Fan Review: 30 Seconds to Mars in Athens

Review of the 30 Seconds to Mars concert on July 6 in Athens by Evooba

The day had finally come! I was excited to see the band perform live since they are one of my favorite bands but also because they’ve been touring for like 2 years straight now with no breaks and they said they’re going to take a break from touring and writing really soon, so seeing them live was a hell of an opportunity now.
As I was getting ready in the morning, my friend who was coming with me at the concert, called me to tell me that there might be a little problem. At first I didn’t really understand what was happening but short story long, she hurt her leg the previous day and couldn’t walk really well nor stand up for long. I didn’t know how serious the situation was till we got the venue.

Nevertheless, it was around 7pm, half an hour before the doors opened. I walked out of the car and there she was waiting for me on the pavement. I didn’t notice anything at first cause she had her leg hidden. As I went closer I saw that she actually couldn’t walk AT ALL!! What were we supposed to do? She obviously couldn’t stand up for the concert so we had to somehow be at the back of the arena so she could hold on to one of the bar gates.

At around 8pm, we hadn’t entered the venue and we were waiting to think of an idea how she could walk in there. Then this nice security guy named Jim, came over to us and asked her what was wrong. After a lot of talking with him – he was so awesome that we exchanged phone numbers and e-mails – and almost an hour of waiting, his dear friend Stathis came where we were and took my friend with his bike backstage from a secret door right outside the venue. I went and found them there. We got it. We were in the venue but backstage. As my friend was being put on a wheelchair I had the chance to witness all three Jared, Shannon and Tomo, standing besides the stage backstage. They were like 10 meters away from us. My friend wanted to take a picture but the security guys didn’t let us because no one was supposed to enter from them.

We had arena tickets so we had to find a place for her to sit in the VIP section. Well, it didn’t exactly happen. This guy took us in the pitch, right in front of the stage and left us there! We were at the 1st row!! We were so excited, especially my friend; she couldn’t believe it.
Twenty minutes later, the lights went out and everyone started screaming. They were right in front of our eyes. Jared with his amazing white triad shirt, Shannon rocking the drums and Tomo with his super cool hair waving in the air killing it on guitar. Search and Destroy was the first song they played. Right when it ended, Jared took a minute to welcome us all and see the crowd. “Holy fuck”, he said. “What a great crowd, I love you” and they continued.

A Beautiful Life and Attack were the songs that followed. Actually Jared was so hyper active that he stopped in the middle of the song and asked everyone to scream as loud as they could and then sing with him the words. It was amazing. Not long after, he had 3 fans on stage. He asked them to tell him how we say I love you in Greek and then yelled “Sas agapo” (=I love you) and “Sas latrevo” (=I adore you) but then someone on stage told him to say “Eiste oloi malakes” which means you’re all assholes. The whole crowd laughed so hard.

Afterwards, Shannon and Tomo took a break and Jared stayed on stage by himself. He started asking us which song we wanted them to play. After a while he played Hurricane followed by a small interlude of Bad Romance and then after asking us again to scream and vote which song we wanted, he played both The Kill and From Yesterday acoustic. That was when he had that little girl on stage. She was around 6-7 years old and was on her dad’s shoulders in the first row. Jared pointed at her and said “You, yes on your dad’s shoulders, with the monkey shirt, come up here” and had her there with him. It was so sweet!!
Alibi and Closer to the Edge were the songs that followed. During the second one, the crowd was going crazy. Everyone was jumping up and down and most of the people were on other people’s shoulder as Jared asked us to do. We could barely hear him sing as the audience was going nuts over the song. Before the “No, No, No” part, Jared stopped the song again and asked us to put our fists up and scream our lungs out to the song. We did, he loved it. I can’t really describe the atmosphere of that moment. It was beyond awesome.

The night was coming to an end and finally Jared asked us to crowd surf if we wanted to get on stage for the last song and he started picking people out from the crowd and pulling them up! My friend wanted to go up there so bad but couldn’t and she told me I should go. There were already almost 30 people on stage and Jared was still pulling up the last ones when suddenly he pointed at me and “Yes, you come up here”. I literally died. I looked at my friend and screamed and got myself up there. He came over to us and he touched my shoulder and I touched his. I can say that for the first time I overcame my fear of being in front of a crowd. It was amazing.

As the intro to Kings and Queens was playing, us on stage, got down on our knees and basically saluted Jared. Then he asked everyone to get down on their knees and slowly rise. From the stage it felt like all these people were actually taking orders from their leader. Everyone was down and suddenly jumped up together and started rocking to the song. It was unbelievable. Jared and Tomo were running up and down the stage and Shannon was nailing it on the drums.
The song ended and the guys, once again, thanked us all for coming and promised they’ll be back really really soon before their tour ends. I hope they will. That night was amazing and I’ll never forget it. Being on stage, 2 meters away from one of your favorite bands is really breath taking. They totally blew me away.

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