Emanations From the Aether

I saw My Chemical Romance perform in Detroit last Friday, the 21st.
This was a reprise of my having seen their "Long Live" the Black Parade show in Chicago one year earlier, with the same people: were_duck, jinjurly & spouse, and raanve.

I almost didn't go on the trip b/c I was fucking exhausted. ( Other things I did in August. )

Anyway - I was fucking exhausted, but we made it and I did it even with some bad reflux here and there.

The show was great.
In Chicago, when we saw this basic show last year, the fascist imagery was kind of shocking to me, as was the pseudo-execution of five people as part of a skit. (Although I did cackle when Gerard Way said, "Thank you for your service!" upon their deaths.)

Back when My Chemical Romance toured their most successful album to date, The Black Parade, the tour was fucking epic and it ended with a show in Mexico City, where Gerard declared, "The Black Parade... is dead!" and they never performed the full album again. (They also went on hiatus for a few years before returning with a loose and delightful "Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.")

The concept of this new tour, "Long Live the Black Parade" is interesting - they just... decided to go on tour. There's no new album, there has been a complete media blackout with no interviews or press tour, etc. The band is simply saying: here's some weird shit, you figure it out. To keep things fresh in lieu of new music, there's an elaborate dystopian future richly imagined down to its own alphabet, slogans, propaganda signs, etc. in the fictional country of Draag. The premise is that the band is performing the Black Parade album while imprisoned in a hospital where they are being brainwashed and de-programmed. It is implied that time is cycling them in a loop, and with each live show, there are slight variations: changes to jackets, killing one person on stage vs. another [before resurrection], testing the bounds of what they're allowed to get away with... and eventually maybe how they will rebel and break out?!?! This all is delicious for the fandom, which watches livestreams of the concerts and comb for new details to try and predict what will happen next. At both the Chicago and Detroit shows, you could see the Designated Lore Expert in each group of attendees explaining to their friends wtf was going on (or leaving it at, "idk, Gerard's doing some weird shit, I'm just here for the music").

All of which led up to: at our show, Gerard (fakely) SLIT FRANK IERO'S THROAT ON STAGE, KILLED HIM, AND THEN RESURRECTED HIM AND PET HIS HEAD and then sang him some of "Superstar" by The Carpenters. We screamed, we wailed. And this was like, the first thing that happened at the show lmao.

The imagery and such felt shocking to me last year, and this time just felt more artistically interesting, including all of the in-universe TV shows and such that are built into the stage performance.

Upon entry, we were handed a postcard souvenir, with a word written on it in Draag, and art resembling a depiction of a 19th century Soviet battle. I think each show got its own postcard, so fans can a) trade with one another, and b) try to decode wtf they represent. I am a little excited and curious to go look up what the other ones look like and what other people think about them.

The first half of the show ("A set"), they play through the entire Black Parade album and then symbolically burn the stage down. The band briefly disappears during an interlude with a cellist before they returned to a stage more in the middle of the crowd for their B set, a more traditional set list featuring the rest of their albums. I like this part of the show more - the guys are more relaxed, they're reacting to one another, they're wearing more comfy clothes, and are generally just looser. (I think the contrast is part of what makes that pleasant, though.)

Our full setlist can be found here at Setlist.fm, although for posterity and a future wrecked internet, the B set list is:
--Honey, This Mirror Isn't Big Enough for the Two of Us
--Bury Me In Black
--Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)
--Jack the Ripper (cover of Morrissey)
--Vampires Will Never Hurt You
--Vampire Money
--I'm Not Okay (I Promise)
--Helena
--S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W
--Zero Percent

In every live show's B-set, the band has tried to do one unique thing, so that each performance / group of fans "gets" something special to them that no one else gets. Ours were "double vampires," Jack the Ripper, and Zero Percent.

The fans themselves are so considerate and fun and happy. In the row in front of us, a woman arrived alone just before My Chem came on, and a girl next to her who was attending with her boyfriend took off a personally crafted bracelet with something specific to the show, and handed it to her, and they adorably spoke with one another a few times throughout the show. SO WHOLESOME, :*)


We ate some delicious food because Detroit, and also visited some bookstores. As I tweeted*, "Literally the only group of humans in the world to whom I would defer on bookstores to visit."

I also met inlovewithnight.bsky.social for the first time - she seems to have some overlap with my irl comics club!
That fandom thing also happened where raanve was like: I must take pictures of funny vanity license plates for X, and I was like WAIT, X?!?! I KNOW HER FROM GLEE FANDOM!!!!! :*)

( Books obtained )

*I don't use Twitter any more but I refuse to change my vocabulary.**
**Imagine having ADDED NOUNS AND VERBS TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE and then CHANGING YOUR BRAND away from that!!!