Ghoulish Concert Proves Better Than Candy

While most people these days spend October 31st chasing their children through crowded streets and pulling masks of the faces of witches, ghouls, and monsters in order to determine if they’re taking the right kid home, sometimes teenagers just can’t stand the pressure Halloween presents and decide to take a route that does not include costume parties or trick-or-treating. This All Hallow’s Eve, the Young Wild Things tour presented itself at the Jackie Gleason Theater for nearly five hours of rock-and-rolling ghastly fun.
Cute is What We Aim For opened up the performance with five songs. Their enigmatic singer, Shaant Hackiyan, jerked and hobbled and tipped all over the stage. All members save for the ever-shy Hackiyan were stripped down to their undies for the special occasion, prompting loud cries from everyone in the room as they adjusted their mics and instruments every so often.

Following Cute were the Plain White T's. Singer Tom Higgenson especially impressed with an acoustic version of their hit single, Hey There Delilah. Not a person failed to sing along, and the newly-introduced Fillmore Theater swelled with the sound of hundreds of voices. Guitarist Tim Lopez, from our point of view, was especially reactive to the crowd as he winked and wooed those closest to the stage.

The third act was Gym Class Heroes. Immediately before their performance, lead singer Travis McCoy's cousin Tiga roused up the crowd with a rendition of "Soulja Boy". The group itself charged onstage dressed as samurai ninjas and with their mascot, Eugene Montross, waving a banner before him. After their set, Travis reemerged to tell the audience news that many of us already knew; days before, Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz had injured his foot jumping from an amp in New Orleans. "Luckily for us," McCoy said, grinning, "we called up some of our buds from Crush Records, and they flew all the way down from Vegas to join us..."

The audience screamed in delight as the first strains of wildly popular band (and Wentz protegees) Panic! At The Disco's I Write Sins Not Tragedies filtered through the speakers. To our surprise, Patrick Stump, the normally mild-mannered Fall Out Boy frontman, charged onstage in a top hat and slathered in makeup. For Halloween, Fall Out Boy had transformed themselves into Panic! At The Disco!

The band finished the song with a relish and immediately soared into their own hits, coupling massive spurts of energy from Stump and Joseph Trohman, guitarist, to make up for the loss of their most energetic performer, Pete. Wentz still managed to rile up the crowd with his between-song chats with the crowd and a costume change into a red Teletubby outfit. As he gleefully showed off his "rocker" cast that allowed him to move around with minimal pain, girls swooned into his magnetic stage presence (or, possibly, it was the effect of drummer Andy Hurley's removal of his shirt and vest halfway through the set). Stump performed an acoustic solo version of “Golden”, a soft, slow melody that ended with the collective applause (that’s right, not yells) of the audience.

Fall Out Boy ended their set with tremendous cannons that fired off an even more explosive amount of confetti into the air, accompanying their tradition closing song, "Saturday". The artists stayed on stage to throw their drumsticks and picks into the roaring crowd before disappearing backstage.
As the doors opened to let out the concertgoers, witches and fake twins and blood-covered vampires all came to the same conclusion: what a rocking Halloween they’d just had!