Fall Out Boy came to Wrigley Field tonight in Chicago. I decided not to go for the first time in years: tickets were expensive, I’d seen them a minimum of four times in the last few tours, and I just didn’t feel like it. The idea of concerts, I’ve found, appeals to me less and less as I age. I’d rather spend my time and money elsewhere. But as I walked home on a chilly Wednesday in late June, the sound of drumbeats crashed under the white skies of wildfire smoke. The Academy Is… called to me like siren song and I found myself sitting in the shade of Wrigley Field as the sun set, sipping beer and wondering why I wasn’t inside the Friendly Confines watching bands stalk the stage. 

The approach to my 40’s is fraught with worry: Am I in good health? Am I saving enough money? Why did I stop watching New Girl in its last season? Notably, however, is after an initial surge of shows after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, live music just hasn’t appealed to me the way it always had before. Live music had always been a lifeblood, the type of energy that shot lightning into the veins and made me feel young as I moshed and ran the circle pit with kids half my age but with an equal amount of love. However, a concert in my own backyard, Wrigley Field, for a band I have seen many times before, just seemed unnecessary. 

Then “Checkmarks” by The Academy Is… fucked my night up. My favorite song by the band, blaring over stadium walls and echoing off buildings filled the evening air. Sound waves found the perfect confluence at intersections and behind stop signs to play every note and lyric perfectly. Standing at a crosswalk, the song ricocheted through my headphones, drawing me toward the stadium. I’d seen The Academy Is… at Concord Music hall months earlier, a dozen feet from the stage and didn’t think I needed to see them again so soon until I stood outside the venue wondering what to do next. “Bring It (Snakes on a Plane)”, a cover by Cobra Starship, met me as I found a table outside the stadium. 

The bitter taste of a golden lager teased me as Alkaline Trio took the stage. Not the biggest fan of Alkaline Trio, I’ve seen them by accident several times over the years either at Riot Fest or opening for other bands, and always a fan of Matt Skiba’s work in Blink-182, the band is a favorite by proxy. Listening to “Calling All Skeletons”, “The Poison”, and “Radio”, I found myself singing louder and louder alone into an empty beer glass on a Sheridan Road patio as people walked by, trying to ignore me. 

The rumpled but autographed copy of Fonda Lee’s Jade Legacy blew open in the breeze as Fall Out Boy took the stage to an eruption of sound. “Love From the Other Side” began their night, quickly sliding into “The Phoenix” and “Sugar We’re Going Down”. Easily dancing between their sound as pop icons and pop punk all-stars, Fall Out Boy solidified their discography into a coherent sound that melded old and new into a black hole of style that any band would worship. Even now, a mile away writing this, the echo of Patrick Stump’s voice and the crashing wave of an enthusiastic crowd rolls over the neighborhoods like a gentle but persistent fog.

Not going to a show so near to me was easy since I want to save money, but I will remember the regret for far longer. I’ve seen Fall out Boy at Wrigley Field almost every time they’ve performed there for the last half decade, but this performance will be more memorable than any photograph. The first time I said “no” was the one I regretted most, and solidified my resolve to be there next time. Maybe the love of live music fades with age, but the lightning it shoves into your blood never does. As I walked home, I sang every lyric to an empty street and revived the memory of “The North Side Skanker”, a title I drunkenly gave myself while dancing to headphones full of ska music several years ago. Age takes a lot from us, including the idea of doing what we did when we were young, but it can’t take our youth or the sense of rebellion that came with it.

I didn’t stay to listen to the full show–the passion to write overcame me. However, for the first time in years, I remember why I love music, why it heralded and defined such a large part of my life and why I still feel passionate about the genre even if I don’t listen as much. Fall Out Boy once again managed to reach past genre, taste, generation and passion to demand attention to the stage. Music will always change and listeners will change ahead of and with it. But believers will never die.

by Kyle Schultz

Kyle Schultz is the Senior Editor at It’s All Dead and has worked as a gaming journalist at Structure Gaming. He lives in Chicago and dropkicked a pickle under the stove. That smell will define his house for generations to come.