert went from 7:30 till about 11:00. It was open to all ages and that may have influenced the relatively early start.