Jimmy Eat World Announce Tour Dates with Foo Fighters!

Jimmy Eat World will support Foo Fighters on a run of 2008 US tour dates! Details are as follows. All shows are on sale now:
January 16th – Miami, FL – Bank Atlantic Arena
January 17th – Orlando, FL – Amway Arena
January 19th – Birmingham, AL – BJCC Arena
January 20th – Pensacola, FL – Pensacola Civic Center
January 22nd – Houston, TX – Toyota Center
January 23rd – Dallas, TX – American Airlines Center
January 25th – Memphis, TN – FedEx Forum

And added bonus is Against Me! opening the Foos North American dates!!!

Not much to report on Day #4 which was a rest day since I would be taking the 6 hour Amtrak from St. Louis to Chicago. I took 4 NyQuil LiquidGels so I could pass out but ugh, I couldn't! The train was full but thankfully they put us in business class seats. Due to waiting for a freight train going 0.000000000001 mph to pass, I didn't get into Chicago until 1.5 hours later than scheduled. BLAH. Met up with billy_ and Alex. We ate at some nearby 24 hour diner that serves a banana with every meal. For some reason I was the only one who got the banana. Also got stuff from Walgreens.

( Why Lollapalooza Kicks Coachella's Ass )

( Why It Doesn't )


2007 Lollapalooza Day 1

The Fratellis. We took the bus to downtown Chicago which turned out to be a baaad idea. Due to the frequent stops to load up too many passengers and heavy traffic, we got to Grant Park way later than scheduled. Wish we took the Red Line train instead!! It took us forever to pick up our passes because they were at the Media Check-In Tent which was ALL THE WAY on the southend of Grant Park. On our way, we did hear The Fratellis do what I suspect was their last song Chelsea's Dagger. Not too heartbroken I missed them. Already seen them three times this year and I'm pretty maxed out. Next album?

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. The Polyphonic Spree. We walked around picking up free crap along the way. Decided what the heck, we'll check out Ted Leo. Poor dude fell on his ass on the first or second song! After he finished, he said "Thanks guys!" We were getting hungry so we decided to utilize the in-and-out privileges to eat at a nearby Thai place knowing we'd miss The Polyphonic Spree. Stopped by the nearby hostel to buy a visitors CTA pass, which they were out of. Walked to the Chicago Cultural Center, enjoyed the A/C and exhibits (sadly no photos allowed) and bought a visitor's pass. Stopped by Walgreens to pick up more stuff.

Against Me! Don't even dare talk shit about this band. Or else! I was listening to New Wave on my iPod and gosh darnit I really liked it. The crowd wasn't as spirited as Coachella. Surprisingly hardly any moshing or crowd surfing. Alex conjectured being on concrete maybe had something to do with it--which is strange since this is Grant Park. Looking forward to seeing them again at LA Invasion at Home Depot Center where I saw them two years ago!

The Rapture. While waiting for the The Rapture underneath some trees on some elevated spot (woot!), we could hear M.I.A. on the Bud Stage. It didn't sound too good where we were. Unfortunately don't recall too much about The Rapture's set. It didn't seem as fun as their Coachella set to me but maybe daylight had something to do with it. There was a green crane behind us. Some stupid kids thought it'd be cool to get on it and jump up and down shaking the whole thing.

Blonde Redhead. The Black Keys. We decided to utilize our in-and-out privileges for dinner. Unfortunately so did a lot of the people at the place we ended up. The chicken ceasar salad wasn't very good and service was slow. Line at the bathroom was way long. There were two girls there who changed into their robot-inspired get-ups for Daft Punk.

LCD Soundsystem. Came back and caught, I guess, two songs. At the end, James Murphy says "go over there" pointing to the Daft Punk stage. So we did.

Daft Punk. Decided to break from routine and tried to get closer to the stage. Bad mistake, bad mistake! It got super crowded not too far from the soundboard so we backtracked and ended way in the back somewhere. Seems like everyone has raved about Daft Punk at Coachella and the LA Sports Arena; but me...meh, wasn't feeling it. Neither was Alex. I really wanted to see a real band that singed and played instruments. So we decided to catch the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!/Cold War Kids/Elvis Perkins in Dearland after-fest show at the Metro. Off to the Red Line station...

Day 3 presented a conflict between The Mojave Tent (The Kooks, CSS, Klaxons) versus The Outdoor Theatre (Mando Diao, Kaiser Chiefs, Placebo). In the end I was won out by the argument that Placebo doesn't play the U.S. that much and CSS and The Klaxons will be back in LA eventually.

The Kooks. Due to yet another one-hour wait for food at another fine Indio restaurant establishment, we weren't able to make it in time for Mando Diao at 2:15pm. So after scrounging through trash bins for our daily bottle water supply, we headed over to the Mojave Tent where we caught two songs by Tapes 'n Tapes who sounded OK but nothing too memorable. Then we moved in closer (maybe 6 rows back?) for The Kooks who were surprisingly entertaining. But wow, was it steamy hot in there.

Against Me! So we give up seeing Explosions in the Sky and Rodrigo y Gabriela to position ourselves better for Kaiser Chiefs and Placebo. Not that I hate Against Me! I saw them open up for Jimmy Eat World and Green Day back on October 8, 2005 and they weren't bad. The crowd was apathetic towards them back then. But on this day, their fans definitely showed up--starting a mosh pit and spontaneously crowd surfing, to my dismay using my shoulders to climb on top :\  My friend Alex had enough and left for safer grounds which left Keith and I to fend for ourselves. I was hoping some of the people at the rail would be leaving after Against Me! But ugh...hardly anyone left. Keith was able to get a rail spot on the left side facing the stage so I followed. I talked to the middle-aged guy next to me whom I realized I see at a lot of local LA shows as he was talking about shows I too had attended. I guess the sunglasses and hat disguised him (and me).

Kaiser Chiefs. Fun show, from certain angles Ricky Wilson sorta looked like a more energetic Josh Homme. He did ANYTHING to entertain the crowd like climbing the scaffold and stagediving. But the crowd seemed meh to me. I guess they were waiting for Placebo? I managed to get their setlist, but gave it to Keith since he gave me The Fratellis setlist and was probably the bigger KC fan. Oh, some photographer stood on the bench attached to the barrier for a few songs thereby obstructing people's views. When he left, middle fingers were thrown and certain un-nice words were said.

Placebo. I know maybe a handful of Placebo songs, but wow they were awesome live. Something about Brian Molko's voice and darkness blanketing the stage. I was enjoying the show so much I even made space for this short girl who had been trying to squeeze onto the rail. Props to having a female roadie (I think she was Brian's guitar tech). They ended with a nice cover of the Kate Bush classic "Running Up That Hill." After Placebo, everyone was crowding in trying to get closer to the stage...for Air?!?! Two French guys?? We made a speedy exit by jumping the barrier and meeting Alex on the outside. I suck at jumping over barriers, BTW.

The Teddybears. Teddy bears are normally cute, but these were creepy. They had an interesting video on the projection screen which consisted of Teddybear heads inserted into different movies such as A Clockwork Orange, Taxi, Scarface while a different rapper or singer came out for each song. I think there were a couple guys with big Teddybear heads on playing guitar and bass but we were so far in the back we couldn't see them clearly. It looked pretty fun but we were swept into RATM fever and left after 5 songs to find a place to watch Rage.

Rage Against the Machine. I knew I wanted to be far away from the "action." It's one thing to experience it with 2200 other guys at the Wiltern, but 60,000 with the real deal? No way!!! We ended maybe 20 yards from the soundboard which meant we couldn't see the stage so we relied on the big screens. People in our section were pretty cool except this drunk-off-his-ass guy who kept falling over everyone pissing everyone off. I had enough and out of character screamed at the guy. He tried apologizing to me but he was so drunk he kept apologizing to someone else. Eventually his friends escorted him out before a fight would erupt.

At the end of "Renegades of Funk," we thought it amusing Zack was doing the "rerh rerh rerh rerhh rerhh" part (I thought it was suppose to be Tom Morello's guitar!) while Tim C sang "we're the renegades of funk!, we're the renegades of funk!!" The sound during RATM sucked!!!! It sounded extremely muffled and wasn't even loud enough which seemed weird when I recalled how loud JAMC and RHCP were. People were even screaming "LOUDER!" So the experience wasn't as epic as it should have been.