At the concert at UMBC’s fieldhouse last Friday, Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba dedicated this song to John Waters, substituting “Baltimore” for “San Francisco” in the lyrics. Then he dedicated the next one to … John Waters.

Alkaline Trio was the middle band of the show. This came as some surprise, as only My Chemical Romance was on the bill when we bought the tickets.

The opener was Reggie and the Full Effect, a death-metal band-as-costume headed by James Dewees of the Get Up Kids. Dewees/Reggie came out dressed in purple velour pajamas claiming to be Prince, and threw cheeseburgers he pulled out of his pants into the audience before launching into something really, really, loud. In fact, the only thing that sounded vaguely like a real song was a Slayer cover the band performed.

Then, as my son and I had just about regained our hearing, Alkaline Trio came on to the opening music from “A Clockwork Orange.” They played for almost an hour, and every song was epic.

Finally, around 10:00, MCR took the stage. Gerard Way worked the audience, telling them (us) that they had the potential to be the best audience on the tour (Baltimore was the last US stop). “But you’ve got tough competition…you’re up against San Antonio…”