Images: Reel Big Fish, Streetlight Manifesto, Lionize December 23, 2011 at the House of Blues

I seem to mention this in every ska review that I write, but I have a huge soft spot for the oft-, and unfairly, maligned subgenre of third-wave ska punk that dominated MTV and radio airwaves when I was young. One of the bands that was on constant rotation for me and thousands of other 13 year olds during this time was Reel Big Fish, the poster children of the sillier, sunnier southern California style of ska.

Say what you want about them – sure, they’re silly, they re-release their songs a lot and they’ve had a rotating cast of musicians over the years, but vocalist/guitarist Aaron Barrett and company know how to put on a fun show. December’s House of Blues show marked the first time I’d seen the band in the 8 years since they played Ska Summit in 2003. I was honestly surprised to find that they have only improved with age. While Barrett still dominates the show with his corny-yet-endearing jokes and high energy antics, the rest of the band is much more at the forefront than in the past. Not to mention, they sounded phenomenal, which only makes sense since a band as successful and long-running as RBF probably have their pick of great brass players to choose from. Song-wise, the band stuck mostly to the classics I remember from Cheer Up, Why Do They Rock So Hard? and particularly the ever-popular Turn the Radio Off, with “Sell Out,” “Beer,” and “She Has a Girlfriend Now” eliciting the most dancing and sing-alongs.

On the other hand, New Brunswick’s Streetlight Manifesto is a band I still follow with great passion, having been reared on vocalist/guitarist Tomas Kalnoky’s previous band Catch 22 and their late-90s masterpiece Keasbey Nights. It makes me intensely happy to see that they’ve found such a large audience during a time that ska has become a fringe of a fringe. And speaking of Nights, two songs from that album (later recorded by Streetlight), snuck into the set – “Dear Sergio” and epic closer “1234 1234,” the latter being one of my all-time favorite songs which I’ve been waiting to hear live again since the band’s first Vegas show in August of 2004. The rest of Streetlight’s catalog was well-represented, from Everything Goes Numb highlight “Here’s to Life” to a cover of the Squirrel Nut Zipper’s “Hell,” which can be found on the Streetlight cover album 99 Songs of Revolution: Vol. 1. While existing in the same genre as their headlining tourmates, the two band’s shows couldn’t be further from each other. While RBF wears bright colors, engages in lengthy banter between songs, and is washed in bright yellow light, Streetlight takes a more stripped-down approach, with the notoriously private Kalnoky often keeping his back to his fans and the band hiding in dark blues and shadows. The mystique actually works quite well with Streelight’s style, and their set was the highlight of the night.

Openers Lionize were probably familiar to most diehard Streetlight fans – the band is singed to Kalnoky’s Pentimento Music Company label and they opened for the skapunks at their Hard Rock Café show early in 2011. The band plays a form of jam band rock with some reggae influence, and their set accented both when they brought out part of Streetlight’s brass section for some impromptu jamming. The fantastically powerful vocals and the band’s improvisational talents surely won them some new fans that night.

-Emily Matview | https://www.flickr.com/photos/holdfastnow/