I went to the Sonic Symphony World Tour performance in LA! I knew that this would be my best chance to see Crush 40 live, which had been a dream of mine for a while. I figured that they would have the most special guests at the Los Angeles performance and it wasn’t until I was on my way to LA that I got confirmation that the entirety of Crush 40 was going to be there. Crush 40 consists of guitarist and composer Jun Senoue with Johnny Gioeli as the singer. I knew that Jun Senoue was going to be there but I didn’t know Johnny was going to be there until the last minute so I was pretty excited when I got the news.
Because it was a symphony performance I very much wanted to dress up. My partner dressed in a blue suit and slicked his hair back emulating Sonic. I on the other hand went as a fancy female Eggman with a black dress, long red jacket and tiny blue glasses. There were a lot of cosplayers at the event and a lot of people doing the same thing we were. Similar to the game awards it was a mixed bag of people dressing nice and people looking like they rolled out of bed and drove over.
It started with the symphony orchestra playing songs from the older titles to the newer titles with the gameplay in the background. Then after intermission Crush 40 came out and it turned into a rock performance as they sang their most iconic songs. We got a sneak peak of the theme for Sonic SuperStars which at the time had not come out yet. After all that, Kellin Quinn of Sleeping with Sirens and Sonic Frontiers soundtrack fame came on stage. The great thing about Kellins set was that the lyrics for the Sonic Frontiers songs were on the screen because to be honest… I needed them. Of course they saved Live and Learn for last, making us say encore for them to come back on stage. Crush 40 and Kellin Quinn singing Live and Learn together was really phenomenal and a wonderful way to end the night. It was a dream come true to be able to sing Sonic the Hedgehog songs out loud with everyone that night, and I’m happy that I got to check seeing Crush 40 live off my bucket list.
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