A passerby driving on route 981 towards Latrobe had quite a site to view this past Friday night when looking out the window towards campus. Jam-packed parking lots, tail lights from the SVC security booth the whole way to route 30, and a very visible line of people reaching the whole way around the Robert S. Carey Center.

     This spectacle was the result of the fall concert, presented by the Student Government Association. The show featuring Anberlin, Taking Back Sunday, and The All-American Rejects was the first one at SVC to sell out in over 10 years, selling approximately 1,500 tickets.

     The sight on campus was even more spectacular than the one viewed from the nearby highways. With a queue of people stretching from the top of the steps at the Carey Center wrapping around the building the whole way back towards Gerard Hall, the campus was more bustling than it has been all semester. The people at the beginning of the line arrived on campus up to 4 hours before the doors for the concert opened at 7 pm.

     What did these people do in line for so long? To entertain the crowd, Erickson, a Cleveland based band following the tour, was walking around with an acoustic guitar and serving as troubadours. Surprisingly enough the crowd took to the band with delight, enjoying Erickson’s harmonizing melodies and poetic lyrics. The band will be playing around Pittsburgh in the spring with other bands such as Freshman 15, Mayday Parade, and The Academy Is. They have songs up for purchase on iTunes and a CD available at Hot Topic Stores for anyone wanting to hear more.

     10 minutes after the opening of the doors, the Carey Center Gymnasium was already half filled and steaming with people and blaring with canned music. 30 minutes later the bleachers began to fill up, and 10 minutes before Anberlin was scheduled to open the show the gym was completely flooded with people brushing shoulder to shoulder with absolutely no room for breathing.           

     After much anticipation live music began to burst through the speakers and Anberlin came out on the stage. They were greeted on the stage with loud cheers, clapping and lots of pushing happening in the crowd. Playing songs such as “Feel Good Drag,” “Breaking,” and “Godspeed” got the crowd in right mood to hear some more music. Fans standing in the front of the mosh pit area even got a glimpse of The All-American Rejects’ lead singer, Tyson Ritter, as he came to stand and listen in front of the stage by the base speakers in support of his opening act. As Anberlin’s set came to a close they were awarded with much deserved applause, cheers, and more pushing in the mosh pit. Senior Briana Taylor was ecstatic to go to “the Anberlin concert” and said that “they were amazing, I love Anberlin!”

     As the roadies came on the stage more canned music was shoved through the speakers once again. During the down time people could go out the concession stand to grab a bottle of water, run outside to get some cool, fresh air, or visit the bands’ merchandise tables and purchase shirts, CDs, and guitar picks etc.

     Once again the canned music faded away and live music started to blare through the speakers as Taking Back Sunday ran out onto stage. As the music picked up again so did the crowd. The mosh pit became more crowded, rowdy, and sweaty. Crowd surfing picked up and people were getting dropped, kicked in the head, and many were getting grabbed once they reached the stage and pushed back to the crowd by the many security guards.

     The band played songs such as “Sink Into Me,” and “MakeDamnSure.” The lead singer provided quite a show dancing and jumping around on the stage, and swinging his microphone around every second he wasn’t singing, dropping it several times and coming dangerously close to knocking security guards and photographers in the head with it. He even climbed the scaffolding holding lighting fixtures of the stage up and hung from it by his feet upside down and sang part of a song that way. At the close of their hour-long set Taking Back Sunday riled up the crowd for The All-American Rejects by playing one last song and getting everyone in the gym to stand up and scream and dance.

     Once again the roadies came out and the canned music worked its way through the speakers and the stage was torn down and set up for The All-American Rejects. It became impossible for someone caught in the middle of the mosh pit to get out or get closer to the stage; everyone was stuck where they were. All of the sudden the canned music went away and a recognizable drum and guitar riff started to blast out toward the crowd.

     The All-American Rejects ran out onto stage and started to play one of their most popular songs, “Move Along.” One could hardly hear over the beating of the bass and the screaming crowd at this point in the show. As always promised by the band the show was quite a spectacle with lead singer, Tyson Ritter, wearing nothing but a pair of pink skin tight jeans, and silver glittery keds running all over the stage, going into the bleachers and even kissing a girl in the crowd. Tyson made lots of controversial comments in between songs. One comment made about SVC is one that most freshman ask when entering the college, “what the…is a bearcat? I would assume that it would have the…nether regions of a…bear, and the upper parts of a…cat. That’s….awesome. We totally support a…school with the…[guts] to mix together two…animals like that.” But underneath all of the raunchy show, the band is pretty chill and relaxed.

     In the afternoon before the show The Review got the chance to sit down and talk to two of the band members, guitarists Nick Wheeler and Mike Kennerty in their varsity locker room dressing room filled with Cheetos, Lays, Cheeze Its, milk, orange juice, and Dr. Pepper. The first question we had for them was about how they came up with the name, The All-American Rejects. Nick answered us saying “it doesn’t really mean anything. We like to make up stories and tell people how we came up with it, but really it was before the interweb was in our houses so [Tyson and I] had to go down to Hasting’s Book, Music and Videos and look up CDs on the computer they had down there and there were no CDs by a band called The All-American Rejects so it was really the first thing we thought of that wasn’t taken.” That was in 1999.

     He went on to tell us that in 2002 they met Mike and Chris Gaylor, their drummer, and have been together ever since.

Mike told us “every song we sing is a story and the record, When the World Comes Down, was an endeavor for us, and we recommend you listen to it from beginning to end, and even after the last song just let it keep playing.” Nick recommended giving a listen to the song, “Another Heart Calls” because “collectively as a group it’s our favorite, and a duet with a female voice, so that’s kind of cool, we don’t really do stuff like that.”

     When asked about how they were liking Latrobe, Nick said “our mangaer got us all hyped up because of the Rolling Rock company and we thought we were gonna get to tour the brewery.” “But we’re still stocked to be here and play the show tonight,” said Mike.           

     We found out all about the band’s pre-show rituals, according to Nick “we love colleges because there’s group showers…no, we all kind of go off and do our own thing, our own vocal warm-ups, oh and Tyson douses himself in glitter, lots of glitter.” Mike told us, “I love when colleges have a gym, I like to take advantage of that and go running and stuff.” “No, he just likes looking sweaty before going on stage,” said Nick.

     And with that it was time for them to go and do their thing and get ready for what Tyson said was their “longest All-American Rejects set ever.” The show, ending with a crowd favorite, “Gives You Hell,” was perceived as one of two extremes by students. Some students loved it and said it was the best experience of their lives. Other had an awful time, despised the vulgarity of Tyson like freshman, Heidi Hellmuth who said “when he came up into the bleachers he was all sweaty and gross and then he kissed that girl and the way he did it was just gross.” And others like student Lyndsey Androstic thought that “there were way too many people and way to many middle school kids there causing trouble.”

     All in all the sold out show was a success for SVC drawing in people from all over, and even though there were lots of high school and middle school kids at the show SVC can look at that as a good way to get students to consider coming to SVC for college. Even students from Seton Hill and The University of Pittsburgh were overheard talking about the “great concert at Saint Vincent” while at an intercollegiate horse show a couple days later. So no matter what you’re opinion of the concert as a whole it has put SVC back on the map as offering top notch entertainment for its students.