By Monk and David Stewart
Bowling For Soup must rate as one of the hardest working bands on the scene, with frontman Jaret Ray Reddick in particular seeming to never sleep, what with his multiple side projects and almost non-stop collaborations. Hell, he even managed to fit in two solo shows around this short run of rescheduled dates which saw the pop punk legends fulfill their longstanding promise to an audience who missed out, due to various logistical difficulties, on their last trip to the Über Kingdom…
First up on the night was Thomas Ian Nicholas, who as well as being a singer, is also a songwriter, film producer and actor. Some of you may know him better as Kevin Myers from the ‘American Pie’ series of movies.
Nicholas played an almost 30 minute acoustic set which consisted of songs from his fourteen year career in music. As well as original material, he also performed a cover of the Blink 182 hit ‘All The Small Things’, which the crowd absolutely loved and sang along to, from start to finish. He finished his set with a song that he has recorded with Bowling For Soup, which is a version of their own hit song ‘1985’. This song though is an American Pie version of the song, titled ‘1999’, which was the year that the movie was released.
This was a great start to the night as he was very entertaining and the people in attendance were really into his performance.
Next up were the four piece, independent, female fronted and unapologetically alternative rock band, hailing out of Nottingham, England, As December Falls. This is a band that I came across during lockdown and their story is an interesting one. They formed in 2014 and despite being continuously advised about working with promoters and bookers to be able to get anywhere in the music business, the band decided to go it alone and do things their own way.
Since their inception they have released two EPs and in 2019 released their self titled debut album, as well as a follow up album last year entitled ‘Happier’. The band has also played a number of festival dates including Slam Dunk and Burn It Down. On top of that, they have also had two sell out ÜK tours under their belt and are slotted to play Download Festival and Takedown Festival in 2023. So I guess that it does sometimes pay not to listen.
As December Falls played a 30 minute set of great alternative rock that at times has a very poppy punk vibe to it. The band were very tight and have a great chemistry together on stage, not to mention that Bethany Hunter’s vocals are just sublime. Their set was high energy from the moment that they took to the stage, to the moment the last note was played.
If you have never seen or heard this band I strongly recommend that you check them out, especially if you are a fan of Paramore or The Pretty Reckless.
Finally, on the agenda tonight were headliners Bowling For Soup. To be honest, this didn’t feel like a concert but instead, felt more like a huge get together of friends for one hell of a party. What happened over the next 80 minutes was none stop fun and great uplifting pop punk music that you just couldn’t help but get into. The band sounded great and was in humorous form with some fun little anecdotes and jokes along the way. Some of which I won’t put in this article, just encase there are any younger readers.
The show started with the BFS theme which then went into their opening song ‘Almost’. Part of the way through the set singer Jaret Reddick mentioned about The Cure playing here in Belfast on the same night, which led the band into doing a cover of The Cure’s 1987 hit ‘Just Like Heaven’, which coincidentally was The Cure’s first American hit.
The band only played one song from their current album ‘Pop Drunk Snot Bread’, that being ‘I Wanna Be Brad Pitt’. The rest of the set consisted of great songs and all of the memorable ones over their almost 30year career, including ‘The Bitch Song’, ‘Punk Rock 101’, ‘The Last Rock Show’, ‘Shut-Up And Smile, ‘1985’, the theme from the Disney animated show ‘Phineas And Ferb’ and finishing with what Jaret Reddick described as their most famous song ever, ‘Girl All The Bad Guys Want’.
A damn good night of fun, great music and one hell of a party you will certainly regret missing out on when it comes around again in the not too distant future.
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