Last Wednesday was an incredibly special day for me, as it is every time I get to see my favourite band live. I have often wondered about the meaning of "favourite band" as opposed to "that one band I really, really like", or "one of my favourite bands". What makes Jimmy Eat World my favourite band, the unrivalled band at the top of the list, what separates them from everyone else was something blurry, like mumbling an excuse out of a tricky question you don't want to answer. I wondered if I could genuinely call them my favourite band when I had never followed a full tours of theirs as I had done for other bands. These are way too many questions, in the grand scheme of things. What stopped me from just liking them more than the others and not feeling like I needed to provide the world with an essay on how they were my favourites? This is when I dislike questions, and my hyperactive brain.

I'll never have all the answers, but as far as demonstrations go, Wednesday helped.

It's always going to be tough, for me, to rate the band who's playing before Jimmy, unless I already know them. Every time I see Jimmy Eat World live, I turn into an impatient child and my usual desire to get to know different artists vanishes into thin air.

Amsterdam started with German band Razz, who had already supported the Americans at their Berlin and Cologne shows, in June and July. The quatuor offers us a promising blend of fuzzy rock guitars and poppy sound - think Bastille, just slightly less dark and a little more upbeat. The outfit is very talented and it is clear to see why Jimmy Eat World have chosen them as support on those three shows. Their songs make for a very entertaining half-hour, and they do their job with class and enthusiasm. I wish their music was a little more diverse - I rarely ever pick up on those details, but I felt like all seven songs they played had the exact same structure, and it became a little repetitive halfway through. If they added a little more variety in their set, they could easily go from "entertaining" to "excellent", I felt.

Since I have created this blog, I have seen Jimmy Eat World five times, six if you include the Amsterdam show. It never gets easier to write about it, or to find the right words to describe the amount of love I have in my heart and the amount of joy their music brings me. It feels like those things are beyond words, and yet, I need to try and put them into sentences, I need to try and voice them. What a challenge, my friends. 

What makes Jimmy Eat World my favourite band is the happiness they bring me. I knew this show was going to fly by, as every one of their shows had in the past, and yet, from start to finish, I had the stupidest, biggest, goofiest grin on my face. Two songs in, my jaw started aching because I couldn't help but smile, and even when they played quieter, sadder songs (Hear You Me, 23), my face would not let that smile disappear.
I found myself happy crying during Big Casino. It has always been one of my favourite Jimmy songs - it is a perfect little pop-rock tune, with a soaring chorus that is easy to memorise and ridiculously satisfying to belt out, with just a hint of emotion on the bridge. I have always thought it was one of their best songs, the type of single that had a true shot at daytime radio and number one slots in the charts. It has been released ten years ago and it hasn't aged a day, it is universal, it is timeless. It is what I would call a true masterpiece and I would argue that it is one of the best songs released this past decade. I have always known this, accepted those as facts, and when I would hear Big Casino live, I would jump around, sing at the top of my lungs, take the time to marvel at the fact that the chorus is a thing of beauty. Apparently, on Wednesday, those facts and feelings grabbed me so violently I could not stop crying. I was not even sad - I was just plain happy, satisfied and content. When they carried on with Integrity Blues' Pass the Baby, introducing it as one of their newer songs, I found myself submerged with pride.

I am partial to a "so proud of my boys" moment every now and again, "every now and again" meaning at pretty much every gig I go to. The small bands I see grow make me proud, the bands whose members have been nice to me from the beginning make me proud, the bands whose releases make it to the charts or the bands who win awards make me proud. The pride I felt when Jimmy Eat World played Pass the Baby was not like this - I was just proud to have a favourite band who was not scared to reinvent themselves, even when they were on their ninth album and were established and influential in our scene (and beyond). Pass the Baby is dark, and miles away from bursting singles and tunes like Big Casino. It has a strong Clarity feeling, with an extended outro à la Goodbye Sky Harbor. It is less easy to get into than the singles and it is a reminder that this band can do absolutely anything. They can bottle up happiness in Sweetness, they can capture raw pain in Hear You Me, they can encapsulate feelings we all go through in 23, and they can create unique diamonds that showcase all the faces of their talent like Pass the Baby.

Seeing Jimmy Eat World perform makes you feel elated. They have never struck me as a band who was out there to play rockstar or to play pop-punk band 101. They walk out there, grab their guitars and do their thing. I am so close to the stage I can distinctly hear the sound of Jim Adkins' shoes stomping on the wooden floor. It somehow adds something realer to the show - that is one feeling I can't quite put into words. They have never been a band who ask you to open this shit up and they don't quite jump around, but they have more energy than many bands I have seen. About five songs in, the four-piece is dripping with sweat when the venue is well air-conditioned, and overall, they play in such an inviting way that they end up showing more energy and enthusiasm that the bands who spin-kick around. Every time Adkins talks to the crowd, he sounds a little astonished, a little beside himself that over a thousand people have showed up to sing his band's songs back at him when he couldn't be further away from Mesa, Arizona. This band has been touring the world for twenty years, has released nine albums, has been incredibly successful for the past two decades and yet, they are still surprised at the fact that there are people willing to spend an evening with them. 

I don't know how desperate I would sound if I told you I would be willing to spend every single one of my evenings watching Jimmy Eat World play a live show. I figured out that they were my favourite band and that I loved them more than anyone else because they manage to make me so happy I am shaken up, as if I wasn't sure I could ever be that happy, as if I wasn't sure there was something on this planet who could wake up such feelings in me. For two hours, everything stopped and the twenty-three (twenty-three!) songs they played and the four men that created them were all that mattered.