On the warm summer evening of July 21 Seattle’s Showbox hosted the stellar double bill of Bowling for Soup and Reel Big Fish. This was a show not to be missed.
Bowling for Soup played last and this was my third time seeing them. As much as I enjoyed their last two shows, this one was the best. Their stage personae has grown. Though some might argue this point judging by their elementary humor. But I felt their elementary humor added to their charm and the sheer entertainment of the evening.
Besides the corny humor, Bowling for Soup plays catchy pop tunes with catchy tunes and catchy hooks. Almost every song is an earworm.
At one point each of the four band members told a corny joke that was tantamount to something a second-grader would tell. Then the audience would clap and the joke getting the loudest applause would win. Rob Felicetti (bass guitar) went first with a joke about a drunken giraffe. Though his joke received many raucous applause, but it didn’t hit a spot with me by the longest stretch. I do applaud him for sticking his neck out. It was guitarist Chris Burney who won the most applause with another elementary joke that I’m sure is older than I am.
Lead singer Jaret Reddick said that BFS has been touring the world for 25 years and if anyone in the audience was younger than that he might be their father. He apologized for missing all those Christmases. That joke led into their song High School Never Ends, about people who stop maturing after they leave high school (you still listen to the same sh** you did back then . . . high school never ends).
Toward the end of their set the band gathered at the front of the stage for an audience photo-op, then moved stage right, then left, striking silly poses each time. Then they sat down on the drum riser for awhile before Chris got up and goaded the audience into getting the band to do one more song. That’s when they lit into 1985. I would have been disappointed if they hadn’t done that song as it’s the song that got me into them when I first saw them perform it on the Letterman Show over a decade ago. My son said it was my theme song. Much of it is. I did want to get my hands on any member of Duran Duran, but never aspired to shaking my ass on the hood of Whitesnake’s car and I never rocked out to Wham. Part way through the song, since everyone sang along anyway, the band stopped playing and Jaret announced that the audience could finish singing the song and they’d just go backstage and hang out with the horn section from Reel Big Fish (who had joined them on stage for this song). The audience complied but the band just hung out on stage before coming back and finishing the song, still with the help of the audience. Then it was all over. There was nothing to do but take my sweaty body outside (I don’t think there’s a club in Seattle with decent ventilation).
As mentioned, Reel Big Fish played before Bowling for Soup. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen Reel Big Fish. I’ve seen them headline their own shows and have seen them at countless festivals. They never disappoint. Like Bowling for Soup, they infuse sophomoric humor heavily into their shows, but they also have that rare talent for making sophomoric humor funny. Reel Big Fish is fronted by funny guy Aaron Barrett, who always wears loud Hawaiian shirts. This time he added a white fedora and white-rimmed plastic sunglasses giving him the resemblance of an insect from a cheap sci-fi movie. They opened their set with Everyone Else Is an Asshole, which everyone immediately sang along to. They also played a song or two off their brand new album Life Sucks.
Suburban Rhythm is always played with different musical genres including disco, hard-core punk and even a square dance version, which had the horn section (Billy Kottage – Trombone
John Christianson (Johnny Christmas) – Trumpet, and Matt Appleton – Saxophone (AKA Saxel Rose), dancing about arm in arm in perfect square dance form.
In keeping with the humor, Aaron announced they would play a song that was a huge hit for them in the nineties and lit into the Smash Mouth hit, All Star.
They ended their set with the AHA cover, Take On Me, in which Saxel Rose sang lead as he is the only band member who can hit the high notes.
Opening the evening was a punk band from Chicago calling themselves Mest. Mest was a very energetic band with a lot of power pop overtones reminiscent of Blink 182 or early Green Day. They had everyone on the floor bouncing up and down and crowd surfing. I would love to see them come back to Seattle and headline their own show. They were amazing.
The whole evening was amazing and fun and I would live it all over again tomorrow if I could.
– Photos property of Holly Homan, all rights reserved.
Bowling for Soup
Reel Big Fish
