Maybe I don’t feel bad about being the only adult in a room of screaming teenagers (well, other than the parents that brought the teenagers) because there is something more to Paramore. Oh sure, they are teenage punk and angst and all that. But where other bands have a lot of style and trendy outfits and such, Paramore is all business. Singer Hayley Williams jumps out on stage in a black shirt and jeans and that’s it. No costume changes, no clothes you wouldn’t want to see your daughter in, it’s just straight out rock. Jeremy Davis, the Brothers Farro (Zac and Josh), and Taylor York don’t leap all across the stage and make rock star poses, they just pound out chord after chord and bludgeon the crowd a post-hardcore/punk/rock drive. The kids may dig it, but this stuff isn’t that far off from 1979. The lyrics are all righteous anger about all the things the kids hate from authorities: arrogance, lying, and distrust with a little dose of comfort mixed in between.

While Adriene may have been there to see Paramore, I was actually there for the opening band. I discovered Paper Route a couple years ago, but this is the year that they have made the quantum leap to one of my favorite bands. If you haven’t heard my bather on about their fabulous album Absence, you haven’t talked to me much lately. What I love about this band is that live in concert, they take an album that’s mostly electronica sounds and give it a hard rock sound and deliver the goods without much in the way of pre-recorded gadgets. Powerful drum ensembles by the entire band replace the drum loops on the album. They played mostly songs from their new album, picking one or two from their previous EP’s. The little teenagers standing behind us (each dressed ridiculous and annoying as teenage girls can be) didn’t like them at all, but much of the crowd did, and I figure if I’m liking something that annoying teenage girls don’t, then I’m doing something right.

In other news, I saw earlier this week that the band Copeland was calling it quits. I’m sad to hear that news. They were a band that came about in the early part of this decade when boy bands, divas, and post-grunge still dominated radio and went the other direction, introducing beautiful melodies and the piano back into music. Much like other bands such as Coldplay or The Fray, they were part of the knife edge that pushed music in a new direction. Had I been eighteen when Beneath Medicine Tree was released, I have a feeling it would have been one of my favorite albums ever. As it was when it came out, I was a little older, a little more secure in my romantic life and my personal identity, but the album still resonated with that inner teenager, that one that would’ve probably gone to that Paramore show, too. I hadn’t liked their last two albums as much, but I thought the show they played at Cornerstone Festival this past year was once of the best I’ve seen by Copeland, I’m sad to see them go the way that all good bands, save the occasional U2, seem to go.