Elliot Minor: One More Time?

I love these guys: (from left to right) Ali Paul, Ed Hetherton, Alex Davies, Dan Hetherton, and Ed Minton

Saturday the 29th of March 2014 is a day that I will never forget for many reasons, and a day that I thought may never happen again. However, for a day that I wanted to be absolutely perfect, it certainly didn't start that way, as I woke up incredibly late (anybody who knows me won't be surprised to hear this!)! Still, I knew I had plenty of time and that the exciting things were going to happen late in the day. I left my house just before 4pm - yes, I really left that late for a concert - and headed for the town centre. My best friend, Pete, was kind enough to take me into town, so I bought him some late lunch/early dinner (chicken fillet bites and chips, thanks for asking!) and said goodbye. I walked off to Reading train station, thinking to myself, 'I don't think I've ever been on a train on my own, let alone into London by myself.' I bought myself a train ticket, an energy drink and some chewing gum, and boarded a train at 5:53pm. Within 1 hour and 15 minutes I had gotten a train from Reading to London Paddington, navigated the London Underground to get to Camden Town station, and was enjoying a cold, crisp, delicious cider at the bar in the Camden Underworld (the music venue where Elliot Minor were playing) - it's pretty cool living not too far from one of the greatest cities in the world!

I briefly bumped into one of my Facebook friends, Susan, who I met thanks to this phenomenal band. I went through to watch the last support act, Fort Hope, who were great and had a whole bunch of good pop rock songs, and then I waited patiently, like everybody else, for what we were all actually here for: Elliot Minor. Allow me to digress for a bit, though, for those who are unaware of the band: Elliot Minor are an incredibly talented British rock band who I got into around the time of me getting into rock music, discovering their awesome demos, and loving it when I saw their first single, Parallel Worlds, appear on the music channels. Their music is mainly guitar-driven pop rock that incorporates a lot of minor chords, beautiful vocal harmonies, piano and, sometimes, the likes of a violin! Between them, they are capable of playing guitar, bass, drums, piano, violin, cello, double bass, clarinet and saxophone. It was a joy to see their singles go into the official UK music charts - I was a fan of the charts, and pop and indie music at that time - with songs such as Still Figuring Out, Jessica, Parallel Worlds (re-release) and The White One Is Evil, charting at 17, 19, 21 and 22 respectively. After around a year of releasing singles, they were finally releasing their self-titled debut album on the 14th of April 2008, and I saw them live two days prior to this, headlining at the London Astoria (I had also seen them support McFly at Wembley Arena), which I still say is one of the greatest nights of my life! Finally having my hands on the CD of their debut album was a sweet feeling because of how long I had already loved this band. I already knew the 4 singles, plus I had heard demos of all of the 7 other songs on the album - not that that mattered because I already knew how awesome these songs were; plus, the demos are raw, mainly just guitar-driven pop-rock, whereas the album versions are majestic, with perfect production, vocal harmonies to die for, and some epic orchestral arrangements (the same can be said for their second album, too) accompanying the guitars for a sound that is incredibly unique, exciting, and often stunning. This is why when you see them live, it feels like you're hearing the demos more than the album versions, which is pretty cool, in my opinion, because it's nice to hear different versions to what you listen to all the time. I'm not sure if anybody else has ever compared them to this band, but I think that parts of some of Elliot Minor's songs remind me of the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO: famous for Mr. Blue Sky, which has appeared in movies, commercials, etc., and so you probably know it even if you don't think you do!). To me, their debut album is nothing short of a masterpiece, and I'd even rank it in my top 5 favourite albums ever, which would be: My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade, Green Day's American Idiot, Yellowcard's Ocean Avenue, Elliot Minor's Elliot Minor, and All Time Low's Nothing Personal.

Their second album, Solaris, was released on the 19th of October 2009, and is also absolutely brilliant, whilst not being as good as their debut album (I won't list my favourite Elliot Minor songs from both albums, but, instead, recommend that you check out the YouTube videos on this blog entry; you could play them whilst reading this blog!). They then released an acoustic version of Solaris on the 15th of November 2010, before going quiet for quite a while, making fans fear they were going on hiatus or, even worse, splitting up. Ali Paul (keyboard/piano player) announced on the 28th of August 2010 that he was leaving the band after the end of the tour, to go study law at university. This didn't help the speculation about the band going their separate ways, and, very soon after, it had been announced that Dan Hetherton (drums) had created a new band, The Dead Famous, with the former lead singer of GO:Audio. Ed 'Teddy' Hetherton (bass) and Ed Minton (guitarist, and second vocalist) both went off to study, and Alex Davies (lead singer, and guitar) ended up creating a new band, Spirits, all of which made a comeback seem very unlikely. However, on the 30th of November 2013 - after almost 3 years of inactivity - the band started to post teasers on their Facebook and Twitter accounts, merely saying things like "2014" and "#EMonemoretime", leading fans to speculate as to whether this was one more concert, one more tour, one more album, etc.!? We found out on the 7th of December that it would be one more concert, at the Camden Underworld on Friday the 28th of March 2014! Tickets went on sale on the 9th, but little did they know how much their passionate fans still care about them, as the 500 tickets sold out in 30 seconds, leading them to announce a second date for Saturday the 29th, which also went and sold out in 30 seconds! I was at this Saturday show thanks to buying a ticket off of a lovely, honest Elliot Minor fan, Rhiannon, who was selling a ticket at face value! They announced a third date, this time at the O2 Islington, and staggered the selling of the tickets. I knew the next three months would seem like they were going on forever, but I had something huge to look forward to - something totally unexpected - and I was just glad I was able to obtain a ticket, no matter the means! (Now you have some perspective on how much this band mean to me, and how much this concert would mean to me, I now head back to the original premise of this blog: the concert day!)

Some epic music began to play - the theme from the movie Inception - and Elliot Minor (just to stress: all 5 of them came back for these concerts) took to the stage, met by screams/cheers of delight due to the sheer excitement of this concert for any big Elliot Minor fan. Dan fires off on the drums for the start of Jessica, before the guitars roar in, the crowd sing along, and you just know this is going to be something special! In the minds of Elliot Minor fans - including me - they have no bad songs, and there was no way that any song would get a bad reception; after all, we thought this day may never come again, so we were sure as hell going to enjoy this to the max! Even I was nodding my head and singing at the top of my lungs, and, yet, I'm normally pretty shy in public! As amazing song after amazing song came and went, the intimate venue got hotter and sweatier, but, still, hearing my favourite songs live - some for the first time, as I had never seen them tour their second album - was sending a shiver down my spine! Running Away always gets the crowd jumping, with its infectious guitar riff and catchy chorus. For me, getting to hear songs such as Shiver and I Believe for the first time live was really special, the former having one of the most epic outros I've ever heard in a song: a mixture of guitar solos, piano solos, and violins! I Believe has an epic orchestrated bit in the album recording, which is imitated well on stage. More of my favourites included Last Call to New York City (you can see the version that I saw live at the Underworld, in the video below this paragraph) - an incredibly epic rock ballad, with awesome chords and fantastic drums - and Parallel Worlds, which is quite simply one of the best pop rock songs I've ever heard, with a killer guitar solo, and it, of course, never disappoints when performed live! I swear I could talk about how all the songs had the crowd singing along like they didn't have a care in the world, enjoying every second, and it felt so brilliant to be surrounded by people who enjoy these songs as much as me. It was amazing how well they performed together after none of them having played as Elliot Minor for over 3 years; they seemed perfect together, like no time had passed at all. It was just such an epic concert, with all the songs being killer, an unbelievable crowd, and an epic vibe/atmosphere! I genuinely couldn't believe how fast it seemed to be over - 15 songs, 8 from their self-titled debut album, 7 from Solaris - but there was always the afterparty...

The ticket that enabled me to have one of the most memorable nights of my life

Everybody left the venue having had an unforgettable time. I messaged with another of my Facebook friends, Kelly, and we met up outside the venue, discussing for about half an hour about how amazing the concert was, how our days had been, etc., and it was lovely to be chatting with somebody I had never met in my life but who I felt I kind of knew thanks to sharing a love for EM - it's also scary to think I may never again see the EM fans I met on this night, but hopefully that's not the case. I went into The World's End pub, that is above/next to the Underworld, for the afterparty and grabbed myself a cider. Firstly, I saw Ed Minton chatting/hugging/taking photos with fans, and I managed to get a photo with him - even if this had been the only member of EM that I met, I would've still been happy because of how I'd never met any musicians before, let alone from a band I idolise as much as EM! This did, however, turn out to be the first of 4 photos I got with the members of EM, and I soon had my second because I got a photo with Ed Hetherton. For this photo, I handed my phone - which is what I was taking the pictures on - to a complete stranger, loving the fact you could just trust people that you didn't even remotely know, because of how everybody was there to have a fantastic time with one another! As the pub was connected to the music venue, the type of music they played in there was all rock orientated - Green Day, Blink-182, Bowling For Soup, Wheatus, and Head Automatica being some of the bands I remember hearing - and having everybody sing along to songs such as Stacy's Mom, What's My Age Again?, and Basket Case, will be a moment I will recall for the rest of my life! I saw another Elliot Minor fan, Vicky, and we hugged and chatted for a bit, as well as seeing each other off and on whilst we were both at the afterparty; she also took the 2 photos that I managed to get with Dan Hetherton and Alex Davies whilst outside the pub. I genuinely couldn't believe I had got photos with 4 guys who are heroes to me, from one of my favourite bands of all-time (shame I couldn't get the fifth member, Ali Paul, as well!), and that I even chatted to Alex for a little bit! I was on a massive high (legally, of course!), and stayed at the afterparty for so long that problems began to occur...

                                          

Ed Minton and I

Me and Ed Hetherton

Me and Dan Hetherton

Alex Davies and I

I left the afterparty at about 12:30am, knowing I had to get back to Reading - in hindsight, I should've stayed at the afterparty and stayed in London for the night, then none of the following problems would've happened. The first problem I encountered was that Camden Town Underground station was now closed, meaning I had to figure out how to get buses back to London Paddington train station, walking the streets of London, in places I had never been before. 2 buses later, I arrived at Paddington bus stop at around 1:15am, being told by some nice guy in the street that there were no more trains - I was sure that trains between Reading and London ran through the night, no matter how infrequent, so I walked over to the station. A guy in a security box outside the station told me what I kind of already knew but had tried to deny: there were no more trains! I now believe the last train left at 1am, although it just so happened to be the night the clocks went forward by an hour, and a Sunday morning, so I'm not 100% sure as to when the last train really was, but I knew I was unlucky (trains on a weekday run through the night for people who have to go to work at very early times). I phoned my dad with 3% battery - having killed my phone taking pictures and recording video at the concert, and keeping up with football/cricket scores throughout the day - and my phone died without being able to explain the full situation! I must've chatted to about 10 people around Paddington, explaining my situation, but not many people are willing to let you use their phones - would you let somebody use your phone in a similar situation? I'd like to think I would trust the individual and do the nice thing. I went into Paddington train station, which must be one of the busiest staitions in the world during operational hours, but the place was like a ghost town: a few people who had decided to sleep and wait for the morning train, and a few workers dressed in fluorescent coats, but nothing more. I found a payphone and called my dad (again) at what was now probably 2:45am (including the clocks going forward), but the phone ate my money so quickly; the payphone began to ring, and my dad had cleverly called back the payphone. Fortunately, I still had about £50 in my wallet, so it was decided that I would head for a taxi and see if that money could get me from the centre of London to the west of London, which is closer to Reading and, therefore, easier for my dad to pick me up. The taxi driver was such a great guy, letting me use his phone on 2 occasions, and confirming that he would do the trip for £40 - admittedly that's £40 I shouldn't have had to spend, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I saw the meter when the taxi driver dropped me off in west London, it was closer to £50, so I thanked him hugely and gave him a tip. Dad picked me up from west London at 4:15am, we headed home, I thanked my dad in a Facebook status (written at about 5:30am, after I had got home and charged my phone!), and was grateful to be in my own bed, for what was left of the night (and quite a bit of the day!). Fortunately, I have the best dad in the world, otherwise this night would've ended very differently!

My Elliot Minor merch that turned up recently: a signed (and creased!) EM poster, and a very soft EM T-shirt, which I wore with pride yesterday (at the time of publishing this blog)!

So, it was an unbelievable day/night for many reasons, and a day that will live in my mind forever as one of the most eventful, memorable, and stunning days I've ever had! Of course I would want another tour, another song, another album, etc., but if this concert (and afterparty!) is a goodbye to Alex, Ali, Dan, Ed and Ed - a.k.a. Elliot Minor - then I can't think of anything that could've been more perfect.

My Life-changing Journey with My Chemical Romance

An amazing picture that depicts the characters and setting of The Black Parade

It's hard to imagine there was once a time when if anybody said to me, "do you know who My Chemical Romance are?", chances are I'd have given them a blank stare and said, "who!?", but before my ears had the pleasure of hearing Welcome to the Black Parade, that was the truth! Prior to 2006, I was mainly an indie and pop music fan, and I even used to listen to the official UK music charts, and, yet, it was thanks to a few rock bands actually getting a bit of mainstream success - mainly Green Day's American Idiot, MCR's WttBP, and Fall Out Boy's This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race - that I went on to become the rock music fan I am today. On October the 8th 2006, I was listening to the official music charts when a song called America, by a British indie rock band called Razorlight, got to number 1, and I was really happy because I love the band and the song (it's an amazing song - check it out!). Then, just one week later, I was again listening to the charts, getting to the point where they're just about to announce what's got to number 1, and Razorlight had got knocked off the top spot by My Chemical Romance's only ever UK number 1, Welcome to the Black Parade - at the time, I remember genuinely being a little bit sad that a song I loved had been knocked off the number 1 spot, but very soon was I changing my mind! It didn't take long for me to be hearing WttBP on numerous occasions - it was everywhere - and, before I knew it, I had fallen in love with this epic rock song, with its killer guitar section by Ray (you know the bit!), awesome piano intro before the song truly kicks off, and anthemic, sing-along chorus. I bought the WttBP single, kind of expecting my love to just be for the one song, but soon I was hearing Famous Last Words and thinking to myself, 'this band are great', and so I went and bought The Black Parade in early 2007, having barely purchased any 'proper' rock albums up until this point in my life. At first, I fell for songs like Cancer and Disenchanted, the former particularly striking a chord as I had lost my nan to this horrible disease just 2 years before this, and I had never heard such a stunning song (I rank it in my top 5 favourite songs ever), with its haunting piano, beautiful and brutally honest lyrics, and Gerard's signature vocals (and there's some great backing vocals towards the end). Never had I heard such a grandiose album, it seeming like I was discovering something new every time I gave it a listen, and there's not a single album in the world that I would rather listen to from start to finish; not only that, though, as it also has the biggest number of my favourite songs ever, as I would pick 5 songs from this album for a list of my 100 favourite songs - Cancer, Famous Last Words, Dead!, WttBP, and Disenchanted - and I certainly can't say that about any other album. An absolute classic, for me, an album that is constantly being listed by many as one of the best rock albums of the last decade, and it is my favourite album ever.

The time that then passed between The Black Parade and Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys seemed like an eternity, and a lot happened in this time: they scrapped a whole bunch of material because of it "not feeling right, organic, or complete... created in the wrong place, at the wrong time" (this material would go on to be Conventional Weapons), they sadly parted ways with the awesome Bob Bryar, and a story getting released in a couple of UK tabloid newspapers that had fans appalled, upset, shocked, and dumbfounded! At the time of this story coming out, about the tragic death of Hannah Bond, I still wasn't a huge fan of My Chemical Romance - only knowing the one album - but, even then, I was clever enough to make up my own mind, knowing that I was enjoying the music, and surely that's all that matters? It was really a couple of years down the line where the news story really hit me, as whilst a news story existed that blamed MCR for the death of a teenage girl - MCR apparently link "death with glamour" and are a "suicide cult" band, with their lyrics being associated "with depression and self-harm" - I was starting to become friends with people who loved the band, finding out the band had saved people, or made them stronger, more confident, teaching them to be themselves. You only have to listen to many of Gerard's famous quotes/lyrics to know that he (and the band) wants you to "not be afraid to keep on living...", "be yourself, don't take anyone's shit...", "there is nothing worth taking your life over...", etc. Having at this point acquired a copy of Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge - thanks to my best friend giving me his copy - and being surprised by my mum when she bought me a copy of Danger Days for Christmas 2010, I was discovering the band for myself, and realising that never in a million years could these newspaper stories have been any more ignorant if they had tried - were we even listening to the same band, did they even speak to any fans of the band, did they do any research, whatsoever, in order to make the story balanced? The unbelievable (although, what really is shocking nowadays? I mean, you can never believe everything you read) truth is that these newspapers printed stories that were out to shock people, completely one-sided, and just incredibly untrue, without the necessary knowledge to print a balanced story. The fact that within one of the stories they list Blink-182 as "emos" should tell you everything you need to know about the utter ignorance of these articles! I became friends with loads of people on Facebook, who loved MCR - and I'm still making friends who love this life-changing band, to this day - I even changed my middle name to "Killjoy" for a bit, and was really becoming a huge fan of these guys. I love Danger Days, instantly falling in love with songs like Bulletproof Heart, Summertime, and The Kids From Yesterday ("You only hear the music when your heart begins to break" is a line that hit even harder after the band split), and enjoying listening to the whole album all the way through, taking in its story of being yourself (not what people want you to be), sticking up for what you believe in, and I believe the album has a fantastic camaraderie feel - as it certainly brought me into an epic family: the Killjoys - saying you should have the backs of the people you love, sticking together even when times get hard, etc. This album will always mean a massive amount to me - little did we know that it would be MCR's last studio album - even if it isn't on the same level as The Black Parade.

(From left to right) Mikey Way, Frank Iero, Gerard Way, and Ray Toro - my heroes - during a Danger Days photo shoot

To some, this may seem a strange thing to say, but a massive part of why these guys changed my life is the fans of the band. My Facebook friend count would grow on a regular basis as I became friends with even more MCR fans, becoming close with a whole bunch of them - some were from 'The Lurkers of the MCRmy' Facebook page, some liked to call themselves 'Killjoys', but, one thing was definite, we were all part of the MCRmy: an unbreakable, passionate, and unrivalled fan group! I'm Facebook friends with fans of Elliot Minor, Green Day, Thirty Seconds To Mars, Fall Out Boy, etc., and these fans are fantastic, but nothing can compare to the MCRmy, home to some of the most amazing, beautiful, caring, kindhearted, and loyal people I've ever met in my life, and I genuinely can't imagine my life without them. One day, I will meet a bunch of them, and I have no doubts about that, whatsoever! I bought myself a copy of I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love and it felt great to own all 4 studio albums that MCR had made up until this point - expecting there would be many more albums to come in the future, as they had said they were working on album number 5. I remember listening to Bullets for the first time, whilst lying in bed, struck by just how 'in your face' it was - a really raw, powerhouse of an album - and how it was so far away from Danger Days, and yet they still both sound like MCR. I'm skipping ahead a bit here, but MCR's greatest hits album, May Death Never Stop You, shows just how varied, talented, and unbelievable these guys are, going from hard-hitting punk rock songs through to pop rock songs with perfect production, and every anthemic step in-between. In late 2012 we got told that we would get to hear the unreleased material, Conventional Weapons, that MCR had recorded prior to Danger Days, and, if I'm honest, I'm glad this didn't become the basis of an album! The songs are by no means 'bad' - I really like Ambulance, Boy Divison, and The World Is Ugly, and The Light Behind Your Eyes is one of the most stunning songs I've ever heard - but I feel that this direction would've ended up creating MCR's worst album. Still, it was good to hear 10 unreleased MCR songs whilst we waited for the next album, but then we got the news that nobody in the MCRmy will ever forget: on the 22nd of March 2013, we got a brief message on MCR's official website, saying that they were splitting up! The message was short and impersonal - not something we would've ever expected from MCR - and it was heartbreaking and shocking to be hearing this news! I remember I was up late on that Friday night - the news came through in the early hours of Saturday morning in the British time zone - and I saw one my Facebook friends post about MCR splitting up, and I instantly dismissed it, not wanting to believe it was true. I took a moment, and then commented on the friend's status, saying something like, "No way!!! Where did you hear this!?", and when they replied with, "It's on the official website", I knew it was true, and my heart sank! Had I gone to bed at an earlier time that night - I was going out with my grandad in the morning, so I should've been asleep - maybe I wouldn't have heard the news until Saturday morning, maybe even later; it's sometimes weird the way things happen. The statuses started flooding in on my news feed, I knew I would never be alone in this situation, and there were even people that I started chatting to on that very night, people who I now call 'good friends'. This seemed like the ultimate test of everything that MCR had taught the MCRmy: were we strong enough to not let this destroy us? Would we be able to "carry on"? Would we continue to be ourselves, believe in ourselves? The answers are a resounding 'yes', as never before have I seen so many people be there for each other, with support, care, love, and, looking back, I'm proud of the MCRmy for the way we handled it! Of course we were all heartbroken, shed tears, felt like doing nothing for a little while (Gerard's unforgettable vigil didn't help with this, as it knocked me off my feet, tearing me up just days after the split, but it was the much needed, beautiful, detailed written piece that the MCRmy needed to hear), but we made it through, and I - and I'm sure the whole of the MCRmy, too - am a stronger person for having gone through something I didn't expect to happen for many more years. MCR decided to throw themselves a funeral, releasing a new single on the 17th of February 2014, Fake Your Death, and a greatest hits collection, May Death Never Stop You, on the 25th of March 2014. Fake Your Death is a brilliant, heartbreaking song, with such honesty in the lyrics, and some of the lyrics, like "even lights can fade away", and "I choose defeat, I walk away", seemed to show what was going through the minds of the band members at the time of writing this song, whether they realised it or not. "Just look at all that pain" would sum up what the MCRmy had been going through. In my eyes, it's the perfect 'goodbye song' - not that I am saying goodbye, because MCR live on forever in my heart and mind - just what I expected to hear, and a song that I will love for the rest of my life.

When I listen to May Death Never Stop You, and/or watch the DVD that came with the package, I now choose to smile instead of being sad. I choose to enjoy the songs, remember the perfect journey I've been on, remember all the amazing things the band have taught me, and think of the people I've met along the way. I'm a better, stronger, more confident person because of MCR - they taught me that it's fine to be myself, even if that isn't cool, and believe in myself - and that's why I'll now always look back and smile, remembering the fondness I have for this band. I envy anybody who's been on this journey for a longer time than me - anybody who got into the band around the time of Bullets, or Three Cheers - but, speaking for myself, I can still easily say that my journey has been life-changing. MCR are proof that you never know when a band are going to split up, so go see bands live when you have the chance - that's been my attitude ever since the split, because of how I never saw MCR live, as I always assumed there'd be more time - enjoy the songs and albums as much as you can, and don't ever be anything other than proud for liking what you like! Gerard, Frank, Ray, and Mikey (and Bob and Matt!), I thank you for being the most inspirational, stunning, and life-changing band I've ever come across in my life! Do I have other bands in my life that mean a hell of a lot to me? Yes. Will other bands come into my life, who I end up absolutely loving? Yeah, most likely. Will there ever be another My Chemical Romance? No, not in a million years! So long and goodnight! <3