My Chemical Romance announced a reunion tour back in 2019. ❤ The closest they'd come to Oklahoma was Dallas, TX. Only a short drive away! Lacey and I knew we had to go. Lacey waited by her laptop hours before tickets went on sale in hopes of getting a pair... and we did!! They were the worst overpriced seats; the nosebleed section of the gigantic arena, BUT we got tickets!!! 😁 Then the concert was postponed in 2020... and again 2021. I was afraid that they'd just cancel and refund everyone. But then they announced the tour will be starting in 2022 with new dates. And guess what?? One of the newly added dates, the first date of the North American tour actually, would be in Oklahoma City at the Paycom arena. Oh boy were we excited!!! So excited that I bought us matching shirts and painted the band's logo on the back. ❤❤❤❤ Lacey once again waited hours by her laptop, counting down the minutes until tickets went on sale. She got us really good seats at a reasonable price. YAY! It was official, time to grab our eye liner because we'd be seeing our favorite emo band in concert twice!
The opening band at the OKC concert was Dilly Dally, a terrible band that no one liked. Lacey said they were okay but she is just very generous. It was a group of women who screamed sounds and pretended they knew how to play their instruments. The second act was Coheed and Cambria. Wes loves them and was jealous I'd be getting to see them. I vaguely remembered hearing them on the radio in the mid-2000s but didn't know any of their songs. Turns out, they're amazing!! 🎸The lead singer had a ton of rad guitar solos. They also had a spinning thing on the drum set that projected lasers!
After a VERY long wait accompanied by what sounded like a low-flying helicopter, but was supposed to be "the swarm", My Chemical Romance finally came on. 🎤They sounded exactly as I remembered from our college emo days. They were loud, manic, and passionate. I have never felt such a sense of community at a concert before. I know music speaks to a lot of people but I, personally, have never really felt a deep visiceral connection to a set of lyrics. Well, that changed at the concert. I felt all the feels! I truly felt a sense of oneness as we all sang along. 🎶 It was so extremely powerful hearing an entire arena singing "we'll carry on," and declaring that we are "awake and unafraid." 💀 It was definitely an experience I will never forget. Their set was mostly songs from the Danger Days album, which was a little odd since most of the hits were off of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and The Black Parade. It was their first show so the sound could have been better but I didn't notice until Lacey & I were talking about it on the way home. If I had one complaint, it would be that the lead singer relied too much on the distortion machine, but he did tell us that he was having vocal problems that evening.
A month later, Lacey and I were in the American Airlines arena in Dallas, TX for show number two. We didn't get any merchandise at the OKC show because the line was miles long and the t-shirt designs frankly weren't that cool. 😕 We decided that we should buy something from the Dallas concert since we've been to two shows (what kind of fans would we be without t-shirts?) We decided to skip the opening bands to get dinner from the concession stands and wait it out in the extremely long merch line. I wanted a shirt with the tour dates on it but the only design I liked didn't have tour dates. 😑 The Paycom arena had some neat balloon and chalk art for the band (that we sadly didn't see until on Instagram the next day) so we decided to walk around the American Airlines arena in search of art. There was none. We made it back to our seats to see the last few songs of the second act, Midtown. They were decent.
My Chemical Romance came on and played a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SHOW than the one we saw in Oklahoma City. They played almost twice as many songs and mostly from the Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and The Black Parade albums. The set list seemed to have an order to it. It felt like they were testing out songs to play at the OKC show and were much more refined, and less chaotic this time around. They sounded 100x times better! I guess they had plenty of practice between August 20th and September 28th. The best part was that the lead singer let go of his reliance on the distortion machine. The tradeoff was that this concert felt more robotic and as if the band was at work. The OKC show felt more intimate because they'd stop every few songs and talk to us or the lead singer would tell a personal story. The Dallas show was all business, song after song with no breaks. It didn't have the same energy or sense of community as the OKC show did. I still felt moved as we all sung along but it was a different vibe. It was so strange to see the same band play two entirely different shows on the same tour, and only one month apart. I'm not sure which experience I enjoyed more. Now that Lacey and I have seen AFI and My Chemical Romance, we just need to see The Used and we'll have the trifecta of emo under our belts.
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