Soundtracked

Something I'm Not

** Image ID #2070351 Unavailable **
This week's theme: Guilty Pleasures

I guess another qualifier in the Guilty Pleasure Olympics   could come from a band that was more or less a side project of another band that never really reached mainstream success but has a huge underground following anyway and is considered widely influential of some of the bigger pop/rock acts of the last decade.

The Get Up Kids
reggie and the full effect

When a band can basically open for itself, play a high-energy hour and a half-long set, and then put on a dominating, muscular closing performance, I would say you've gotten your money's worth out of that tiny club gig. A Reggie show...that might've been the best concert ever.

See, they're basically the Get Up Kids' keyboardist and a rotating cast of other musicians from other genres and whatever. And on any of their given albums, they can sound like an 80's Eurotrash pop dance band (Fluxuation), a very heavy Finnish death metal alter-ego (Common Denominator- you will go buy a t-shirt!), and the standard Emo punk/pop band singin' about girlfriends, circa the mid-2000's...and that's probably when I saw them, maybe 2004 or 2005.

They opened in costume as Fluxuation...and they mainly addressed the crowd with some humor for about twenty minutes and maybe played two songs, including "Gloves"  . After a short break, the full band came out and for an hour and a half it felt like an honest to goodness pop-punk show in a tiny club...they played straight as Reggie And The Full Effect and I think they were on their fourth album by then, so they could play a solid set of mostly danceable pop/rock stuff. And then, instead of an encore, the entire band came back out shirtless and covered in fake blood for a least a full half-hour set as Common Denominator...loud, angry, glorious and hilarious. Sometimes it's anticlimactic when you kinda know what song a band is gonna close their show with...but when it's "Dwarf Invasion"  , there is no shortage of awesomeness.

I've seen live clips of the band when they're in different costumes and stuff, and it's fun, but it'll never be as amazing as seeing them open, close, and encore a show. I don't think they do that anymore, and it's a damn shame because it's probably the most immersive way to see the band perform songs from all over their varied catalog.

And I think we can all agree that some of us have given up on the idea of "guilty pleasures"...there is nothing wrong with liking something that sounds nothing like   the band that maybe spawned newer, fresher ideas...and there certainly isn't a damn thing guilty about being a fan of something that isn't quite so mainstream but still makes for a good story  . And if the band is super versatile, all the better...especially if it can happen in one song.

"You might have been something I'm not.
You must have said words I forgot."
Lyrics.  

Going to concerts in general is almost always an enjoyable experience...especially if you've got a tight group of people and enough space and everyone's havin' a good time. And when the band is puttin' on a great performance, the entire atmosphere around the venue is amazing...even if it's just a little club gig in a tiny spot with shitty sightlines, and the line to get in and the roped-off area to go outside for a smoke seems like it's more spacious than the front of the actual stage. But that's where you also meet some of the coolest- and weirdest  - people.