It’s fair to say that the target audience for tonight at The Regency Grand Ballroom is significantly younger then normal. In fact, looking at the fans that were up against the barricade for tonight’s show every single one of them had the mark of under 21, big Sharpied-on X’s on the tops of both their hands.
Every single band in the line up, all 5 of them, share a fair bit of similarities. They all shop at American Apparel or thrift shops exclusively, they all wear Vans (fact, look at the pictures) other than one guy who wore Nike’s, they all have that perfectly disheveled hair and they all have pants tighter than mine. They also all share a huge amount of energy. Every band tonight had great stage presence and put on a great show.
There are pictures of all 5 bands in the gallery but I am going to just cut to the chase and talk about the last two: sorry Artist Vs Poet, My Favorite Highway and Sing it Loud.
The Rocket Summer is basically Bryce Avary. Avary makes that fairly clear as soon as he comes on stage by first playing some drums, looping them, then moving on to recording a bass loop, and so on, basically saying, “See I really did write all this, watch me play it.” It’s impressive but I saw Rivers Cuomo do that first, none the less, still nice to see someone who has musical know how. I’d say that’s my favorite thing about The Rocket Summer: Avary’s sense of bridging the gap from boring singer-songwriter crap to more upbeat poppy fun to listen to stuff. I first heard The Rocket Summer when that stuff was huge in my world and was really into hellogoodbye as well, and lucky for me in summer of 2005 they were touring together. (yeah, I hella went to that!) Since 2005, I noticed that Avary has both grown some facial hair and had somehow learned how to smile bigger! The highlight of The Rocket Summer’s set was when Avary appeared in the middle of the crowd and played an entire song acoustic. Once he was finished he then crowd surfed back to the stage. It was fairly professional of the crowd, seeing as how it was a good 30 feet to the stage! The incredibly gracious Avary profusely thanked everyone for coming out and wished everyone a great night in hopes they’d come back out to see The Rocket Summer perform next time in town. I think they will. I know I will as I took a liking to Avary. He’s so cute and nice, we could totally be BFF’s!
Forever the Sickest Kids hit the stage running. Literally, they all ran out on stage, but not before a loudspeaker announcement came on asking six boys to report to the principal’s office. Can you guess who those six boys are? No, it wasn’t the Jonas brothers or their clones, it was the sixs members of FTSK. I have to admit that I think that FTSK style is kinda Blink-182 circa Dude Ranch. Dickies swapped with WESC jeans, DC’s for Dunks/ Air Force One’s, pretty much that same, sideways-backwards hats, I suppose youth really is eternal, along with its style. The Audience freaked out once FTSK started to play, it was like a roar of a thousand screaming girls, stuff I’ve only read about on Hayley Williams’ Livejournal or Twitter. However, the commotion only seemed to drive FTSK to perform with more energy. FTSK really know how to get their audience all wound-up and chomping at the bit to get more of them, some of those girls had scary looks on their faces and I was nervous at times to be the only human between them and the stage, however it’s nice to see this for a change. I kind of wish I desired an idol as much as some of these girls do, but as for right now my only idol is my guild leader! FTSK are definitely at the forefront of popular teenage rock music. They have the screaming fans, the promotional deals with awesome Swedish jean companies, and the energetic stage presence to give the Boss a run for his billions of dollars.
In the grand scheme of things FTSK probably are not revolutionary in any way, they’re not going to make you think about deep political activism or make you go vegan, but they are going to try and make sure you have a great time watching them. I can say with confidence that they are going to do whatever they can to make your daughter fall in love with them in the hour and a half they have together, so just go out and buy the posters from Hot Topic now and thank your beloved digital media director later.
Check out the photo gallery to get a visual!
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[Editor’s Note: While Spinning Platters were on the guest list for this show, neither the writer nor the website was paid to drop all of those clothing brands into his review. He just likes clothing brands.]
