If you’re one of the lucky ones to have acted fast when Twenty One Pilots announced months ago they would play the Tucson Arena on Sunday, Feb. 19, you will find yourself surrounded by true fans.
Some of them discovered the band back in 2013 when it played a show at The Rock near the University of Arizona. Some of them go back a few years before that when the duo was a trio.
True fans listened to bootlegs and YouTube videos of the hip-hop/pop-rocking duo while the rest of the world focused on Top 40 radio. If they weren’t taking note in the beginning when Tyler Joseph and two Columbus, Ohio, buddies — Nick Thomas and Chris Salih — first got together in 2009, they started to when Thomas and Salih left in 2011 and former House of Heroes drummer Josh Dun slipped in. That’s when things started getting interesting.
True fans don’t really like those of us who fell in love with Twenty One Pilots on the back of their 2015 breakthrough hits “Stressed Out” and “Ride” from the pair’s sophomore album on Atlantic Records imprint Fueled by Ramen. It’s the same label that brought us Panic! at the Disco, Paramore and Young the Giant — alternative rock and pop acts that have made significant impacts on mainstream radio.
If you are a real johnny-come-late-to-the-Twenty-One-Pilots-Party — people who had a vague reference to the duo from “Stressed Out” but really fell for them with their latest single “Heathens” — you are, in the words of diehard fans, posers.
