In front of the white stone steps of Kenan Auditorium, freshman Rhema Easley is first in line to see Gym Class Heroes, the band ACE booked for this year's spring show at UNCW.
She's been first for almost four hours. There are almost 200 people lined up behind her, and half of those were here over an hour early. Many are students, but there are others in the crowd, older and younger. A mom carries a tray of empty Cook Out cups to the trash can. A large man in a bright green t-shirt, in his 30s or 40s, complains about his place in line to everyone, and to no one in particular. A little boy no more than ten with black hair and freckles sucks down some water from a Dasani bottle, the heel of his Adidas barely touching the pavement. A teenage girl, jet black bangs across her forehead, is wearing a Gym Class Heroes t-shirt.
Students, kids, teenagers, moms and dads, interspersed with working class fans in their 20s. The gang's all here.
WHERE THE LINE BEGINS
Rhema sits on a longboard, using her boots to slide back and forth on the sidewalk ... a few inches to the left, a few to the right. Her skin is dark brown, her eyes are dark brown, and her hair is dark brown, almost black, in long thin braids pulled back from her face. She stands, her too-big long-sleeve crisp white tunic wrinkles, and she brushes away a gnat who came to visit her. The sun is falling behind her as she jokes with her friends. Birds that rest high above the skinny trunks of pines across the street laugh with her.
But Rhema steals glances at the students in green t-shirts, waiting for those front doors to open, her ticket in hand.
Standing behind Rhema is Caitlyn Fergeson, who studies theatre at Mt. Olive College. She's been listening to Gym Class Heroes since the eighth grade. Caitlyn always wanted to come to UNCW. Now that she's seen the place, she's thinking of transferring. The beautiful weather isn't dissuading her in the least.
"It's so spread out," she says, "I thought there were a lot more students here."
She's blonde, her hair streaked with blue and barely touching her shoulders. The strap of her sports bra is neon pink, matching the white and pink t-shirt that hangs over her jean shorts. She wears glasses, the frames plastic and black.
Her boyfriend, Christopher Ballance, whose friends call him Topher, is an amateur comedian at ECU and a business management major. He's a head taller than Caitlyn, in a large red M&Ms t-shirt, his dark hair curly and close to his scalp. He describes himself as a casual fan that came along for the ride.
"Will call on the left, please," shouts an ACE volunteer, and the long line splits in two.
Caitlyn and Topher are separated by a three or four yards, but the crowd is so loud that they can't hear each other, so they whip out their cell phones and face towards each other like they're whispering into each other's ears. Topher makes a heart with his fingers after they hang up.
THE DOORS ARE OPEN
Once Rhema's ticket is in ACE's hands, she runs past them, smiling, down the right aisle to the very front row. She snags a red padded seat with her friends and waits for the auditorium to fill.
Caitlyn and Topher take their seats in the front row too, but on the left. Caitlyn is singing into her hand, a pretend microphone, to her boyfriend.
DJ Bigg B from 97.3 The Coast is playing radio hits, and the crowd can't seem to sit down. They're dancing and jumping and shouting and whistling. Bigg B is busy at a turntable on stage, thick white headphones wrapped around his shaved brown head.
The crowd screams for everything Bigg B suggests: for Maroon 5, for the end of spring break, for Nicki Minaj, for Rihanna. He gives shout outs to UNCW students, to Cape Fear students, to graduates, to student orgs, to R.A.s.
"I may be young but I'm ready," the crowd sings a Beyonce song as the volume turns low.
"Two fingers in the air for Whitney," Bigg B shouts to the crowd, his voice booming.
They scream for Whitney Houston, and raise their fingers.
THE SHOW BEGINS
As Bigg B bids the audience farewell and the audience roars their appreciation, band roadies set the stage. The crowd stands up every time the music stops, hoping for the start of the show. When it does, everyone in the front row is on their feet.
Everyone but Rhema.
Her short, red-painted fingernails, all 10, rise to cover her mouth. Her eyes, magnified by her glasses, widen and tear. She can't bring herself to stand.
"I'm so overwhelmed, I can't stop my legs from shaking!" she shouts.
All of a sudden, lead singer Travie McCoy is chewing gum between the lyrics of "Cookie Jar." His eyes light up and widen with each line, showing more white than brown. His hair is contained in a mud-green beanie, which accentuates his facial expressions, captivating the crowd.
Tattoos leak from the edges of his army shorts and gray hoodie. His Nike sneaker is on a speaker towards the front of the stage as he leans down, serenading the audience, his left hand pulling the meaning out of his chest like a string coming out of his heart.
Eric Roberts, stage right, is wearing a slightly darker beanie. His face is more righteous as his hands flourish after every line of bass. The black hoodie and black t-shirt make his dark olive skin a shade paler. His eyes close. He's in the moment, almost too in the moment. Eric's entire body pauses after each note, as if they are stopping the world with awesomeness.
But soon the moment is gone, and stage left is filled with the sounds of Disashi Lumumba-Kasongo's electric guitar. In a white t-shirt that hangs from his lean shoulders and a white bandana across his forehead, his almost-black skin looks a shade darker. There is a white pick between his fingers at the end of his long, thin arms. When he plays, his right arm resembles a dark brown wrench, moving up and down across the body of the guitar.
Disashi is all straight lines and points, except for his hands. His hands are like rattles shaking across the strings.
Rays of blue light color the smoke that falls to the floor behind drummer Matt McGinley, whose lips are turned upward in a blissful smile as he rocks out, his hair thrashing with the beat.
IN COMES THE POWER
Their energy never wanes, song after song. Travie is jumping across the shallow pit where the photographers are standing to get closer to the crowd. He's crouching on the floor and singing to the hardwood. He's resting his head on the microphone like it might forgive him of his sins.
"When he jumped right down into the audience he was literally five feet away from me," says Rhema. She was star-struck.
After the first few songs, Travie wipes the sweat from his face with a black towel, takes a swig of water from a bottle near Matt's drums, pulls the right side of his beanie down over his eyebrow, and picks up his shorts with lanky arms. That's all the break he needs before he's back at the microphone.
"Its time we start taking advantage of each other's company," Travie says between songs, "I want you to give the person next to you the biggest (expletive) hug in your life." The crowd, already standing, obliges. The young, the old and the in-between embrace.
"You didn't have to do that, but you did, and we absolutely love you for it," Travie says, "Welcome to the family."
It was a powerful moment, a moment that, outside of Kenan's walls, might not even exist. It swept up through the rows of the auditorium like wildfire, even towards the back, where Tonya Biba and her son Jax, eight years old, are sitting in the last row.
"This reminds me of when I was in school, when I was a kid. For all you out there ... who had every one of your flaws pointed out to you ... anyone who has ever been bullied," says Travie, introducing their hit, "The Fighter."
"This is for the people who can't defend themselves. Keep your fists up," he says.
The lyrics catch hold of the audience, and the floor of Kenan is drinking tears.
"But I do it for the kids life threw the towel in on. Every time you fall it's only making your chin strong," Travie sings.
And then his past jumps into his throat, and you can hear his proud heart pounding.
"If I can last thirty rounds, there's no reason you should ever have your head down. Six-foot-five, two hundred and twenty pounds, hailing from rock bottom, Loserville, nothing town."
By song's end, Jax is standing on the back of his seat trying to catch a glimpse of the stage, and Tonya's right arm is around his shoulders, balancing him, as they both throw their fists in the air.
Travie and Disashl sing "Billionaire," Disashl holds his right hand over his heart when he mentions Oprah and the Queen in the first lyrics of the song. Then, the audience is given the chance to sing the entire chorus.
"I wanna be a billionaire so (expletive) bad, buy all of the things I never had," the lyrics fill the auditorium. "I wanna be on the cover of Forbes magazine, smiling next to Oprah and the Queen."
Even the moms in the room know the lyrics to this song. In the sixties, Americans sang for freedom. In the '70s, they sang for drugs. In the '80s, they sang for expression.
This audience, full of students, parents and the working class of Wilmington, is singing about money, reflecting how hard the economy's downturn has hit each of them.
THE FANS SHOW THEIR LOVE
"This was his first true concert," says Tonya after the show, "He was really excited to be a part of it. " Tonya has another boy at home, only four years old, and her husband is a graduate of UNCW's Communication Studies program. Since they moved to Wilmington 5 years ago from Charlotte, Tonya says it has been hard to find good music.
"I thought it made it a lot better live than just hearing them on the radio," she said.
Caitlyn from Mt. Olive was equally impressed.
"I'm glad they drew attention to the meaning of 'The Fighter'" she said. "They stood up for the little guys. They stood up for the underdogs."
Christopher, the casual fan, had no expectations coming into the show and felt like Gym Class Heroes had presentation.
"Their interaction with the audience when they sang 'Billionaire' was really cool," he said. "You could tell they've been doing this for a long time, and they were good."
The diverse members of Gym Class Heroes, and their equally diverse sound, a mix of hip-hop, reggae and rock, has brought in an equally diverse crowd to a not-so-diverse campus. With an 82.7 percent white undergraduate population, slightly higher than in 2010, UNCW is among the least diverse of 17 state universities in North Carolina, according to statistics from the UNC System.
In this case, as in the case of many generations, music has brought the people together.
