Falling in: Local Music | North Shore heroes Fall Out Boy are as surprised as you are

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(Free-Press-Release.com) April 9, 2007 -- A few hours before showtime at Metro on Valentine's Day, the members of the chart-topping pop-punk band Fall Out Boy were gearing up to treat their hometown to a second buzz-building, under-the-radar club show celebrating the release of their fourth album, "From Infinity on High."

Then, they'd played a morning show in New York, an afternoon gig at Chicago's House of Blues and an evening concert on a rooftop in Los Angeles, with an MTV camera crew trailing them every step of the way.

The Metro show was greeted with just as much media frenzy: The record company thought it would be a good idea for journalists to see the group in its old stomping grounds, and the musicians spent several hours before the show talking to writers who'd flown in from England, Europe and South America. By the end of the month, the quartet would also appear on the covers of Spin and Rolling Stone magazines.

"Dude -- a familiar face!" one of the musicians said when I finally got my turn for an audience, and we reminisced about the first time I interviewed them, as they were hauling their amps offstage after a sparsely attended showcase at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, back in 2003.

The group has come a long way since then: It is now the most successful and famous rock band that Chicago has produced since the Smashing Pumpkins in the mid-'90s.

Fall Out Boy's 2005 breakthrough, "From Under the Cork Tree," sold 3 million copies. Its new disc debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart
Eight weeks after its release, it was certified platinum with a million copies sold, and it has yet to fall out of the Top 10.

Nevertheless, for the first 15 minutes, all the musicians wanted to talk about was how, the morning after the Grammys, they managed to catch a short performance by the Police during the press conference announcing that band's summer reunion tour.

"That was unbelievable -- the best thing ever!" 22-year-old guitarist Joe Trohman gushed.

"Joe, [drummer] Andy [Hurley] and I somehow snuck into the line for that press event, and there was [Roots drummer and R&B producer] ?uestlove standing there, so we said to him, 'Come with us!' " recalled singer Patrick Stump, also 22. "None of us were even supposed to be in there, but somehow we got to stand right in front of the stage, and no one came to kick us out. Afterwards, we were eating dinner with ?uestlove, and he was like, 'Wow, man! I can't believe we did that!' And we were like, 'No kidding! But we can't believe we're sitting here with ?uestlove, either!' "

Of course, it isn't all glitz and glamour. "Yeah, but we also went to the Clive Davis [Grammy] party the other night," Pete Wentz reminded his bandmates. "We didn't have enough money for the valet, so we parked four blocks away. We rolled in wearing hoodies, and we didn't stop to think that it was a black-tie event. They let us in, because we bombarded our way through the red-carpet people. But it wasn't long after that that we got asked to leave."

Leave it to the band's 27-year-old bassist, lyricist, designated heartthrob and perpetually brooding poetic soul to keep things in perspective. The four members of Fall Out Boy may now be superstars, with Wentz by far the most recognizable. But one of their charms is that they still have the aura of scrappy punks who've crashed a party where they don't belong, and part of their appeal is that they're taking fans with them.

Source: http://www.msn.com

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