Fall Out Boy

There’s a lot of hype surrounding Fall Out Boy. There hasn’t always been, but that’s certainly the way things are now. All the fancy words and complicated explanations to clear a name that was swiped from the Simpsons to begin with. The Simpsons know they’re messed up, and they own it. I just wanted to take a break from all of the Pete-sanity and broken hearts and guyliner to remind you all of this wonderful band’s roots. It’s more for fun than anything, but I’m posting some older videos. Watch them, compare if you want, but remember how much we adore these boys regardless.

video, Fall Out Boy, old, Take This To Your Grave, Saturday, Grand Theft Autumn, Dead On Arrival, flashback, hype

There’s a new journal entry on Fall Out Boy’s site. Check it out:

“so many updates. the end of HCT was hard. on tour it becomes like summer camp, you get used to seeing the same faces over and over again.

since then we have still been going non-stop. thanks to everyone who came out to the Today show! nbc said that we broke records with the amount of fans who showed up… pretty insane. then playing live earth was another mindblowing experience- to see all of these people coming together for music and belief all at once gave me chills. we got to hang with some good people like kanye west and john mayer- id recommend both of them as people and artists. i dont know how to explain but it is thrilling to be in the presence of people you know will end up changing culture.

the photos and video dont do the mood of this concert justice. it may not be monterey pop but this was something larger than the sum of its parts. it makes me want to make change in my daily life. thanks for taking part.

off to the lab to work on some new ideas. patrick is making music, producing some new bands. joe is getting his house ready for cribs and andy is busy doing whatever sexy vegetarians do.

this fall we will be playing shows with gym class heroes and the plain white t’s- before then we will be warming up in europe with a few days Decaydance fest— including us panic at the disco, gym class heroes, the academy is and cobra starship. should be a fun family reunion.

“have fun storming the castle” im gonna miss mark saying this to us every night… ”

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One of the many bands that passed through the Live Earth stages around the world Saturday put it best.

“It’s not really important what goes on here tonight, but what happens in the future,” said Pete Wentz of the band Fall Out Boy, who appeared in the New York concert.

For many who participated - as performers or spectators at the massive global music event - it was an inspiring night, perhaps the biggest concert broadcast in history, all dedicated to confronting what organizer Al Gore has called “the greatest threat mankind has ever faced.”

Saturday’s musicians were committed to changing that dynamic, but entertainers as a group have a spotty track record in forcing the body politic into change. Just look at the results of recent US presidential elections, where the entertainment business came down firmly on the side of the centre-left Democrats in 2004, only for George Bush to win a majority.

But Live Earth could be different.

The campaign to raise awareness about the dangers and causes of global warming has already gathered significant momentum. Only the most committed ideologues still dispute scientific evidence pointing to human activity as the cause of the climate threat, and children the world over re as focused on the environment as their parents were on the space race.

The sights and sounds of well-known personalities lending their voices to the cause may embolden people to take the actions demanded by the seven-point pledge offered up from organizers for all participants to sign.

“I think it’s cool that so many people are coming together to support this,” said Ellen Sanchez, 14, who watched the concerts at a big screen erected for the occasion in San Francisco. “It definitely focuses attention on the problem. We can’t ignore it any longer.”

Others already see the mega-gig as just the latest round of unwanted celebrity preaching.

That was certainly the attitude of critics who called Live Earth ”concerts for guilty stars.” They pointed out that many performances had flown to the shows in private jets, and asked how the massive productions with their huge carbon footprints could really benefit the cause. ‘All are guilty’

Perhaps the answer was at Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach, where some 700,000 people attended a free concert where actress and kid’s show host Xuxa framed the issue: “We are all guilty. We waste paper, water, energy and many other things. … It is not just for Americans. This is a concert for the whole world.”

Or maybe it was in the Netherlands, where thousands gathered by bicycle in an Amsterdam square to watch the shows being broadcast from other countries and hear ideas about how to save energy.

Africa, the underdeveloped continent with the least global-warming emissions but some of the worst potential effects, hosted a concert in Johannesburg. And the Shanghai concert carried great symbolism, as China continues to boom its way toward becoming one of the world’s biggest polluters.

The concerts certainly raised environmental awareness to a new level. Seen by a projected 2 billion people, the concerts featured environmental messages flashing behind the stages. Commercial breaks were filled with infomercials about the cause.

But the greatest benefit could come from the seven-point pledge organizers asked people to sign to limit their own pollution. The pledge calls on governments to sign meaningful treaties to reduce carbon emissions by 90 per cent by the year 2050, and to enact strict limits on coal-burning power stations.

“I’m so proud to be a part of it today, because it’s not about the problem. It’s more about the solution,” said songstress Alicia Keys at the New York show. “So I want you to make that pledge. I’m making the pledge, and I want you to make that pledge right now.”

Source.

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I found an article on About.com listing and reviewing the top ten pop albums of 2007. It stated the following:

Halfway through the year is a good time to reflect on what we’ve seen in pop music so far. These are the 10 best pop albums of the first half of 2007.

In the number one spot? Fall Out Boy. Here’s the review for FOB and Infinity on High:

This is Fall Out Boy’s first truly great album, and it is a landmark in the evolution of punk-influenced pop music. Taking its title from a Van Gogh letter written at a moment of emotional ecstasy, one can’t help but wonder if this is something like the statement the Ramones or Nirvana could have delivered absent the devastating impact of drug and alcohol addictions and with the wind of true support at their backs. Only a band with a tremendous sense of confidence can deliver words like this:

“And I saw God cry in the reflection of my enemies
And all the lovers with no time for me”

Fall Out Boy Fans - You Know Who You Are

If you are part of Fall Out Boy’s intended core audience, you likely know who you are. In case you’ve been hiding out over the past year and don’t know, Pete Wentz spells it out for you in “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race”:

“All the boys who the dance floor didn’t love
And all the girls whose lips couldn’t move fast enough”

You’ve been the target of great rock music in the past, but where Kurt Cobain and Robert Smith wanted you to crawl inside and share their pain and cynicism about the world, Fall Out Boy on Infinity on High want you to dance and sing and celebrate that the world belongs to you, too.

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Fall Out Boy makes some quick cameo appearances in The Academy Is… new video, “Neighbors“! I posted the video below, courtesy of our friends at YouTube. Enjoy!

Fall Out Boy, cameo, appearance, The Academy Is…, Neighbors, video, YouTube

There’s really only one contender for SOTW this week. Interpol are back, with “The Heinrich Maneuver”. Anybody who thought this band might be running out of creative steam after two albums has been proved emphatically wrong by this dark, brooding monster of a single. Shadowy lyricism? Check. Urgent, paranoid, edgy backdrop? Check. It’s a vicious, caustic three minutes, an anticipation-cranking taster for forthcoming album “Our Love To Admire”, which is set to be one of the records of the year. I can’t wait.

The pick of the rest of this week’s releases…

As you’ll no doubt know, the once legendary Smashing Pumpkins recently reformed. On “Tarantula”, Billy Corgan’s vocals are as whiney as ever, but the music over which he sings them has somehow transformed into a vicious, fiery, guitar-driven squall with solo’s aplenty. It sounds like Brian May and Robert Page dueling desperately in a “who can be the most self-indulgent axe hero” contest.

One comeback we were all hoping wouldn’t happen is that of Canadian angst-merchant Avril Lavigne. “When You’re Gone” opens with a couple of fairly promising bars of tinkling piano; it’s not long, though, before the plodding four-four beat kicks in and the song turns into the kind of mid-paced, soft rock effort you might have expected from somebody like Jennifer Rush half-way thorugh the Eighties. She may be trying to give herself more gravitas by shaking off the “Sk8r Boi” image, but this is merely exchanging extreme irritation for intense boredom.

New Young Pony Club, “Ice Cream”. Vague elements of punk-funk permeate this slow, lazily cool slice of sultriness. The bassline pulses like a heartbeat, the guitars stab gracefully somewhere low down in the mix, and some shimmering synths add atmosphere to the whole like chrome shimmering in the twilight. It’s alluring, pulse-quickening stuff.

Summer’s here, though it doesn’t really feel like it, and that means it’s time for a beautifully rendered indie-pop single from Swedish harmony purveyors The Concretes. Could “Oh Boy” be that single? I think so. It’s as sugary as the Magic Numbers, but it doesn’t make you feel sick; it’s as catchy as Kylie, and it makes you wanna dance.

Meanwhile, Fall Out Boy drop “The Take Over The Breaks Over“. It’s not the very worst thing the band have ever released; fizzy and energetic and not quite as overtly teen-angst as their previous stuff. It still falls a long way short of making you want to listen to it more than once though. Source.

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Drummer Andy Hurley had been in many hardcore bands with bassist Pete Wentz before they formed Fall Out Boy. Basically, they both just wanted a change of scenery.
“We just got burned out with the heaviness and the negative energies of the hardcore scene,” Hurley said by phone from Atlanta. “We wanted to do something different.”
So they teamed up with lead guitarist Joe Trohman and rhythm guitarist/vocalist Patrick Stump and named the new band Fall Out Boy, after a sidekick character on “The Simpsons.”
“The music we play now is so different than what we did in the past,” said Hurley, who cited Metallica and Slayer as his major musical influences. “The focus has always been on the music. And it still is.”
In 2002, the band released its first CD, “Fall Out Boy’s Evening Out with Your Girlfriend,” on Uprising Records. Three years later, the label reissued the CD to coincide with the band’s major-label debut on Island Records, “From Under the Cork Tree.”
In between, Fall Out Boy recorded and released “Take This to Your Grave” for the Fueled By Ramen label.
“Take This to Your Grave” sold more than 500,000 copies, pushing the disc to Gold Record status. “From Under the Cork Tree” sold more than 3 million copies. And the band’s most recent album, “Infinity on High,” released earlier this year, has already sold 1 million copies and became the No. 1 album on Billboard’s 200. Today it sits strongly at No. 31.
“It always surprises us at the success of our albums,” said Hurley. “We don’t write the songs thinking they’re going to be successful. And when they get noticed, it’s always a good thing for us.”
Recording “Infinity on High” was not much different than the studio sessions for “From Under the Cork Tree,” said Hurley. “We had the whole album ready to record, but like we did on ‘Cork Tree,’ we scrapped half the songs and wrote new ones in the studio.
“So it’s safe to say that half the songs are newer than the other half. In fact, the song ‘Golden’ wasn’t among the original songs we had ready for recording.”
But preparing to record “Infinity on High” was far from a nerve-wracking process, said Hurley. “We don’t worry about following up success. ‘Cork Tree’ did well way beyond our expectations, but we didn’t worry whether or not ‘Infinity’ would do better. We just did what we felt was right.
“‘Infinity’ is our second major-label full-length album and, in reality, we have more than just two CDs. So we’re pretty comfortable with the process. We just look at a new CD as a welcome accomplishment.”
In the past couple of years, Fall Out Boy has earned an array of music awards — MuchMusic People’s Choice Video Award for Favorite International Group, a bunch of Kerrang! Awards, a load of Teen Choice Awards, a Grammy nomination and two MTV Music Video Awards.
“The awards are great because most of them are voted on by fans,” said Hurley. “It’s nice to be recognized by your fans. And I don’t want to take anything away from them, but I do think that bands can get caught up in the awards and forget everything else. I don’t go around thinking how cool I am because we got this or that award. Because the awards are nice recognitions and add to the career, but in reality, the music is why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
Hurley isn’t kidding. Fall Out Boy is always either on the road or recording music. There has been very little time off. “We are thinking to take a longer break after we finish touring this album. But after the American tour, we’re going to South Africa, the Philippines and a bunch of Southeast Asian countries. Then we’re coming back and doing more dates in the states, and then taking our break.
“But Pat has been writing songs here and there and he already has 10 or 12 songs ready to go. I can already see that once the break starts, we’re going to get antsy and want to record the new songs. And, we’ll probably scrap half of them.” Source.

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New York Fashion Week’s hottest ticket, Fashion Rocks™, returns for its fourth year to the legendary Radio City Music Hall on September 6, 2007. Music’s A-list performers and the world’s hottest fashions will once again share the stage in a star-studded extravaganza celebrating the relationship between fashion and music. The concert will air the following night, Friday, September 7, 2007 in a two-hour special on the CBS television network (9:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT).

The show, hosted by Entourage star Jeremy Piven, will feature performances by Aerosmith, Alicia Keys, Avril Lavigne, Carrie Underwood, Fall Out Boy, Fergie, Jennifer Hudson, Jennifer Lopez, Ludacris, Martina McBride, Santana and Usher.

“The synergy between fashion and music is even more pronounced now than it was when we first created Fashion Rocks™ three years ago, said Condé Nast Media Group president, Richard D. Beckman. “Each year the line between the two becomes increasingly blurred as more musicians launch fashion lines and more designers align themselves with musicians. Fashion Rocks™ 2007 will feature outstanding performers from both worlds who span the spectrum of musical genres and fashion styles and bring to life that special relationship.”

The Fashion Rocks™ magazine will also return this year. Slated to reach over 60 million readers and filled with even more editorial content, Fashion Rocks™ magazine will accompany the September issue of 17 Condé Nast titles. Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and Contributing Editor Jonathan Van Meter will again take the helm as editorial director and editor-in-chief, respectively.

New to the scene is OBO, an international fashion production company. OBO will be producing the highly anticipated fashion segments that appear throughout the concert.

OBO most recently produced the 2007 Victoria’s Secret fashion show, as well as shows for Zegna, Marchesa, Tommy Hilfiger, Chloé and Behnaz Sarafpour, among others.

Executive producers of Fashion Rocks™ are Anthony Eaton, executive director and president of Tall Pony Productions and Richard D. Beckman, president of Condé Nast Media Group and Kingdom Entertainment. Mr. Eaton is an award-winning video producer whose roster of accolades includes GRAMMY® Awards, Cable Aces and NAACP Awards. His work has also received numerous film festival honors.

Fashion Rocks™ is sponsored by five key advertisers: Chevrolet, Citi, Revlon, Dillard’s, and Nexxus.
Fashion Rocks™ is a production of Condé Nast Media Group, a unit of Condé Nast Publications which includes corporate sales, marketing, interactive and direct sales efforts for all of Condé Nast’s consumer magazines and websites. Condé Nast Media Group is recognized as an industry leader for its creation and execution of large-scale, integrated, multi-platform advertising programs and events.

Fans looking for more information on Fashion Rocks can log onto fashionrocks2007.tv

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New York Fashion Week, Fashion Rocks, Radio City Music Hall, concert, CBS, Fall Out Boy, 2007

As a society we have to ask ourselves: what are we feeding our children? This is not intended to be a discussion about mechanically separated chicken or high-fructose corn syrup. No, another kind of food: music. It is, after all, the singular most powerful expression of the human soul.

Yet, in today’s consumer-based capitalistic society, music has been sterilized, homogenized, desensitized and, worst of all, commoditized into an entity designed not to enrich the listeners but to make rich the purveyors.

If this sounds highfalutin, then you weren’t at the Tacoma Dome on Wednesday night because this concert was the epitome of what is wrong in music today.

Exhibit 1: Cobra Starship, a band whose claim to fame is the song “Bring It (Snakes on a Plane.)” Yes, from the cheesy action-packed flop of a film starring Sam Jackson. Dear reader, the only thing worse than a stupid song is a song that makes you stupid. For this, Cobra Starship is guilty and should be ejected from Starship Earth.

Exhibit 2: The Academy Is …, a band that thankfully had its name emblazoned on a giant banner, otherwise their power pop, bubblegum rock would not have been identifiable from the 237 other bands that have this exact same sound. Generic? Guilty! Driven by gimmicks and cheesy clichés? Guilty! Send the Academy to the gallows!

Exhibit 3: +44, the band former Blink-182 members Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker formed when Blink went on indefinite hiatus. These are not punk preservationists or even revisionists. No, +44 is simply thieves with guitars who would rather count their money than write an original, that is to say fresh, song. This L.A. band romps through power chord after power chord while Hoppus sings sensitive, surefire lines like, “Baby come on.” The best part of this band is the banter, “(guitarist) Shane Gallagher likes to cut his hair like Britney Spears.” (He’s bald. Har-har.)

Now, the exception to the rule and perhaps our hope for the future: Fall Out Boy, the emissaries of emo who wittingly nabbed their moniker from the Simpsons. (Fall Out Boy was Radioactive Man’s sidekick.) This Chicago four-piece added all kinds of lights, flames, streamers and explosions to a show that could have been just as successful without the hoopla. The reason: The songs are well-crafted, interesting and exciting compositions, topped with ample wit, humor and irony. In other words, the music could stand alone.

“This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race” is a perfect example. This infectious concoction is also a stirring anthem; played live or on the radio, it changes the room; it demands fist pumping and shouting; it gets blood flowing.

The same could be said of “One & Only,” a song from “Timbaland Presents Shock Value” that supposedly features Fall Out Boy, but the way FOB plays it, the song its own. To make it even better, bassist Pete Wentz and guitarist Joe Trohman snuck out to the sound stage to play the song while standing on top of a Honda. Of course, the young girls went crazy, sending high-pitched shrieks into the ears of whatever journalist happened to be standing nearby.

It was more than these two hits. FOB played a full set of rip-roaring rock ‘n’ roll (”Sugar We’re Goin’ Down,” “The Carpal Tunnel of Love,” “Thnks fr th Mmrs,” to name some high points) that breathed new life into the genre. They even reconstituted Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” That’s food for the soul.

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Cobra Starship, Bring It (Snakes on a Plane.), Sam Jackson, The Academy Is …, +44, Fall Out Boy, Chicago, This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race, FOB, Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, Honda, Sugar We’re Goin’ Down, The Carpal Tunnel of Love, Thnks fr th Mmrs, Michael Jackson, Beat It

Pete Wentz is the type of character that feeds the fuel of gossip sites.

He’s the heartthrob bassist of pop-punk band Fall Out Boy. Nude photos of him surfaced on the Internet last year. He’s dating wannabe-punk princess Ashlee Simpson. And he wears loads of black eyeliner.

But as much as it would inevitably get tiresome to be the focus of packs of paparazzi and have your life dissected by celebrity bloggers, Wentz is able to be philosophical about it all.

Speaking over the phone from Milwaukee, where he was gearing up for another show on the band’s summer tour - which brings them to Vancouver tonight - Wentz initially criticized celebrity bloggers such as Perez Hilton, but then changed his tune to admit that he’s not all that different from them.

“I guess there’s something to be said for how much of a life can you really have from just making money off of other people’s misery,” he says in a slightly strained and tired-sounding voice. “But then again, when I read the words that I write, I think that’s probably what I do a lot of the time, too, is make money off of other people’s misery.”

Wentz, 28, writes the bulk of the lyrics to Fall Out Boy’s songs and says sometimes the easiest way to generate powerful lyrics is to feed off human despair, much like the bloggers.

“Sometimes it’s easy to gut yourself or gut other people when you’re writing songs and I think that it’s a lot harder to be truly introspective or tell a good story that’s real.”

Wentz is humble and relaxed over the phone. There is little ego or defensive insecurity leaking through. He sounds like a guy who’s had some battles with fame and emerged a little beaten up, but is now able to brush off unwanted attention and mean-spirited criticism.

In early 2005, Wentz took a near-lethal dose of the anti-anxiety drug Ativan while sitting in his sister’s car in a mall parking lot on the outskirts of Chicago, where he grew up. The overdose came a few months before the band released its breakthrough album, From Under the Cork Tree, which landed Fall Out Boy on Billboard’s Top 10.

The band was formed in 2001 when Wentz and his good friend Joe Trohman - lead guitarist - met Patrick Stump, who was still in high school. Stump, 23, initially filled the role of drummer, but soon became lead singer.

Infinity on High was released earlier this year and hit the top spot on Billboard within its first week. The album is a fast-paced, guitar-heavy, angst-filled romp that has elements of punk, metal and pop - a combination that Wentz acknowledges has the ability to both attract and repel listeners.

“We’re one of those bands that’s like a lightning rod for people to love or hate. There’s people who hate to love us and there’s people who love to hate us and I think the new record, if anything, only solidifies that,” he says. “We really have no qualms about wanting to be the biggest rock band on the planet and we have a long way to go.

“There are a lot of bands that are a lot bigger than us right now and have the ability to reach a lot more people and have a greater legacy, or whatever, but at the same time, we wrote this record to be heard in arenas and possibly even one day in stadiums.”

The band is playing at the Pacific Coliseum Thursday night and Wentz says the show will be full of surprises.

“We were trying to put on the biggest rock show that we possibly could and we reached for some things that I think are right at the edge of our grasp but so far they’ve been going pretty well - knock on wood.”

Asked for specifics on those “things,” Wentz suddenly got protective of his show. “I can’t go into too much detail because for the most part we’re trying to keep them as surprises,” he says.

As hints, he says the big idea for the show came after the band watched The Prestige - a film about competitive magicians - and after they saw an old interview with Michael Jackson in which he clarified that the Moonwalk is an illusion rather than a dance move.

While the show might be filled with illusions, Fall Out Boy’s fame and success has little to do with smoke and mirrors. Wentz realizes his public image is something of a caricature of himself, but he wisely says that as long as he can keep a sense of humour it won’t get to him.

“Anyone can become a parody of themselves … I think that it’s better when you can start laughing about that before other people do.”

Source.

This is quite a different interview from the norm. While it is still Pete-based news, I found this satisfying to read. But is he sincere?

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The hottest party of the night Friday, June 22, had to be at Axis/Radius nightclub in Old Town Scottsdale. That’s because Fall Out Boy’s undeclared spokesman and notorious ruckus-causer bassist, Pete Wentz, took care of the ones and twos for a DJ set at the club.

Wentz came to the venue after his band’s concert at Cricket Pavilion, where the pop-punk outfit headlined the Honda Civic Tour.

Wentz ditched his ever-present hoodie for a more hipster look while he DJed, wearing a gray vest over a black T-shirt and sporting a black baseball cap.

His Fall Out Boy set ended at about 10:45 p.m., and he arrived at the club looking spiffy a little after midnight. For an hour and a half, the music was under Wentz’s control, as he played a banging mix of oldies and new hits.

Wentz kept the music pretty pure, opting to play about one-and-a-half minute segments of songs without much alteration to the beats.

His talent lied in the sequence of the songs, as he transitioned between contemporary artists like Gwen Stefani and Nelly Furtado and older hits by Michael Jackson and Bon Jovi. The songs flowed well because beats matched up in unique ways, and Wentz’s selection was very impressive.

Axis/Radius is usually known for having more present-day hip-hop and pop hits, but the packed dance floor and just-as-congested upstairs embraced the older songs by Journey and even Nirvana.

Wentz brought an energy that just made everything work, and people sang along and threw their hands up throughout the set.

While there were a couple of emo-looking girls in the crowd showing off their tattoos and Hot Topic garb, and fans clamoring near the DJ booth snapping pictures, most of the clubgoers looked like typical Axis/Radius fare, dressed up trendily.

It seemed like most clubbers were unaware of who Wentz was - let alone that he was DJing there - possibly because many Fall Out Boy fans are underage.

Wentz didn’t talk to any of the fans; he just focused on his music, staring at his computer, listening in his earphones and singing along to the songs he chose.

His friend Gabe Saporta, lead singer of Fall Out Boy opener Cobra Starship, was another story, though. Saporta danced with and hugged plenty of fans, plus he posed for several pictures. He also hyped up the crowd by wildly throwing his hands up during every song and singing along.

Fall Out Boy drummer Andy Hurley was also spotted sitting down at a VIP table on the floor near the DJ booth. His table was left alone for the most part.

Axis/Radius was probably a great place for Wentz to DJ considering he wasn’t bothered and got to focus on his music, which the crowd seemed to eat up.

Fall Out Boy should be back on the road this fall, so Wentz may be back in a Valley booth soon.

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Rage Against the Machine and the Smashing Pumpkins are among the acts set to headline this year’s Voodoo Music Experience.

Other featured acts include Wilco, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, Sinead O’Connor, Fall Out Boy, Mute Math, Plain White T’s and The Black Crowes.

The three-day festival at City Park opens Oct. 26.

Some 90,000 fans attended last fall’s festival, headlined by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Duran Duran. That turnout prompted organizers to expand the event from two days to three. The festival also ran three days in 2003.

Steve Rehage, whose company, Rehage Entertainment Inc., produces the Voodoo Music Experience, said he’s proud of the lineup. It’s one he hopes “demands national attention and makes people think, `Wow, cool things still happen in New Orleans. Let’s go.’”

Source.

Great line-up for Voodoo this year, and Fall Out Boy just makes it better. Anyone going? For some more information, check out Voodoo Music Experience on the web.

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Voodoo Music Experience, Fall Out Boy, Plain White T’s, festival, City Park

Every dissection of the band Fall Out Boy should probably begin with whether or not you think bassist Pete Wentz is a loser or a genius.

On one side is a deafening chorus of critics who see Wentz as a business-first, pop-punk poseur who takes nude self-portraits, vogues in fashion ads, pals around with online gossipmonger Perez Hilton and has dated Ashlee Simpson and Lindsay Lohan.

On the other is an even more vocal nation of teens and tweens who see Wentz as the handsome, brilliant and charismatic leader of the most influential rock band of the MySpace generation. Fall Out Boy headlines the Honda Civic Tour at the Tacoma Dome on Wednesday.

“You go on Web sites that have what people think of Pete, and it’s not always good,” said Andy Hurley, Fall Out Boy’s drummer and a longtime friend of Wentz’s, in a phone interview from Scotland, where the band was tuning up for its tour. “Obviously he’s got really magnetic looks and a magnetic personality. He’s definitely the most outspoken out of all of us. But I just think he’s an idea man who has so many ideas, constantly, that you just can’t deny someone like that.”

Buoyed by thunderous guitars, Wentz’s witty lyrics and singer Patrick Stump’s frantic but soulful warble, the Chicago foursome has ascended to punk royalty since 2003, when the guys released their first album, “Take This To Your Grave,” on Tampa’s Fueled by Ramen Records.

The band’s breakthrough album, “From Under The Cork Tree,” sold 2.5 million copies, spawned the insatiably catchy hits “Dance, Dance” and “Sugar, We’re Going Down,” earned the band a Best New Artist Grammy nod and helped it snag 1.8 million MySpace friends.

In March, as the band’s new album, “Infinity On High,” debuted at No. 1, the guys landed simultaneous covers of Spin and Rolling Stone.

In his spare time, Wentz has created a clothing line, a glitzy nightclub in New York’s East Village and a film company. And his record label, Decaydence – an imprint of Fueled by Ramen – has spawned a slew of megaselling bands like Panic! At the Disco and Gym Class Heroes.

Because of Wentz’s visibility, Madison Avenue now sees Fall Out Boy as a mainline to the teenage marketplace. The band has high-profile sponsorship deals with Nokia, Verizon, Tag Body Spray and Honda, and Wentz has modeled for the Gap and DKNY.

It is telling that Jay-Z, president and CEO of Def Jam Recordings, has become a mentor to Wentz. And Wentz has made no secret of the fact that he wants to become a Def Jam-like corporate entity.

“I want to create a culture people are interested in,” he told Spin in March. “Our singles matter. Our videos matter. The clothes we wear matter. I want it to be this culture, the way Def Jam used to be.”

Does it matter to fans that Wentz is so candid about his corporate aspirations?

“It is a weird line to have to balance,” Hurley says. “But I think when you get to a certain point in a band, especially our band, you have to make sacrifices like that in order to reach more kids. I think we’ve been able to do it in a way where we’ve had the right people working with us and letting us do what we want to do, and letting us bring our vision to fruition.”

In other words, as long as the band keeps churning out hits, and as long as the Pete Wentz brand remains white-hot, Fall Out Boy will have free reign over the pop-punk landscape and possibly beyond.

“I want to be the biggest band on the planet,” Wentz told Rolling Stone in March.

Notice he didn’t say “we.”

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Well, I spotted this in Seventeen magazine. These are dating tips from Pete himself. Enjoy.

Read His Body Language

You can definitely tell who’s interested in you and who’s platonic by paying attention to how a guy moves around you. When I was in high school, my thing was to get as close as humanly possible to a girl and just make her have to kiss me! You do the hug that’s too close, where your mouth is close to hers and you kinda feel it out a little bit.

Get Out There

You’re gonna meet tons of different people throughout your life, and it’s totally worth it to stick your neck out a little bit if you like someone. Even when you get shot down, it seems really devastating, but it’s not in the long run. That’s one of the things I really wish I had been able to tell myself in high school: “Man, it’s not really the end of the world that you’re single. It’s your time to figure out what’s right for you.”

Take a Chance

Sometimes the person that is best for you is the person right under your nose. I wanted to have a girlfriend in high school, and I know I would have treated a girl well, but instead I was just friends with a lot of girls. They ended up telling me later on, “We’re so perfect together,” but at the time I wasn’t the cool-enough guy. It’s important to look past superficial stuff, like whether the guy hangs out with popular kids. It’s worth it to go after the black sheep!

Make Out if You Want

To me, it’s not really that big of a deal. I think that it’s cool when people can feel free with that kind of thing. I’m pretty much a prude other than that, so I don’t feel bad about myself. I remember my first kisses with a lot of people, and they’re rad experiences. And you don’t have to really take it to that next level because that’s what keeps it exciting.

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“So to avoid any confusion- we made a new video for our song “the take over…”. it is a low budget video that we made just to tide everyone over until we get the next one done. its pretty much just an internet video. pretty simple. hopefully you like it. the idea behind it is pretty much the perception we all have of ourselves versus the perception the world has of us…. maybe its a bit more dimwitted as it involves a puppy’s perspective too. check out the link over at absolutepunk.net or www.friendsorenemies.com - we’ll be working on the next big video in july.

for what its worth. this video is just supposed to be fun, so dont read too much into it. we came up with it on the spot.”

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Fall Out Boy sure can pump out some videos, there’s no doubt about that. Other bands I’ve followed take long breaks between making music videos. Ahh, another reason to enjoy FOB.

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