The whole band obsession started when I was about 17, you know how it is, have a fight with the parentals, you feel sorry for yourself and you turn up the stereo and lose yourself in your music for awhile.
Well that’s how it started with me I was having a shit time at home fighting constantly with my mother, and mum and I had a screaming match which got me kicked out of home for the millionth time.
So I went to a mates place and she gave me a cd and told me to listen to it…
Now trust me I wasn’t into that emo/rock stuff from the beginning, I thought it was a load of crap for un stable emotional fucks who couldn’t deal with life so they cut themselves to the sad feel sorry for yourself lyrics….
I was a real over opinionated kid, I still probably am, but I think ive gotten better, tough shit if I haven’t I suppose.
Anyways so I was given this bloody burnt cd because we were all broke as shit so legally buying a cd was just a joke, I eventually listened to the cd and that’s when it happened, I honestly cant tell you what it was about the sound, what it was about the lyrics, from that one time at age 17 Thirty Seconds To Mars became my favourite band.
After listening to A Beautiful Lie - their 2nd album I decided to go and buy - yep I used my youth allowance and bought their 1st self titled album!
Then I became engrossed in my music life, that became my reality for so long because my real life was so bad that I didn’t want to feel anything apart from the emotions the songs gave to me.
Everyone noticed the change in me, even I did, it wasn’t that I became a recluse and didn’t socialise it was kind of the opposite i became alive.
When I was 15 - 16 I got really bad depression.
-when I was a child I had a fucked up father who beat the shit out of my mother, then my step mother, killed a guy went to court over it and got away with it, then ‘dedicated’ his life to God and pretended to be a good man. Haha the bullshit of it all still amazes me to this day, the man was still running around beating the shit out of my then step mother, he was still moving drugs around for the gangs he was affiliated with, once every two years when id actually see the man, he’d emotionally bully my sister and I.
Then my mothers former boy friend was a child molester (clearly no one knew it at the time) and I was too young to know what was going on and once I figured it out I became an angry fucked up unstable teenager who hated life and didn’t want to be apart of it anymore.
This shit was all before MARS.
So after quitting school going on suicide watch and counselling for over a year I started to appreciate living again, at 17 I went back to school, started making friends and learnt how to smile!
I mean sure life was still fucked up, but you just some how get through, because you know even though you might be feeling the lowest of the low and your life might be the shittest its ever been, there is still others out in the world worse off and you just figure out life is a major learning curb, and even though I was learning some really horrible lessons really early on, better to learn them then than now… right?
So MARS became a major part of my life, they were having a concert in Sydney at the end of 06 and I was hell bent on getting there, they sold out by the time we got our internet to work, so I had to go on eBay and buy 2 of the scalped tickets, so it was hella $$ but in my eyes seeing them is worth their combined weight in gold!
So I buy the tickets (still on my centrelink pay - because I was a lazy mother fucker who thought that school was enough and I deserved to get paid for sitting on my arse rather than getting paid because I worked hard.)
Unfortunately the concert was on the same time some of my final exams were on so I wasn’t able to make it.
That sucked a major penis!
But I started going on the Thirty Seconds To Mars official site were you could talk to other fans and I started talking to people from all over the world on Kyte and Twitter even on face book!
It was like a new beginning! New friends, new time, more positive energy.
Speaking to these people was the one place I really felt like I belonged (as lame and as corny as that may sound)
But everyone was there for the exact same reason, the love of the music! The great music!
We all felt something when we sat down and listened to the songs, something powerful enough for us to all come together and be like a little dysfunctional worldwide family!
Then the Echelon received the email about the LA summits, and while we were friggen excited for all the lucky buggers who got to go, the rest of us were still disappointed that we couldn’t be apart of the AWESOME experience of being on the THIS IS WAR album!
But we should have known the guys would have done something brilliant, we should have known that they would have wanted anyone from WHERE EVER in the world to be apart of the MARS magic.
The Echelon receive another email… The global and Digital summits!!
Holy.bucket.of.shit……
This I HAD to go too!
But work was over the top with people being sick or on holidays so I knew id have to make up a really good excuse to be able to go…
So I made up a cousins wedding… and I flew all the way down to Sydney Australia to stay in a hotel with 3 strangers and we all had the BEST time!!
We rocked up to the digital summit and there were about 30 others hanging around waiting to join in on the good stuff, channel V came over and interviewed us and we all rambled on about our favourite songs and why Thirty Seconds To Mars are so special to us.
Then it was time, we all signed some waivers and we walked into the studio to be greeted by a friendly dude who put the LA summit video on and showed us what to do!
After about an hour or two it was all over, but holy shit it was the most surreal and fantastic thing id ever been apart of and I know all the girls I met there felt the same!
Once again id met some amazing people through the greatest band alive!
So in 2009 I decided I wanted to live in America for a year, now the only way I was really able to do that was with the work experience I had from Australia - childcare….
So I became an Au Pair and moved to America in October 09.
I’d studied childcare studies for 2 years in Australia whilst finishing my last years of school and I worked for a year and a half in a childcare centre before I left for America.
Trust me I really didn’t wanna come to America to look after someone elses kids fulltime but I used the work experience I had to get me to the country where I wanted to go too!
All through my childhood America seemed like the most interesting, perfect place to live! So once I was old enough naturally I figured out how to get here!
By the time I’d flown over to America and got settled in, Thirty Seconds to Mars’s 3rd album This Is War was about to be released!
I was going to be able to see them for the first time in America!
Can I get a FUCK YEAH!!
So with the friends id made on the internet - lol, we starting doing promo, getting sent stickers and posters and we put them all over the city I even sent stuff over to Australia for my family to stick places!
December 09 rolled around and MARS announced that they were going to do a few concerts around the US before they embarked oh their 2010 THIS IS WAR tour.
After a five minute very convincing conversation with my good friend Tashia I decided I was going to fly from PA to Cleveland Ohio for my first ever MARS concert!
So in the middle of a shitty snow storm I flew over to Ohio, well after being delayed for hours thinking I wasn’t even going to get there, I landed in Cleveland and got picked up by my MARS ‘mom’ Wendy!
I met up with Tashia at Wendy’s and there were a few other girls there and we all signed each others year books and decided to go to the House of Blues and start doing some decent promo before the concert that night.
Once we got there we started handing out posters and stickers to the SHIT LOADS of people who were there hours before the concert even began!
It was INSANE! It was amazing!
Tash and I were talking to some girl about doing more promo when Jared Leto himself strolled out of the kitchen and came over and said hello!
He asked us how we were, and that he’d see us later on that night.
Then after that we went outside and met Shannon Leto, gave him a hug and got our pictures taken with him!
That was awesome!
Hadn’t even seen them play and I had already met two of the band members!
After that it was pretty much time to line up and get ready for the shit fight for a good mosh pit position!
Fucking hilarious…
But we ended up getting a decent position on the left hand side of the area so we were right in front of Tomo playing!
The concert was fanfuckingtastic no word of a lie, it was the best concert I’ve seen!
And I’ve been to a few!
I also might be slightly biased but who gives a shit in my mind they rocked that place out hardcore!
After that concert I was on the biggest high for the next week, you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.
Then life went back to normal, working, eating, sleeping, hanging out with the girls.
All the usual boring shit.
A few months ticked by whilst we all impatiently waited for the US tour dates to come out!
Then finally at the end of Feb or Early March 2010 we got the email!!
The day the US tour dates came out I stalked the MARS page the entire morning waiting for the 10am presale to start!
The girls that I went and stayed with at the Cleveland concert decided that we were going to go to 5 of the East Coast concerts!
We bought tickets to see them in Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, NY and Philly.
I’m taking a week off work to have a massive MARS road trip with my newly found American friends!
Whilst we’re in Toronto we are going to help build a house with Habitat For Humanity!
Yesterday we also got told that there will be another concert in NJ the day after the NY one so we’re now also considering going to that one also.
I know it seems nuts to most people to spend your whole entire months wages on going to see the same Band 5 or 6 times in one week, and yeah maybe it is, but for right now, all these little adventures keep life interesting and worth being apart of!
