Paramore and Jimmy Eat World Roll Out Their Road Show in San Antonio

Consider the "internal issues" officially dealt with. Though Paramore cancelled a handful of European dates amidst rumors of breakup and pregnancy, it appears as though the group has worked through the normal everyday problems that afflict a young band learning to grind it out on the road. It couldn't have come at a better time, too, as Paramore were refreshed and vibrant as they kicked off a U.S. tour opening for Jimmy Eat World, the emo elders who gave the young upstarts a reason to emote in the first place.

Last night at the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas — night one of a twenty-gig run — Paramore proved their Grammy nomination for Best New Artist wasn't a fluke, as they buzzsawed through their big, hooky catalog of songs, particularly blowing up on "Born for This," "crushcrushcrush" and "For a Pessimist, I'm Pretty Optimistic." A third axeman bolstered the guitar assaults unleashed during regular headbanging sessions. To their cameraphone-waving fans, the big payoff was closer "Misery Business," the song with its own T-shirt.

Shutterbugs gave way to crowd surfers for Jimmy Eat World's set. It opened with the killer left-right combo of "Big Casino" (off their 2007 album Chase This Light) followed by the old-school jam "Sweetness." Paramore's raw energy was obviously rubbing off on the road veterans from Arizona. Despite singer Jim Adkins' somewhat bitter complaints about their tour geography ("We could have started this tour on the West Coast. We could have started this tour on the East Coast. But no...."), the band's bright, shiny anthems gave the amped-up crowd a Texas-sized evening of glorious emo catharsis.

Check out more photos from the show here.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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