“Are you 21?”
My reward for confidently answering this legally stagnant, pro-prohibition question – in typically terse Jannus security fashion – is to have my downturned wrist swiftly cranked for an ink branding. I have a hard time imagining anyone under the age of Something to Write Home About – the album we are here to celebrate 25 years of – is here, and a full night of people watching later, my prediction would be confirmed. (“Punk rock will never die, but you will.”) I won’t be drinking the overpriced schlosh on offer tonight anyway. On the previous evening I got post-dry January smashed on liberated red wine and other accessories, and now really wish all these fellow codgers didn’t appear to have already taken all the uncomfortable metal seating.
Hot Rod Circuit. A band whose silly suburban name always struck me with third wave fear, they were apparently always cohorts of the likes of The Get Up Kids, having been formed in the safe waters of 1997 in the honourary Midwestern enclave of Alabama. Based on hearing them in both recorded and live formats, it appears they were one of those occasionally respectable bridge groups between the days of proper and improper emo. Most importantly in this regard, the vocal style from singer Andy Jackson is not making me recoil from lashings of overly American earnestness, as would be the case for so many 2000s chancers. Further latter-day credibility comes from their apparent lack of financial success, with the band only covering the Southern dates on the tour before returning – in the case of bassist Jay Russel – to such jobs as appliance repair. (They would then make way for an act whose name choice managed to both reflect the scene’s romantic tendencies and showed tremendously sensible forward thinking when it came to future nostalgia touring: The Anniversary.) Maybe living the dream was too much to expect from all this, but the occasional dreamy siesta is better than nothing.
Newly released Holiday video (with old footage)
Before getting started, Jim Suptic paraphrases a top tune by Vagrant Records peers Hey Mercedes, suggesting that we treat this Wednesday night like a Friday (something I usually do more because of our flextime economy than any deeply held punk beliefs, as evidenced by last night’s fermented fiasco). Then the opening riff-hooks of Holiday get flung remorselessly upon the audience and it immediately feels like down tools time. “What became of everyone I used to know?” Matt Pryor’s vocals sound just as essential as they did, well, prior, as the band power-blast their way through their magnum opus’s opening double whammy into the evening’s first seasonably appropriate sentimental. The performance doesn’t quite have the tape hiss and gapped playback of my old copy, but the flow of the tracklist still gives off that classic compilation nature. The continuous combination of subtle ballads, motif-laden melodic monsters and crossover moments (such as The Company Dime, or the pregnant aggression of Long Goodnight) means that STWHA still delivers the chills when live and when fucking old. It’s nice to see many of my fellow olds mouthing along to every single word, managing with more ease than usual to remember that feeling of vitality. The rendition is a faithful one from all on stage, as you might hope, right down to the essential keyboards (though sadly no longtime keyman James Dewees in evidence – these days presumably too busy putting together the next totally unhinged Reggie and the Full Effect project). Has such a good album ever been accused of inspiring so many terrible imitators?
“Sometimes I think to recite / words that I read and rewrite”
In only one respect do I take issue with the precision of the set. I’ve argued this before, but the European cut of this album that features Forgive And Forget and Central Standard Time (both later included on the Eudora compilation) is simply superior to the canonical version. Whoever made that decision at Epitaph recognised that as an ending it better complimented the opening numbers and helped to keep the admittedly enjoyable slower songs appropriately contained. When The Get Up Kids are done performing I’ll Catch You, and the real wildcard section of the encore begins, I am saddened to not be catered to in this respect, but it’s pretty decent regardless. Campfire Kansas is the first of a few later gems, with a healthy helping of some of the better tracks from Four Minute Mile such as Shorty and Don’t Hate Me. And, perhaps sensing my adolescent pining, Forgive And Forget also gets an airing. The more time that we are blessed with to look back on our younger, stupider selves, the more remarkable it becomes that so much incredible punk (and adjacent) music was written by people too young to know any better. We’re growing up by the hour. Be sure to keep leaving marks that are worth writing home about.
“You can read about it when we’re gone”
If, somehow, you aren’t currently residing in the stinking drip tray of our civilisation in managed decline, you may wish to purchase the 25th anniversary remastered deluxe edition of Something to Write Home About that was released in September 2024. Like its cover stars, the vinyl is pressed in “Silver Nugget,” includes expanded robot artwork and a second disc of (d)emo versions (though it still doesn’t include Forgive And Forget. Unforgivably.) The Get Up Kids will be touring> the US through March, and hitting Europe and the UK beginning in May.
James Lamont
James Lamont is a writer and speaker of various punkfessional shades, over the years working on everything from multi-genre radio programmes to underground punk and hip hop reviews, from unwieldy environmental behemoth papers to DIY media projects. In his mid-twenties he swapped the depressing, darkening skies of his home city Manchester for the depressing, sun-bleached crudbuckets of Florida. You can read more of his writing at https://radicalbeatwriting.blogspot.com/ and follow his happenings at https://www.facebook.com/radicalbeatwriting/