Celebrating their 20th anniversary with an extensive tour of the world and special online tracks and 7″ releases all throughout this year, I caught The Bouncing Souls this week in the intimate setting of the smaller stage at the Liverpool O2 Academy. A long term staple of the modern American punk scene and famed for their energetic live shows, everyone there knew they were going to be in for a great night!
The first support act for tonight were local Liverpool lads Chief, who played a fast and riotous set with their melodic hardcore punk music and entertaining between song banter easily getting the early home crowd warmed up. Its refreshing to see such a well rehearsed and tight local band supporting one of the bigger acts in the punk scene, but Chief are definitely that, with the politically motivated punk rock coming across as sincere and impassioned rather than tacky as is it sometimes can seem to the cynics amongst us, but its obvious that these boys aren’t posing, they genuinely have a message to get across, and if this industry was at all sensible and fair, they’d be tipped for the top. A really impressive band, who hopefully in the future will continue to play far and wide and give more people the opportunity to catch them live, if they play near you, they come highly recommended.
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Next up to play were Black President, a punk supergroup formed from members of Goldfinger, Lagwagon and Guttermouth, they had settled on a name long before Mr Obama even announced he was running. A band filled with such luminaries of the American punk scene should surely have been able to grab the audience hard and keep them entertained, but, apart from some very impressive fast playing and plenty of energy, there wasn’t a whole lot here. The whole thing seemed a little boring and flat and they failed to engage with the crowd at all, instead pandering to only the same small section at the front who were obviously big fans. The set just ended up seeming a little embarrassing as several aging, posturing, past it punks, pranced about tried to hide the fact that in all honestly, they looked like Good Charlotte’s dads.
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The last support slot was filled by P.O.S., whose album, ‘Never Better’ Chris reviewed very favourably here and who I was anxious to see. He came on and felt the need to explain himself to the audience and told everyone that he was here to rap and if they didn’t like it, they all should leave. Hopefully, no one took him up on this because he was good to his word, because he certainly can rap. Incredibly impressive, P.O.S. is very good at what he does, self -described “rap to skateboard to” it was surprising how well most of the crowd took to it despite it being a change from the normal type of act you’d expect at this sort of gig. His set was a little mired by a very negative reaction from some of the more closed minded persons who were there that night, but this was all easily handled by the charismatic P.O.S. who is obviously well used to such ill-thought and reactionary attitudes from the punk crowds he plays for. He is skilled, lyrically amazing and very entertaining, well worth checking out and he’ll soon be ‘two for two’ with 5 star ratings from crowdsurfer.net
Rating: – see, told you.
A short break and then The Bouncing Souls took to the stage and started things off fast and tight, the confidence and ability of the band shone and it was easy to see how they’d managed to stick around for so long. Engaging and charismatic, lead singer Greg Attonito getting right into the crowd and starting to have fun between and even during songs, plucking the camera out the hands of one of the guys filming for www.punkrockvids.com and proceeding to play with that for a song jumping around the stage with it, he even posed for a few snaps for yours truly down in the photo pit, and passed the mic back and forth with the audience all the way through. Part way through the set of tight and energetic pop punk, Pete Steinkopf had a guitar problem which would normally leave an awkward silence for a band, but Attonio simply plucked out a ukulele from back stage and proceed to wow us all with a stripped down, acoustic cover of the “Sick Of It All” song “Good Lookin‘ Out”, which got the now filled-out venue swaying and clapping along and the show soon kicked off again with the new repaired guitar and some more classic tunes, really showing off why they’re so beloved by punks everywhere.
As the show came to a close, they decided to take a request for the next song, when drummer Michael McDermott started playing the wrong song and got laughed at, he stormed off in a comical huff, only for a replacement to be plucked from the eager audience, unfortunately the only song he knew had already been played earlier, but the band didn’t let that stop them and it worked a treat, and the new drummer put an impressive show on, while McDermott joined in the dancing in the crowd. Things continued to be really entertaining, with stage invasions, crowd members singing the songs, lots of surfing and dancing, and plenty more to annoy the already overworked security guard. The Bouncing Souls really reaffirmed to me what punk rock shows should be about, having fun, and I certainly did this night, by the time they’d finished the three song encore, I was blown away!
20 years on and The Bouncing Souls still have it, in fact, they’ve got “it” more than they ever did.
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