By Nick Carrabine
NCarrabine@News-Herald.com

I'm not sure what I did to deserve to go through the things I went through getting to the Jimmy Eat World concert in Columbus Saturday night.

First off, the concert sold out the morning I purchased my single, general admission ticket 10 days before the show leaving no tickets left for two of my friends who were going to purchase tickets later that day.

Up until the night before the concert, I was planning on driving to Columbus solo and going to the show by myself and then justify this lonely action by staying with some friends that I still have down in the state capital.

Luckily, one of my best friends, in an effort to not make me feel like the biggest loser in the world, decided to tag along on the road trip and we got a hotel for the night. However, there was still the problem of going to the concert by myself.

So instead of one loser hanging out by themselves, there were two...and did I mention, lost, in Columbus.

As we parked our car at the hotel we were staying at, approximately three miles from Newport Music Hall, we decided to walk to get food. However getting lost in conversation and well, just lost, we had wandered a mile and a half down the road until we stumbled into some bar. (Thank God for smart phones, how did anyone get anywhere back in the day?) We got a quick bite to eat and by then it was almost 8 p.m. and it was either walk back another mile and a half to the hotel to get the car to drive to the music venue, or just count my losses and walk another mile and a half toward Newport, by myself of course.

I did the latter and before I knew it, I had walked three miles to the concert venue while my friend walked back to the hotel.

And then of course, when I got to the venue, there was something wrong with my ticket, they had said it had been “re-issued,” whatever that means. They told me to “go take it up with the box office.” At this point, I went to the box office and told them about my two and a half hour car ride, my three mile walk to the venue and the very legal, very legit purchase of my ticket. I offered them to show them the original e-mail from Ticketmaster on my phone (again, these things are life savors, literally.) I’ve been to close to 100 concerts over the past 11 years, never have I had this problem. They reiterated my ticket had been “re-issued,” whatever that means, but still let me in. I cannot tell you the hell I would have caused had I not been allowed to enter that venue. Lets just say you’d be reading about me in the news had that occurred.

Anyway, enough about the drama, and more about Jimmy Eat World blowing my face off.

This was my third time seeing the band live, however, I haven’t seen them since 2002. I’ll stop short of saying this was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to, but I can honestly say it was one of the best set lists I’ve came across. Normally when you go to a concert, you leave wishing that the band would have played this song or that song. Not on Saturday, the band played a masterful set list spreading across their five major albums (they have seven) playing fan favorites, "Blister," "23" and for the first tour in eight years, the 16-minute "Goodbye Sky Harbor" (although, they probably cut it to about 10 minutes) to initially close the show.

Also, I normally don’t notice things like these at concerts, but the lighting was incredible. I’ve never seen a show at Newport Music Hall, so I’m not sure if every show is like that or if it was specifically done like that for Jimmy Eat World, but the backdrop was filled with dozens of diamond shaped lights that flickered sporadically matching in rhythm with each and every song.

As I said for my review of the band’s latest album, Invented, Jimmy Eat World isn’t the most energetic band, but their set list was jampacked with their most energetic songs, kicking the night off with “Bleed American” and playing a slew of their hard-rocking songs, “A Praise Chorus,” “My Beat Theory,” “Futures,” “Pain,” etc.

The four song encore was worth the price of admission alone. Most bands come back for a two-song encore, Jimmy Eat World came back with the seven-minute “23,” followed by “Pain” and arguably the band’s two biggest hits from 2001s Bleed American, “The Middle” and “Sweetness.”

In all, the band played 21 songs, spanning just under two hours, approximately double the time it took me to walk to the venue.

Set list:
Bleed American (Bleed American)
Your New Aesthetic (Clarity)
A Praise Chorus (Bleed American)
My Best Theory (Invented)
Let It Happen (Chase This Light)
For Me This Is Heaven (Clarity)
Futures (Futures)
Big Casino (Chase This Light)
Action Needs An Audience (Invented)
Dizzy (Chase This Light)
Coffee And Cigarettes (Invented)
Movielike (Invented)
Hear You Me (Bleed American)
Evidence (Invented)
Work (Futures)
Blister (Clarity)
Goodbye Sky Harbor (Clarity)

(Encore)
23 (Futures)
Pain (Futures)
The Middle (Bleed American)
Sweetness (Bleed American)

Below are the only decent videos I can find from Saturday's show: