My trip to see Cobra Starship, 3OH!3, Travie McCoy (of Gym Class Heroes fame), and I Fight Dragons began much like my visit to the 930 Club over a year earlier to see the Ting Tings: my dad dropped my friend and I off at the end of the block, which just so happened to be the end of the line to get in. We hopped out and got in line, admiring the tour buses parked right next to us. Those weren’t there for The Ting Tings and Hottub.
Since it was the mid-May, I decided to leave my sweatshirt in the car, and although it was mid-May, within minutes, I was shivering and my friend was getting scared for me. Just like at Owl City, except this time, there wasn’t a nice area for me to run laps in to warm up.
When we got into the club, we were not offered cupcakes, so my bitter grudge against all my friends who have been served cupcakes at the 930 Club is now stronger than ever. My friend grabbed us a spot about five people from the stage while I hit the merch stands. Then I ducked into the Little Mermaid’s room and did not encounter any drunk birthday girls. Pity.
One of the reasons my friend and I had spent the past year desperately dreaming of attending a Cobra Starship concert was because we figured that unlike many crowds we’ve encountered, Cobra fans would know how to party. A girl standing behind us confirmed these assumptions when she started loudly explaining to her companion that she can’t stop herself from dancing whenever she heard something with a beat. She then went from cool-party-girl to crazy-party-girl when she started describing how her behavior on a camping trip earned her the moniker Drinks With Wolves. Then she went from crazy-party-girl to flat-out-crazy when she started talking about a grisly murder scene. Fun crowd.
(Click on images to admire them in full-screen splendor.)
I had told Brittany about how I Fight Dragons play music on their Gameboys, so when they came on, we were more psyched to see them than most of the crowd was. But the most psyched person in the club appeared to be the girl next to us, who sang along to every word of every song. Like with the Paper Route fans, I sang along to the choruses and felt unworthy of being in her presence.
Sadly, I Fight Dragons was not dressed like superheroes or video game characters, as they are in many performances I saw videos of online. Most of them wore ordinary clothes, like button-down plaid shirts. Two notable exceptions were their token sexy girl, a cute redhead in a top that bared quite a bit of midriff. Hey, I guess if you’re going to have a girl in your nerd-rock band, you might as well take advantage of all her abilities.
Though she was probably a favorite with the men in the audience, my favorite member was the man in charge of their NES Command Center. He was dressed in a shiny jacket and sunglasses that looked like they could have come from a Neo Halloween costume, and I mean that in the best way possible. But even cooler than the way he looked like he’d escaped from the Matrix was his Command Center. It looked as though the band found Doc Ock’s dead body, removed the human body parts, then put their instruments on the ends of his tentacles to store them while they played other ones. It looked really sweet.
I Fight Dragons played every song on their EP Cool is Just a Number, then demonstrated how their chiptune instruments work to prove they really were playing them live. The lead singer played one, and the girl played her supercool glove.
I liked the chiptune part of their act, but I had trouble dancing to their songs. They just didn’t quite work for jumping or dancing. I didn’t feel too bad about my inability to dance to them, though, because I noticed that the self-proclaimed unstoppable dancer, Drinks With Wolves, was not dancing at all.
After I Fight Dragons’ set was over and they told us we could meet them at the merch stand after the show, they started setting up for Travie McCoy. They took down the TV screens I couldn’t really see that probably showed videogame characters fighting dragons. Travie’s set consisted most notably of a big picture of his album art and a microphone stand that lit up. Ooooh...
Travie came out carrying three big, white balloons that looked really incredibly bright under the spotlight. He sang a bunch of songs whose names I don’t remember because the only song he’s released so far under his solo project is “Billionaire.” I expected his entire set to be him and an acoustic guitar or ukulele, playing cute little songs like “Billionaire,” but he had a drummer and a DJ with him. I think he introduced both of them as members of Gym Class Heroes, but don’t quote me on that. His music was more hip-hop-leaning than I expected based on “Billionaire,” and they sounded quite a bit like... Gym Class Heroes songs. I have no idea why he didn’t just bring the full band with him and release these songs as a new GCH album. I’ll have to investigate.
Not to brag or anything, but after playing two or three songs, Travie said that even though he’d only played a few songs, we had already made this the best show on the tour. Not to totally shove it in your faces, but he said he loved how much energy we had even though we had never heard any of these songs before. Not to say we’re way cooler than all the other cities, but he pretty much loved us... Or was a really good liar.
Near the end of the set, Travie sang “Billionaire.” But he didn’t really sing it. The DJ played the song with Travie’s recorded vocals while Travie sporadically sang and rapped and talked to the crowd. It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard, but I was quite looking forward to seeing him sing it with his acoustic guitar and/or ukulele...
Oh, and as if the color-changing light-up mic stand wasn't enough, the tips of the drumsticks lit up too.
After Travie’s set ended, there was a mid-size surge toward the stage, presumably so everyone could get close enough to kiss Gabe Saporta’s awesome ass (and smile while doing so). Thus, my friend and I went from being five people away from the stage to nine people away without actually losing any ground. Isn’t it amazing how that happens?
That’s not to say we didn’t fight to hold our ground. I tried my best to shift my weight around so one surging battalion would be stopped just behind us. After a few minutes, their front lines broke through, but I tried to angle myself to cut them off and stop them there.
This silent battle was made all the more passive-aggressive by the fact that they were playing Ke$ha and Jay Sean, so everyone was kind of dancing while trying to save their energy for Cobra’s set. I got in a long skirmish with the battalion’s second line in which he would move so that his shoulder was in front of mine and he could slip through, then I would turn and dance so that my shoulder was back in front of his and he was effectively trapped behind me. The Battle of the Shoulders continued for the majority of “Tik Tok” and some of the next song. After a while, he relented and I suffered an attack from the rear. Specifically, his female friend pressed herself right up against my rear.
When faced with a girl trying to push you around by shoving her boobs into your back, you have a few options: move forward and shove your boobs into someone else’s back, setting off an unstoppable domino effect, or hold your ground and wait until she becomes uncomfortable enough to relent. Although I was internally shrieking “THIS CHICK’S BOOBS ARE ALL UP ON ME, AND I AM SO HETEROSEXUAL IT’S UNCOMFORTABLE,” I could not let her win this power play. If she wanted to stand awkwardly close to me, she would have to suffer the awkward consequences.
After several of the least comfortable minutes of my life, she let up a little, and I no longer felt like I was being anal-raped. Her male friend (the one I engaged in the Battle of the Shoulders with) then began doing some weird hand movements directly above my shoulder that didn't quite touch me but sort of tickled. He then began running his hands through my ponytail, but since my hair fortunately does not have nerve endings, I could not tell whether he was actually touching my hair or just coming very close to it. His awkward female friend mimicked his hand movements, and I just smiled and laughed uncomfortably, and tried to see what they were doing without making eye contact.
After several minutes of waiting for Cobra to come on, the troops got restless, and a second surge occurred. The enemy battalion charged past us, and my friend and I were pressed so tightly between the new people next to us that I was able to relax my legs because I no longer needed them to hold me upright. It was pretty cool, as far as uncomfortable and disturbing experiences go.
When Cobra Starship finally came on stage to put us out of our misery, the entire crowd in front of me did a little mini-surge, leaving me with almost a foot of empty space on each side of me, which, let me tell you, is the most space I have ever had in the middle of the crowd in a seatless venue.
It soon turned out, however, that we were going to need all the space we could get because the guy behind me somehow lost his glasses to the small-objects-eating monster known as the dance floor. Turns out, I was pretty lucky when my glasses got knocked off during Unicorn Kid’s set at Rock n Roll Hotel and only had to suffer about ten seconds of blind panic before finding them. This poor guy spent at least three minutes looking for his. So many people were trying to help him look for them, I almost thought Gabe would pause before the next songs and ask us what was going on. He didn’t, though, plowing through the end of opening mosh-fest “The City Is at War” straight on to the even more moshable “Pete Wentz Is the Only Reason We’re Famous.” Really, of all the times you don’t want people jumping up and down...
I thought about telling the guy how I lost my glasses like that at Unicorn Kid’s show, but it didn’t seem like an entirely appropriate thing to say while he was scouring the floor with only the light of his cell phone to guide him. Then after he finally recovered his glasses, I decided the music was too loud to make it worth the effort of shouting.
Cobra followed “Pete Wentz” with “My Move Are White [White Hot, That Is],” and I was glad I could dance to it after having to refrain from jumping during the previous songs for fear of smashing anyone’s glasses.
And, you know, I still hate to brag, but I have to tell you about how Gabe told us that the 930 Club is his favorite venue. He said they’ve played there like 14 times before, which I found hard to believe since the only times I recall Cobra coming to the area in the past year, they played Merriweather Post Pavilion twice and Black Cat once. Regardless, Gabe said this was the first show on the tour to sell out, another reason he loves us.
Between songs, someone threw some Pink Floyd boxers at Gabe.
“Pink Floyd boxers!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been looking for these for months! I’m going to wear them every day, okay?... I’ll wear them over my tighty whities every day.”
omgheisthecutest.
After that, Gabe asked who had seen Cobra Starship before. That cheer was loud enough to make me feel like a loser for never having seen them before, but when he asked who was seeing them for the first time, that cheer was even bigger. I wonder if my fellow Cobra-novices were as surprised as I was about the awkward, passive-aggressive between-set surges toward the stage.
In a move that made me understand why Gabe and William Beckett are buddies, Gabe then welcomed us to the club, teaching us the Cobra hand sign: two fingers... well, actually, I’ll let you go to a concert and learn it for yourself. (Or check out the Too Fast for Love tour t-shirts, which have a picture of it. Bet you can’t figure out which hand symbol goes with Cobra and which goes with 3OH!3.)
“Once you’re a cobra,” Gabe told us, in probably the most inspiring little speech I have ever heard at a concert, “you’re a COBRA FOR LIFE!!!” *insert hand symbols and cheering here*
Gabe then introduced William Beckett of The Academy Is... and Maja Ivarsson of The Sounds. I kind of thought they were actually going to come onstage until he announced Samuel L. Jackson's name. I mean, “Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)” is an awesome song, but bringing Samuel L. Jackson on tour with you just seems a bit excessive.
Neither Jackson nor Beckett and Ivarsson were there, but Cobra Starship did play “Snakes on a Plane.” Gabe invited a member of the audience onstage with him to perform the rap part. A boy named Josh volunteered, and Gabe seemed especially excited to have a guy take a shot at it.
“Normally girls want to do it,” he explained, “but let’s get some testosterone up here!”
Based on Josh’s initial performance, it seemed like letting boys do it might not be the best idea: Gabe helped lead Josh into the rap section, but Josh started to sing the beginning of the song. Then Gabe told him to do the rap and led him in again... and Josh sang the beginning of the song. In as friendly a manner as possible, Gabe warned Josh that if he didn’t get it right soon, he’d have to get off the stage. The third time, Gabe helped him by starting to do the rap with him, and the third time was the charm: Josh made it through the entire rap with great timing and rhyming skills.
“See? He knew it all along,” Gabe said at the end, looking proud and impressed. “He was just nervous.”
“I’d be nervous,” a member of the band whose name I don’t know because I only know Gabe and Victoria’s names, said, “getting up here in front of all these people.”
The other members of the bands whose names I don’t know agreed.
Josh got down off the stage, and Gabe finished up the song.
After playing a couple more songs, Gabe asked if there was any Latin blood in the audience. Either I failed to notice that most of the audience was Hispanic, or Latin blood gives people the ability to cheer really, really loudly. Either way, I was impressed.
Gabe then explained that Cobra Starship is all about mixing things that aren’t normally mixed. For example, their next song had some nice Latin music for the ladies to dance to, then some hard rocking for the guys. That song, of course, was “Smile for the Paparazzi.”
That brings me to the coolest thing about Cobra Starship’s set (besides Gabe and his love of Pink Floyd boxers): the set. As in the stage and backdrop. While I Fight Dragons had opted for the classic black-backdrop look and Travie had gone with the increasingly-popular gigantic-album-art, Cobra Starship’s set was performed in front of thousands of lights. Lights that changed color to show pictures of dancing girls and spell words and do something involving X’s and O’s during “Wet Hot American Summer” that I totally did not understand.
For the dancing parts of “Smile for the Paparazzi,” Gabe sang in front of a backdrop of twinkling stars. Then for the rocking parts, the word “POP” flashed on the screen as Gabe and the crowd chanted “Pop-pop-pop-pop-paparazzi.” It was pretty freaking sweet. In fact, when combined with Gabe’s almost-unmatched charisma (William Beckett is still the only performer I’ve seen who can compete with his stage presence), the flashy backdrop made Cobra Starship’s set the greatest live set I have ever seen.
The set sort of ended with “Hot Mess,” in which the backdrop showed the silhouettes of dancing girls, which seemed rather unnecessary. I mean, the club was already packed with teenage girls sweating through their tank tops (but somehow never sweating off their liquid eyeliner - I will never understand how that works). How much more hot and messy can you get?
At the end of the song, a rainbow of balloons fell from the ceiling. It seemed like a fitting end to the set, but since it’s not proper for opening bands to demand encores, the set went on.
Gabe told us about how, somehow, Cobra Starship had a hit on the radio last summer. This perfect introduction to “Good Girls Go Bad” led into... “Guilty Pleasure.” Because, Gabe explained, before that, everyone knew why Cobra Starship was there: “I came here to make you dance tonight...”
After snubbing “Good Girls Go Bad” for “Guilty Pleasure,” I expected Cobra Starship to send a message to any audience members who only care about their hit single that these concerts aren’t for them by refusing to play “Good Girls Go Bad.” But turns out, Cobra Starship aren’t as bitter about fair-weather fans as I thought: they played “Good Girls Go Bad” as their final song.
I also expected them to play Leighton Meester’s part on a laptop a la what-Owl-City-did-for-“Saltwater-Room”-before-Breanne-started-touring-with-him, but instead, Victoria sang Leighton Meester’s part. And unless they secretly were playing Leighton off a laptop, I must say, Victoria sounded really good.
Fun fact: Did you know Victoria directed an iPod commerical? Or that she’s Paul McCartney’s ex-fiancée’s niece? I love Wikipedia.
At the end of the song, to signify the real end of the set, a rainbow of confetti fell from the ceiling. This might have been cooler than the balloons if the majority of the audience hadn’t been wearing tank tops that showed quite a bit of skin. Really sweaty skin. The confetti landed on everyone’s shoulders and chests, became saturated with sweat, shriveled up, and died. It was a horrible sight.
Although I was a bit too far from the stage for the confetti to reach me, right after the band exited stage left, I got a good view of wet-confetti-covered girls as there was a mass exodus from the front rows. Apparently even though 3OH!3 was headlining, most girls didn’t really give a crap about them.
The mass exodus was rivaled in size only by a surge toward the stage even more massive than the pre-Cobra surge. Moving forward in the pre-Cobra surge was like salmon swimming upstream into a brick wall. Moving forward in the post-Cobra surge was like salmon swimming upstream into a lake that actually has room for most of them. My friend and I might have been swept up in the current because I smiled at a guy who said something unintelligible to me that I now think was along the lines of “Want me to push you until you’re in the first row and I’m in the second?” Whether it was because of his plan to get us to the front or just the force of a crowd of crazed 3OH!3 fans, Brittany and I went from being nine people away from the stage to being five people away again. It was good to be back in front. At first, anyways.
Since my friend and I had no more control over where we ended up than two water molecules have when they’re carried to shore by a wave (and unlike those water molecules, we didn’t even have hydrogen bonds to help hold us together), we got separated by a few people. I was okay with this since I knew where she was, but I think she tried to bring me up to the third row with her, but her plans were thwarted by a girl with shoulders of steel. I wish I’d had her on my side during the pre-Cobra surge.
Although we weren’t quite next to each other, we were both quite close to a group of girls that found an extraordinarily large beige bra on the floor. Apparently someone had attempted to throw it at Gabe during Cobra Starship’s set, but the bra hadn’t quite made it all the way to the stage. These resourceful girls knew better than to let a perfectly good bra that was much too large for any of them them go to waste, so they borrowed a Sharpie from a man nearby and wrote all their names and phone numbers on it so they could throw it at 3OH!3.
3OH!3 came onstage against an American flag backdrop that had their name (literally) written all over it. It looked cool, but it couldn’t compete with Cobra Starship’s fancy lights. What with the lackluster set and the way Cobra had balloons, confetti, and more fans, I put 2 and 2 together and concluded that Cobra were supposed to be the real headliners.
3OH!3 began their set with “Starstrukk,” sans Katy Perry, unfortunately. They followed it with “My First Kiss” (sans Ke$ha, less unfortunately) and “I’m Not Your Boyfriend, Baby.” I considered this to be a strong beginning, since it consisted of almost all their songs that I actually like.
A girl a few people in front of me made a t-shirt that said “I’m Not Your Boyfriend, Baby.” She held it up during that entire song so the guys in the band could see it (and us folks behind her couldn’t see the guys in the band - gee, thanks). At the end of the song, the cute one with short hair - the general consensus on GoogleImages is that he’s Sean Foreman - read the shirt.
“Yeah, you’re not my boyfriend!” he told her. “You don’t even look like a boy!”
Despite his acknowledgement of her shirt, the girl still felt the need to hold it in the air for him to see it for the first couple minutes of the next song. This just made us folks behind her want to punch her in the back of the head even more than we did before.
During the next song, which I didn’t like enough to remember the name of, the girls with the bra decided to throw it. Sean caught it while singing, and without missing a beat (literally), he tossed it right back into the audience. The man who had loaned the girls the Sharpie caught it and tossed it back to them. In that moment, I decided that, although I’m still not crazy about most of 3OH!3’s songs, I have so much respect for Sean Foreman.
For me, the bra-tossing was definitely the highlight of 3OH!3’s set. Although I can’t say I enjoyed the set overall, it taught me a lot about crowd dynamics. To extend the ocean metaphor I used earlier, a whirlpool formed right next to me.
So it was really just an ordinary mosh pit, but when all of a sudden, the relatively calm group of guys standing to your left start running into each other and you try to move to the right as far as you can to get away from the rapidly-expanding circle, it sure feels like being sucked into a whirlpool.
For most of the beginning of the set, I had been trying to avoid the rather large guy next to me, who kept jumping up and down and fist-pumping dangerously close to my face. I tried my best to stay away from him, lest my glasses meet the same fate as those of the guy who was behind me (who, by the way, I never got to bond with over our shared lost-glasses experiences before the tide of people swept me away). One time, the guy next to me even knocked my glasses off. I quickly caught them in mid-air, then held them in my hand for the rest of the song.
When the mosh pit appeared next to me, I was initially glad he now had a more appropriate place to release his fist-pumping energy. Unfortunately, most pits don’t have walls for moshers to bounce off when they get to the edges. Well, they kind of do have walls. They’re called the people standing next to the mosh pit. AKA me.
I was reminded of the vastly underappreciated Son of Dork song “Murdered in the Mosh.” I would just like to warn you that you don’t have to be a poser who claims to like Jane’s Addiction but is actually a Backstreet Boys fan to suffer such a horrible fate. After about three guys bodyslammed me then bounced back into the pit, I was convinced that my life would end that way.
One girl in the same situation as me finally had enough of being pushed around, so she barreled into the mosh pit and started pushing back. She was kind of my hero. She also made me realize the silver lining of being near a mosh pit: if any jerks who fought their way in front of you show up in the mosh, you have the perfect passive aggressive excuse to get revenge. Since I managed to eventually escape the edge of this mosh pit, I think my demise will actually occur in a future mosh pit, doing just that.
As great as it was to be within ten feet of 3OH!3, almost close enough to touch them (and much closer when they actually reached into the audience and everyone surged forward to touch them), I really felt like the set went on a bit too long. I can really only stand being pushed around and stepped on while listening to them announce their plans for a house party in their house. (Really? You’re not going to rent a hotel ballroom for that?)
While we're on the subject of their song "House Party," I would like to note that repeatedly exclaiming “[screw] the club” while performing in a club sends mixed messages. Unless they actually meant “[have sexual intercourse with] the club,” in which case I am immensely glad no one attempted to do so.
By the end of the set, I thoroughly wished I had followed the legions of Cobra Starship fans who left after Cobra’s set. It wasn’t that 3OH!3’s music was that bad. I wasn’t nearly as worried about my ears bleeding as I was about my toes, nose, and internal organs. But then again, it didn’t help that 3OH!3 ended their set with their most insufferable song, “Chokechain.”
Although I desperately hoped that they would end on a low note and leave the stage without an encore, alas, no closing band can ever go without an encore these days. 3OH!3’s performance had none of the balloons or confetti of Cobra’s, further proof that I should have gotten out while I still could. They played two songs for their encore, one of which I didn’t recognize. The second was “Don’t Trust Me,” and as much as I like that song, I didn’t think it was worth being treated like the wall of a moonbounce just to hear that Sean’s a vegetarian.
After 3OH!3’s set ended, my friend and I hit up the free ice water at the bar, then headed back to I Fight Dragons and Travie’s merch table corner because Travie said he’d be there after he put on his jammies. (Seriously.)
Travie had evidently already hit the hay (er, mattress on the bus) by the time the show ended, but several members of I Fight Dragons were there, signing CDs and shirts. We realized when we got there that the members of I Fight Dragons emulate their superhero role models in an unfortunate way: although they may be Superman onstage, offstage they make a pretty convincing Clark Kent.
We each bought a copy of their EP to get them to sign, then awkwardly smiled at their bassist for a bit too long, afraid to ask him if he was really their bassist or just an ordinary guy who looked an awful lot like their bassist. Then we retreated to a nearby trash can to take the packaging off the EPs so we could actually get them to sign them. We decided we would approach the ones who were already signing things since we knew they had to be in the band.
We got their lead singer and token sexy girl to sign the EPs first, then moved on to the guy we’d awkwardly smiled at, who really was their bassist. I realized that although they wear normal-looking clothes, each had a colored patch somewhere on his or her outfit that contained his or her elemental power symbol, or something like that. Very Power Rangers chic.
Armed with the ability to identify the bandmates by closing examining their outfits (or just seeing who was signing autographs), we doubled back onto the floor of the club to get another member’s autograph. As a bouncer tried to escort us out, we got the cute drummer’s autograph. I finally worked up the nerve to start praising them as they signed, and he seemed genuinely grateful for my nervous gush of words about how really really good they were.
Since the bouncer wouldn’t let us back on the floor, we headed for the door, a bit disappointed to get all their signatures but one. Two guys standing by the door tried to sell us I Fight Dragons’ EPs, and we showed them we already had them.
“Awesome!” one said. “Did you get them signed?”
We showed him we were missing one signature.
“What?” he exclaimed. “You can’t miss one!” Then he called over their final member, the guy who looked like Neo playing music out of Doc Ock’s dead body thanks to a really strange glitch in the Matrix. He signed our EPs, and our concert experience was complete. All that was left was to face the annoyed wrath of my dad on the ride home, who hates how we’re always the last kids out of the club, and to marvel at the fact that we survived.
