PHOENIX — Let’s talk about anniversaries. We recognize and celebrate anniversaries to varying degrees as a means of looking objectively at the event and what it meant. We also consider the context in which it exists now and what it means in this new context. My Chemical Romance’s “The Black Parade” tour stop at Chase Field with support from Jimmy Eat World brought with it several anniversaries. 

Let’s start with a good one: Jimmy Eat World’s breakthrough fourth album Bleed American is 25 years old this year. Then there’s September 11th, a day of unspeakable tragedy that was also 25 years ago. It was an event witnessed by a 24-year-old Gerard Way, who saw it not just as the tragedy it was, but as something apocalyptic. He decided to live his life like the world could end and formed My Chemical Romance to make a positive difference, which is a beautiful thing to have come from something so terribly horrible. It should also be noted that September 11th also led Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American to be briefly renamed simply Jimmy Eat World, as their label felt that maybe an album including the words “Bleed” and “American” may not be the best choice, given what the country was experiencing. 

Also of note, given the setting, is that the Arizona Diamondbacks won their only World Series championship on the very field that hosted Sunday night’s show. Maybe important, but definitely not as important as My Chemical Romance’s third album, the operatic The Black Parade, which is turning 20 this year. It was performed in its entirety in the properly rock-operatic way with one of the most-impressive stage shows any band has put on, arguably placing it alongside Pink Floyd’s original “The Wall Tour” in its scope and grandeur. 

Jimmy Eat World: A Home-state Victory 25 Years in the Making

Jimmy Eat World hail from Mesa, AZ, so their opening performance playing their 2001 masterpiece Bleed American in full was a well-deserved victory lap for these hometown heroes to play to a sold out Chase Field, just 18 miles from where their career started. You could tell from the images of the band cast bigger than life on the giant screens to the left and right of the stage throughout their set that the moment meant a lot to them — something lead singer and chief songwriter Jim Adkins noted during their performance. 

Despite being an Arizona transplant, I too felt a pride in watching them perform their most-celebrated album from start to finish within distance of the tiny venues and bars where they started. They deserved a celebratory moment like this and made the most of it during their hour-long set. Hits like  “A Praise Chorus,” “The Middle,” and “Sweetness” had people out of their seats, singing and dancing, feeling the moment with the band. Though not a single, “Hear You Me,” the band’s ballad about fans Mykel and Carli Allan, whose tragic deaths inspired the lyrics, had the ballpark lit up with cell phone lights for the first time in the evening. (The sisters also inspired Weezer’s “Mykel and Carli.”) People had tears in their eyes as they sang along. It was special. There’s no other way to put it. 

Upon completing the album play, Adkins noted that they still had a few more minutes left in their set and proceeded to run through “Big Casino” (from 2007’s Chase This Light), “Work,” and “Pain” (both from 2004’s Futures). They group took a collective arm-in-arm bow to rapturous applause before departing the stage. For Jimmy Eat World’s core four of Adkins, rhythm guitar player Tom Linton, bassist Rich Burch, and drummer Zach Lind, I hope this moment felt as triumphant to them on the stage as it did to those of us in the audience. 

My Chemical Romance: Death, Fire, and The Black Parade Reborn

We are a month and a half shy of that aforementioned 20th anniversary of My Chemical Romance’s undeniable masterpiece The Black Parade (released on October 20, 2006), and the band performed the album from start to finish. This was, of course, not just an album playthrough, but a full-fledged theatrical performance as well, and so it is difficult to properly sum up what this experience was like without giving a beat-for-beat textual reenactment of it. 

Instead, here are the highlights without any unnecessary commentary on what the visuals of the performance meant:

• The band members lining up to each receive medication from a nurse prior to the first song
• Large, Big Brother-esque video screens broadcasting appropriately Orwellian images and videos
• A man on fire running across the stage
• Gerard Way singing to a severed head in an operatic emo reimagining of Hamlet’s churchyard soliloquy (you know, “Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio”)
• Huge bursts of fire rising into the sky and practically nipping at the park’s roof

Then came the closing moments of their set’s first act, as the whole stage was slowly engulfed in flames as Way passionately sang, “I am not afraid to keep on living/I am not afraid to walk this world alone,” with the heat turned up, literally and figuratively, around them. 

What was also on display but not a part of the show per se was how hard the band was working to make it all look and feel as incredible as it was. One could see from any vantage point how much they were all giving the audience: fake blood, but real sweat and tears. 

The second act featured the band out of costume, performing a run of songs from throughout the rest of their catalog on a smaller stage in the middle of the crowd. Despite there being thousands in attendance to witness it, this second half felt smaller, more intimate.

Dressed much more casually, this felt like we were all spying on a club gig by the band. They dedicated their third song of the encore “Boy Division” to “The Butcher,” referencing former tourmates Every Time I Die’s guitar player Andy Williams. He was also a professional wrestler under the name “The Butcher,” who tragically died the night before after collapsing at a wrestling event. Other closing highlights included the tour debut of “The Only Hope for Me Is You” and the band’s first-ever performance of “The Light Behind Your Eyes,” from Number Three of the Conventional Weapons series of previously unreleased material, to close out the show. 

Anniversaries are moments to reflect on what it all meant, and why it still matters now. Jimmy Eat World and My Chemical Romance both reminded us that it matters because the music connected with our hearts and our souls and continues to resonate. It touched something inside all of us and stayed there, like a protection from the pain the world can give us, whether it be the untimely deaths of friends or one of the most horrific and tragic events in our nation’s history. It reminds us that even when it feels like everything is descending into chaos, we should sing loudly as a rebuke of the worst of our world: “I am not afraid to keep on living!” That is a gift we should all hold dear, even when we have to sometimes walk this world alone.

Photo Credit: Bryce Hall