The Elm Student Newspaper
Fall Out Boy Confuses D.C. Audience Member
Volume 80, Issue 25
May 1, 2009
By Natalie Butz
News Editor
Fall Out Boy is currently on tour supporting their fifth album “Folie a Deux”.
Last Saturday, they performed at Merriweather Post Pavilion to the biggest audience they’ve had yet on their “Believers Never Die” Tour. But the manic flip-flopping of the show’s themes paired with Wentz’s non-sequiturs made the experience feel like a patchwork performance offered at a recession-friendly price.
For its first song, Fall Out Boy assumed the stage wearing wigs, business suits and facial lacerations, flanked by storm troopers in full riot gear.
The ‘wtf’ feeling was quickly replaced by the want to dance to a familiar beat, but came back every time a closeup was shown on the monitor of a band member’s face. Maybe sensing the confusion, bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz explained the broken noses and corporate clothes as the band’s attack on CEO’s remaining unaffected by the recession while thousands of Americans were losing their jobs.
If the first two songs had the audience confused, they were even more baffled when the band returned from its first costume change in military jackets, changing the theme without warning or explanation. Then themes dissolved all together and with them, all threads of continuity after the next song when FOB had another costume change and returned in street clothes.
If it was the wish of media darling Wentz to “remove himself from the music,” as he told the Baltimore Sun last week, then he did a poor job. Although his first address to the crowd was met with cheers and applause, his rambling at the microphone almost overshadowed the band’s performance (which at only an hour, was too short for the three hours of acts that came before it).
On the other hand, I guess there’s no muffling the effect Wentz’s presence in the tabloids and gossip rags has had on his popularity. Hundreds of pre-teen and teenage girls in the crowd screamed whenever they saw his face on the screen or heard other acts say his name.
Undeniably, when people go to a Fall Out Boy concert, they expect to get their money’s worth of Pete Wentz. But it’s a shame that Wentz used the show as a soapbox to broadcast his beliefs rather than let the music stand on its own or step back and share the spotlight with his less attention-hungry band members.
At the same time, FOB was so lacking in energy that without Wentz’s eccentricities and the band’s light-up guitars, the show might have dragged. Still, if a packed audience dancing and singing along to every song is any indication, Fall Out Boy’s popularity is still growing.