Great concert. Great concert!
My wife made me promise to take her and my youngest on a vacation once I completed my MBA. Erin (my youngest) decided that Fort Lauderdale was our destination. At some point she realized that Fall Out Boy was going to be in concert in Tampa while we were in Fort Lauderdale. Erin bought tickets after telling me that it was about 30 minutes from Fort Lauderdale to Tampa. She was wrong. It is actually about 4 HOURS.
We were in Fort Lauderdale and needed to get to Tampa, Florida. We had to rent a car. It was my understanding that, when renting a car, you always choose the economy option because the rental company WILL run out of the economy option and have to up grade you for free. I wound up getting a bright red Dodge Charger. KEK.
We left at noon and had a HECK of a time getting into the venue. We wound up being about 20 minutes late for the opening act. I cannot recall their name ... because they were the opening act ... I suppose.
We managed to get a great parking space (close to the exit) and once we got to our seats, Erin and I went to the merch line ... which was about 1.5 hours long at that time. I got into line and sent Erin to get water for us. The kid in front of me was an excessively short young lady named "V". Turns out, V was from Cypress in Houston! She was a college student in the Northeast - the 5th or 6th child in a 12-child Irish-Catholic family. She was in line to get a sweatshirt for the opening band (whose name I forgot). I wound up putting her charge on my card because she only had cash and the merch station only took credit cards ... raging against the machine indeed.
When Erin came back with water I walked over to the merch line at the other end of the venue. I made the mistake of trying to go to the other side of the concert venue by walking across the general admittance area. It was PACKED. And only to find that the other merch line was lust as stacked as the one near the entrance. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Erin and I got matching shirts (and 1 for Cil seeing as her birthday was coming up). We managed to get back to our seats 30 minutes before FOB took the stage. Of course, the shirts were ridiculously expensive. Erin has great taste apparently ...
It was hot. We purchased some canned "Death Water" and took our seats to see the end of "Bring the Horizon". The crowd was enthusiastic for these young men.
Fall Out Boy was fantastic! I lost sight of the length of their impressive catalog and found myself surprised numerous times by the set list. FOB managed to play plenty of their hits, plenty of the new stuff and even had an impressive set of their "old school" stuff that was enhanced by careful staging direction that brought the enormous arena back to a "small concert venue feel". Just very cool.
There was no encore. But the concert was long and satisfying. Erin wanted to see "Dance, Dance". I was there more for "Disloyal Order of the Water Buffalo". We both left satisfied.
It was a long ride back to Fort Lauderdale, but we made it thanks to Apple Music and their "Top Songs" for ... yes, you guessed it ... Fall Out Boy.
