While many would say that ska is dead, the energetic crowd at The House of Blues in Anaheim on Thursday would argue otherwise.
Ska band Streetlight Manifesto headlined the sold-out show, with supporting acts The Supervillains, The Wonder Years and Dan Potthast.
Accompanied by an acoustic guitar and Buddy Holly-style glasses, Dan Potthast opened the show for the eager crowd.
Through his hilarious lyrics, he took the audience on a journey to different areas around the world, including Hot Springs, Arkansas and Tokyo, Japan. Potthast even wrote a song about his experience in Anaheim — one that he wrote five minutes before the show. While he acknowleged in the song that everything in the city was “great,” he mentioned that “Walt Disney was friends with Nazis,” which caused an uproar of laughter in the audience.
During a break between songs, an audience member named Andrew yelled for Potthast to play Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird.” Potthast immediately stopped and began poking fun at the man, and eventually called him out in his last song by singing, “In every crowd, there’s some asshole saying, ‘You suck. Play some Skynyrd!’… There’s an asshole just like Andrew in every crowd.”
The Wonder Years was next on the bill. Stemming from a mix of hardcore and pop-rock, the five-piece band seemed out of place on the tour. Nevertheless, they caused the crowd to get rowdy through their instrumentals, even though their vocals were difficult to bare or understand.
About halfway through The Wonder Years’ set, their vocalist, Dan Campbell, was called a “faggot” by someone in the crowd. He responded by saying, “I don’t know about you guys, but where I come from, homophobia is not tolerated!”
The Supervillains brought some life into the crowd with their horns and funny lyrics. Many of the band’s songs mentioned getting high, which explained the aroma of weed that could be smelled throughout the crowd.
After The Supervillains, the crowd seemed to become extremely anxious for Streetlight Manifesto.
A photographer and journalist explained that he traveled all the way from Japan to review this show because of the band’s popularity in his country.
As soon as the seven-piece group got on stage, all hell seemed to break loose.
Shortly into Streetlight Manifesto’s set, photographers were told to get out of the photo pit because the crowd was too rowdy. Security guards were constantly pulling people out of the audience for crowd surfing.
A giant circle pit was formed as singer Thomas Kalnoky told the crowd to, “Open it up!” during the band’s song “Failing, Flailing.”
During their song, “Moment of Silence,” Kalnoky acknowledged a blonde girl and her boyfriend making out in the audience by saying, “I saw you guys making out during the song. Very nice!” With that was the end of the song, leading a smooth transition into “Moment of Violence.”
Streetlight Manifesto ended their set with “Here’s to Life,” which was preceded with Kalnoky telling the audience, “This is the last song. But, you know that’s a lie.”
As expected, the band returned to the stage for an encore with a cover of NOFX’s “Linoleum.”
Kalnoky said, “We’ve been on the road for five years now but without question this has been the greatest tour we’ve ever done.” Without a doubt, the sold-out crowd would have to agree.
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