Tonight, the You Asked For It tour rolls into Cardiff, with American pop-punk pair Less Than Jake and Bowling For Soup taking the stage at the Utilita Arena for what is somehow the latter’s biggest-ever headline show – all 7,500 tickets sold out, a fact Bowling For Soup may or may not mention just a few times onstage.
Florida’s Less Than Jake are on first, with Chris DeMakes ever the tongue-in-cheek consummate frontman: jokes about one of the security guards being very successful in their love life during the 1970s, learning very quickly to call the audience Wales rather than England, and how “good” they sound tonight (his words, not ours!). Indeed, at one point DeMakes pulls a guy up from the crowd, who’s apparently not stopped air-drumming for the band’s entire set, to continue doing so onstage. There’s even wacky inflatable arm-flailing tube men for the band’s last song, Gainesville Rock City.
Though this is ostensibly a co-headline tour, the main attraction tonight is the nostalgia fest that is Bowling For Soup. The Texans have the most ridiculous intro video – set to their own BFS Theme – before Emily, during which frontman Jaret Reddick says, “We fuckin’ did it, ladies and gentlemen! It took 30 years but we sold out a goddamn arena!”
The amount of big ol’ throwback pop-punk smashes tonight is off the scale, with the likes of Ohio (Come Back To Texas), Punk Rock 101, High School Never Ends, and Girl All The Bad Guys Want being aired. There’s even an appearance from Wales’ own Punk Rock Factory to play the band’s Phineas And Ferb theme song Today Is Gonna Be A Great Day, leading BFS guitarist Chris Burney to quip: “Next time we’re over here, we should get other bands to play our songs… and Rick Astley should sing them.”
For all this good cheer, it would be remiss to pass over the level of discomfort from some of Bowling For Soup’s onstage jokes and ‘bits’: one about how the band need to check IDs before accepting underwear thrown at them these days, and Burney quite literally saying “we want some pussy” at one point. Still, at least the songs were fun.
Bowling For Soup + Less Than Jake, Utilita Arena Cardiff, Fri 23 Feb
words JOSHUA WILLIAMS photos CHLOE JACKSON-NOTT
