They were aboot, at least according to my translation, the people you rely on when you’re at your darkest, and being that person for someone else. Anyone who knows me personally and/or just follows along on teh Internets knows that 2011 wasn’t particularly enjoyable, and I find myself being the one relying on others mopre so that usual. More than any other song this year, on a personaly level, this one…well, got me.

Of course the band went in a different direction for the video…

I choose a “song of the week” every week with the YRs, and picked “El Paso” the day it was first posted on the YouTubes. He was shocked (and I think somewhat amused) that YRs were into his band. My feeling has always been no matter how much people disagree on political issues, we can all agree on great rock n’ roll. That, and if we only listened to artists who agreed with us politically…Toby Keith gets boring real quick

The best rock n’ roll album to come out this year was easily the self titled album from the reunited Taking Back Sunday. From beginning to end, I loved every song on the album. The guitar licks in “You Got Me” were killer, and there was an underlying them in all the lyrics that appear to deal with forgiveness and redemption that I really connected with, as I’m sure most other could as well.

There was also something else, and something that growing up on Long Island led me to be a fan in the first place…these could easily be friends of mine who formed a band and hit it big, both in the style of music and also that “Long Island humor” that you can’t quite describe, but no it when you see it. Seeing the band reunite with the originally line-up just strengthened that.

Anyway, if you haven’t picked up the album yet, get yourself to iTunes…unless you live on The LI, in which case I’d direct you to Looney Tunes in Babylon.

Here’s one of their videos…

The other day, I had one of those experiences at Terminal 5 in New York City (a club that sucks as bad as everyone says it does) during a My Chemical Romance concert.

I had seen MCR a few years ago during “Projekt Revolution” and thought they put on a great live show. I was looking forward to seeing them again as a headliner (when I saw them, they were just under Linkin Park in billing). Their new album was a favourite of mine from last year, so when tickets went on sale I figured “what the hell?”

What the hell was that…for starters, my pre-gaming has changed from a few Budweiser tallboys to a few pints at Rattle n Humm that are slightly higher in ABV, which was ok. I wasn’t in the bag, just buzzed and a little tired. Then came the concert.

I used to enjoy being at shows where everyone has packed together, bouncing up and down, swaying back and forth, and moving however you could with the limited personal space you had. I also used to go to concerts where I didn’t look like a chaperone compared to the rest of audience.

Halfway through the show my friend and I tapped out, and made our way to the back where we had elbow room and a short line for the bar (I think less than ten of us were old enough to drink). Even then, we just got water and said to each other, “Let’s go.” On the way out, I found the only guy who was around my age…and who was there with his son. The final reminder that maybe, in the immortal words of Danny Glover, I’m too old for this shit.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love the band. If they play a show at the Garden, I’m there. I still love live music and like checking out new bands. But it seems somewhere along the way, my peers stopped listening new music at some point while I was still, and am still, tuning into the music that their kids are starting to listen to.

And yeah, while in the movies, characters like Paul Rudd in “Knocked Up” and Jason Bateman in “Juno” seem cool to an extent (Bateman turned douchy), in the real world they’re just lame.

So I pose the question to you, what do you do when you still love the music but have outgrown the scene?

(Though I have to admit, I did get a bitchin’ hoodie)

I’m a huge My Chemical Romance fan. “Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge” was my favourite debut album since Guns n’ Roses “Appetite for Destruction,” and after seeing them at Projekt Revolution a year or two ago, they’re one of the few bands I’ll go out of my way to see live (April 11 in the Manhattan). It was because of the already high expectations I had that I wasn’t so sure aboot “Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys,” especially when their first two singles, while great videos, didn’t really impress me all that much as songs.

That said, after a few listens, the album is as good if not better as their others.

First, just to give some background on the “story” of the album, a quick cut and paste from Wikipedia…

The album’s concept is based around the lives of the “Fabulous Killjoys”, in the setting of California in the year 2019. The band’s alter-egos are the four Killjoys: “Party Poison” (Gerard Way), “Jet Star” (Ray Toro), “Fun Ghoul” (Frank Iero), and “Kobra Kid” (Mikey Way), shown in the videos for “Na Na Na” and “SING”. The Killjoys are a group of outlaws who are fighting against the evil corporation Better Living Industries (BL/ind.) and its leader Korse (Grant Morrison).[2]. The character aliases are the names of their “designer” guns. Their guide is the pirate radio DJ named Dr. Death Defying who is voiced by Steve Montaño.

Got all that?

As a “concept,” where the songs are played in order tell some semblance of a story, the album didn’t really work for me. It was once I started listening to it on shuffle, where I was focusing more on the song and less on the “story,” that’s where I really started to enjoy it more with each lesson. I like the Queen influence of the band (or what Guns n’ Roses would have been if Axl didn’t go insane), where each album sounds entirely different from the previous one…yet you know at first listen is a My Chemical Romance album.

Songs like “S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W,” “Party Poison” and “Planetary (GO!)” wouldn’t have worked on any of their other albums, yet are still some of my more favourite songs they’ve done. Ironically enough, my favourite song was “Vampire Money” which was really the one song who had the least to do with the “Danger Days” storyline.

Either way, it was a great album that their current fans will love and will create an whole to legion of My Chemical Romance fans.