Tuesday, after a busy morning, I made my way to New Haven to see Simple Plan in a headlining show. This was my first time seeing them headlining so even though I would have much rathered have been home still napping, I had to make it there. I had been to College Street Music Hall once before and had opted to sit in the balcony, but since stairs aren’t really my thing these days, I decided I’d utilize their ADA section for this show. Unfortunately, even though the venue is tiered, the ADA section is the back tier so if anyone tall is in the front of the tier and you’re sitting, you really can’t see much. I sat for both openers – Losers Club and Winona Fighter – and depending on how the crowd swayed I was able to see Chuck for most of the show since he was higher up and I could see Pierre when he stepped up on the monitors every now and then and Seb and Jeff would pop into view every now and then as well. I don’t know that I’d do ADA for another show here, but I love Simple Plan enough that it was worth it. I did end up standing up for “Welcome to My Life” and taking some photos and could see pretty well so the tiering does work, but it’s the whole needing to sit that was causing the issue.
The crowd was… awful around me. It was a big group of friends who I think were trying to figure out who could be the most obnoxious one all night and one kept climbing on the rail in front of us and doing… I don’t know what… throughout the night. I kind of thought he was just going to do WWE and jump onto a friend or two. Then when Pierre mentioned Scooby Doo one of them got SO excited that they flung their (I hope) water cup behind them and it went all over me, my walker, the guy next to me, the girl behind me… I was so soaked I actually had to use my shirt to wipe my face off because it wasn’t even a “oh it’s just a couple drops” it was the entire contents of their cup.
Simple Plan however was great. They said they hadn’t played New Haven before (which I believe is true) and that they weren’t sure if they played Connecticut before (which is definitely not true) and kept saying they loved the crowd’s energy (maybe up front was a more fun obnoxious?) and that they’d have to come back. Hopefully that’s true. They played about a 90 minute set with more than enough throwback songs to satisfy me. I’m hoping I can see them, preferably headlining, again soon!
