Bowling For Soup

Live at Leeds Metropolitan University on Wednesday, 14th February 2007

Army Of Freshmen are like young kidults with limitless energy and their live show is exhausting to watch. It is also a drain on the senses, as the music is just chewed up tosh of what is already about too much in the first place. I'll give them some credit; they appear to be having a right laugh on stage, so they are making music for the right reasons, but with two keyboardists on top of the standard band set up the sound isn't justified by the small army of lookalikes (they all have the same hair style pretty much. Short, dark with bit of a quiff).

Now Wheatus have had to cancel tonight, as singer/guitarist Brendan B. Brown has pneumonia and is apparently laid up in Leeds General. I wish him all the best. I had been cringing all day at the prospect of seeing the (hardly) Teenage Dirtbags, but now that the chance has been taken away I am slightly gutted. No singing along to 'A Little Respect' with the young 'uns. I may be the 'Dork' for not knowing this but at the same time I don't care. I realise as soon as I catch a glimpse one of the members of Son Of Dork. The pesky lads of Busted fame are now no longer as easy to avoid, having split into three. They are now peddling not one brand of pap music but three times the assaults on the ears. While Fightstar at least try and leave the pop world behind and Matt Pisshead is doing some solo shite, James Bourne has shoved his effort onto this Get Happy Tour 2007 (I am close to tears, and not from laughing hard).

The name made me think hang on before I saw who it was. To be fair he did write the songs for Busted, they were hits (on certain charts) and I believe Bourne wants to carry on this way with this band. The songs are poppy, but not in a good way. Every melody is a rip off of some far better songs and the stage antics are childish and lacking any enthusiasm. The track (from Ant and Dec's rather abysmal alien film) 'We're Not Alone' has horrible effects layered over it which destroy any chance of a catchy chorus breaking through. Please don't let these bands build up to this, it is an insult to any type of music. Either you're pop or rock, the two don't mix, as these lads prove.

Bowling For Soup bound on stage in matching tracksuits before ripping them off stripper-style and apologising for Wheatus, saying that Brendan sends his love and wants to "snog all the fans". Considering most of them are barely even teenage girls this would have been very wrong. A few are passing out down the front from the sight of the Busted Bourne, while others just have no idea how to handle themselves in a pit situation. Other stories include Jaret Reddick eating some of his rabbit's poo in bed (?) and how Leeds was the first English city they played in. We are blessed. I am not sure what larger than life Chris Burney is attempting when throwing his guitar picks into air and trying to catch them in his mouth every thirty seconds. Surely he must be discouraged from putting things in his mouth. I wondered why there was twelve picks to each mic stand. Obviously the tunes 'Girl All The Bad Guys Want' and 'High School Never Ends' gain huge applause from the young audience, and the sound is so much better than that of the last two sets. Whereas the support like to call themselves rock and roll, they are more emo and pop then these fun loving Texans; more manufactured and in it for looks whereas as BFS are blatantly not. The Get Happy Tour earns its name with the headliners, and just needs to ditch the rest.

• www.bowlingforsoup.com
• www.sonofdork.com

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