Technically speaking, it was the Kiss 95.7 Summer Kickoff Concert. Cherish, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Bow Wow, and Daughtry.

Um, yeah. One-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others...

Admission was included in park admission, and eternaleponine and I were renewing our season passes anyway, so it seemed like a reasonable idea. Especially since the weather had cleared up enough to make it good weather for roller coasters. If it had been rainy, we wouldn't have bothered, especially since RJA had been at the Bamboozle two weeks ago (and yes, i still owe a writeup on that) -- even though i wound up not seeing them at the Bamboozle.

You didn't have to pay extra, but you did have to get a wristband. We were clever and asked the wristband girls about the order of the performers. Doors at 2, show at 3:30 (this information had NOT been on the website), Cherish on first, RJA on second.

Okay. So if we started heading towards the concert grove about AT the show start time, we'd get there in enough time to miss most of the first band and only hear RJA.

Which left us plenty of time to line up for the Superman.

It was really, really easy to tell who'd come to the park for RJA, because none of them had heard the rule about Don't Be That Guy... ten million 13-year-old girls in several designs of Red Jumpsuit Apparatus T-shirt. Fall Out Boy, From First To Last, Chiodos, and Green Day shirts were also fair bets.

Sure, we were just as identifiable -- I had my Dead! hoodie on over a tank top, and eternaleponine had her Revenge hoodie on over an AFI Decemberunderground bunnies shirt. A girl with pink hair admired that.

The lines weren't too bad, this early in the season -- nothing over an hour. For a weekend, that's decent.

Of course, by the time we got to the front of the Superman line, we were both going "WHY do we do this, again?"

But the advantage of doing the Superman first is that everything else is easy. We did Batman next. It was almost relaxing.

We did time the concert just about perfectly. I had not realized that there was a swimming pool back by the picnic grove... this might be handy information, at some point this summer.

As you might expect, it was a very short set. The audience pretty well failed at singing along and at clapping, but that was okay. They played "Damn Regret," used "Face Down" for second to last, and finished up with the album's untitled bonus track, which is either called "The Grim Goodbye" or "The Great Goodbye." Maybe it was "The Grand Goodbye." I don't know. I do know that it was about seven minutes long, which was a little excessive.

I also don't know whether Ronnie's voice was playing tricks on him, or if it was the concert sound, or a little of both, but his vocals were kind of flaky. However, he DID hit the high notes on "Face Down," which made us squee. Nicely done!

There was a mass exodus of emo kids after their set. eternaleponine heard someone saying "I think we missed Red Jumpsuit, because our people -- " with a gesture pointing to the direction everyone was walking. Yes, yes you did. Sorry...

We were going to go on the Flashback next, but just as we got to the front of the line, they announced Technical Difficulties, Maintenance Coming. The technical difficulties involved people being STUCK at the top of the send-you-down-backwards ramp, so we decided that that meant "we don't go on this one today."

And lined up for Pandemonium. Behind, as it turned out, two cute, skinny gay boys. By eavesdropping on their cell phone conversation (hard not to), we learned that they'd wanted to see RJA too, but had gotten there too late. Their friends had stayed for Bow Wow and Daughtry, but they decided to do the rides.

We wound up in the same car with them. They TOTALLY ignored our existence during the initial climb -- too cool to talk to us, I guess. But then I said "damn, we're too evenly balanced in weight, we're not going to spin as much as we should," and that broke the ice, and then the shorter one looked at my hoodie and said, "Hey! I have that one!" And I asked if they'd seen them this tour, and they'd been to the opening date in New Hampshire, and I said how we'd seen them three times, Nassau Coliseum, and Hartford, and the Bamboozle.

Amazing how the right band merch gives you provisional status as a human being...

When we got off the ride, it was starting to rain, so that was the end of the day.

We have lots of free friend tickets. And the parking pass this year goes on your ID, and so it's on mine, so it doesn't matter what car I'm in, I've got it covered.

Who wants to go?