In a normal year, my wife and I would go to 5-10 live concerts. Not only it’s something that we love and do, but also something that we can hardly live without. It’s not a huge streatch to say that last year sucked in this regard. I recognize that we are very fortunate to have “live concerts” as one of the biggest dissapointments of 2020.

Anyway, as vaccination rates soared in Washington state in general and in our counties in particular, many restrictions on public events were lifted. Now sitting at about 80% of the population fully vaccinated, it seemed like as good time as any to get back to live music (and other events, eventually).

As soon as I got a chance, I got tickets to a few concerts; In a way, I overcorrected for the entire year without live music, and got tickets to four shows happening in a span of a month. Two down, two more to go.

Hella Mega Tour

Green Day is one of my all-time favorite bands. “Wake Me Up When September Ends” is one of my all-time favorite songs. Fall Out Boy is one of my other all-time favorites. Naturally, they were on a must-see list for a while, but circumstances were never in my favor. Until this September.

Hella Mega Tour was supposed to stop by in Seattle in July 2020. Obviously, it was postponed and later rescheduled, and until the very day of the show, I wasn’t sure it won’t be postponed again (with Delta variant and all).

The show opened with Weezer set. I’m not a fan, but there are a couple of songs that I like.

Fall Out Boy

Fall Out Boy is a different story. We’ve seen them in concert in 2018, and it was awesome. I really like that not only they’re good at music but they also stand for what’s right.

Last time, I was a little bit surprised by how the band sounded at Key Arena. The sound was a bit weird, somewhat off. I’ve written it off as a poor seats issue: our seats were to the side of the stage and quite far from it, so it’s possible that the sound wasn’t off and it were our seats to blame.

I guess I was wrong. The difference is sound between the 2018 concert and this one was so drastic that it’s evident: last time the sound was off indeed.

Not sure if this fact is interesting, but when I illegally acquired an iTunes account in 2008 (I was in Russia back then, and iTunes didn’t work there), the first album I bought was FOB’s “Infinity on High”. The second one was “All-American Rejects”, but they are out of scope for this post.

Green Day

Finally, Green Day. It’s safe to say that they are my favorite band right now. I missed their show in Seattle in 2018 and this time I was set on actually making it to see them in concert.

Lindsey Stirling

Lindsey Stirling holds a special place in my heart. Her music is pearcing yet gentle and energetic at the same time. I’ve seen her perform with Evanesence a couple of years ago, and absolutely loved her sincerity, her ability to be openly vulnarable, yet strong and sweet and wise and positive.

Bonus

Here’s a 11-minute video with all four performances. Hope it gives you some idea of what it felt like to be there. If the video doesn’t work as expected, try pausing and unpausing it; I’m trying something and this something is not working rougly 50% of the time 🤷

(video temporaily unavailable)