Just a five minute drive away, The Glass House is the most reputable concert venue accessible to Pomona students. This venue, located by the Pomona Arts Colony, feels like a small club, but is spacious enough to hold a lot of people. Last week I saw the Plea For Peace Tour, which was my first, but definitely not my last, concert there.

The Plea For Peace Tour consists of bands that are touring with a purpose. The tour, started by Mike Park, the creator of Asian Man Records, chooses a new cause each year and gives all the proceeds of the concert to that cause. This year, the tour raised money for suicide awareness and all profits went to The Hopeline Network–a hotline for suicide prevention.

The headliners of the tour were Hot Water Music, a fairly popular punk band from Florida, and Matt Skiba, the lead singer of the power pop band Alkaline Trio, who played a solo acoustic set. The Selby Tiger, Thrice, Cave-In and Mike Park, all lesser-known punk/indie/hardcore bands, accompanied the main acts.

The Glass House was surprisingly empty for a tour of this size. I’d imagine this was because it was Tuesday and The Glass House tends to draw a high school crowd. Before the show started, a few friends and I decided to go to a nearby Mexican restaurant. The prices were cheap and the food was horrible, but the atmosphere was nice, and the members of the band Cave-In were seated at the table next to ours. One of my friends is from Boston, the band’s hometown, and he started small-talk with some of the band members. Although Cave-In is relatively famous, they acted just like regular college kids.

The Selby Tigers were playing when we arrived. Although the band had a standard set-up of two guitars, a bass guitar and a guy on drums, they did not play like a typical punk rock band. Every band member sang at one point, including the drummer who had vocals in many of the songs.

The band definitely had flare–one guitarist was dressed up in an auto mechanic’s body suit and another guitarist had a shiny silver guitar and her hair was shaped like a black pineapple. The Selby Tigers played a very strong set and I was particularly impressed with the lead singers Arzu’s voice. She was one of the first female vocalists in a punk band that I had ever seen live.

Our dinner friends, Cave-In, played next, but were too cool to recognize, wave, or even bring us up on stage. They had a sound that is very hard to describe. Many of their distorted guitar sounds seem like they could have come from Radiohead, but were much more generic. After Cave-In played, Thrice, a hometown favorite in this area, went on stage.

Everyone in the crowd knew the words to Thrice’s driving songs and were pushing and moshing, trying to get closer to the stage. I liked Thrice’s set and the response to it throughout. It reminded me of my younger days, when I would just go to a concert for the crowd rather than the band itself.

Matt Skiba went up after Thrice. The only reason I even went to this concert was to see Matt Skiba, lead singer of Alkaline Trio, my favorite band. I maneuvered my way into the center of the front row and heard one of the best performances, ever. Although his set was only six songs long, each was performed beautifully on the acoustic guitar and, cliché as it may seem, was more than music. The songs made me think of friends back home and many memories I have associated with Alkaline Trio. I knew every word to every song, and it was beautiful. I really suggest you try listening to Skiba sometime. At the end of the set, he was joined by Hot Water Music and they played my favorite song, Radio, making it one of the best sets I have ever seen.

I really didn’t listen much to Hot Water Music’s set, because Skiba was so good and I didn’t want to taint the experience. Instead I went to the screen that divided the backstage area and the venue. Leaning on it was Arzu, the female vocalist of the Selby Tigers. I told her I thought she had an amazing voice and we exchanged names. Just then I noticed Skiba in the background. I asked Arzu to get him, and when she did, I took off a bracelet that was given to me by a friend back home, who’s a fellow Alkaline Trio fan, and I gave it to Skiba. He ran around the barrier and came out to talk to me. We talked for a bit and then I gave him a hug, because Alkaline Trio’s music means so much to me. Skiba’s breath smelled like alcohol, which in retrospect makes a lot of sense, because many of Alkaline Trio’s songs are about alcoholism.

After the show I had the opportunity to talk to Arzu and Skiba for a little longer and Skiba ended up giving me one of his bracelets and kissed my friend Shannon on the cheek. I kind of felt like a groupie.

My friends who did pay attention to Hot Water Music said it was a really good performance. Hot Water Music is supposed to play at Pomona College in a few months, and I look forward to seeing them and actually enjoying their set.