Weekend Roundup: J'ason And MoogaBoo Do Cleveland
The first stop on the tour was picking up Moogaboo on Saturday afternoon and whisking us off on an "undisclosed road trip" for the day - which turned out to be Cleveland - since I scored us two tickets to see The Killers at the House Of Blues' Scene Pavillion. I had originally tried to get tickets to the Philadelphia show this coming Friday, but it was sold out. Luckily, Cleveland, which is much closer, was not.
We braved driving through a brief downpour, McDonald's food and a bird with good aim perched on the bridge we eventually parked under to get to the concert, and it was well worth it! Before the show, I even had two cups of beer (which is probably more than the total amount of beer I'd ever drank previously in my life).
Hot Hot Heat was the opening band, and the lead singer looked curiously like Barbra Streisand during, as Moogaboo perfeclty phrased it, "the 'Evergreen (Theme From A Star Is Born)' period." I think they might have sucked, but we were both tipsy and deep in throng of screaming kids (it was general admission), so we didn't really notice.
Once that band was done, we burrowed our way closer to the front. I had smuggled in my digital camera, after all. When Brandon Flowers and Co. took to the stage, the mass of people was all screams and arms waving around. They launched into the first three songs off Hot Fuss, then jumped around and did b-sides, new songs, rare songs and more from the album.
It was a really awesome show (and my 3rd one of theirs). The audience was belting out the lyrics, and it clearly felt like good music is back. The real revelation is that Moogaboo and I both agree: we'd totally do the drummer, Ronnie Vannucci!
After it was over, we hit some local gay bar called Bounce, which was pretty dismal, then bounced outta Cleveland around 2:30 a.m. After about 20 minutes on the road, we realized we were heading west toward Toledo, rather than back east toward Pennsylvania. We gave an emergency call to Shanaynay back in Cali, who attempted to Mapquest us back the other way.
When all was said and done (crappy truck stop food, losing our Turnpike ticket, me hallucinating while driving because I was so tired, dropping off Moogaboo), I pulled back up to my parents' house at 6 a.m. on Sunday morning. The sun was just coming up, and I was headed for bed.