Bowling For Soup - Live Review

Bowling For Soup and The Aquabats @ Rock City, Nottingham 12/02/18

Everyone’s favourite music venue, on a Monday night, completely sold out.. it can only mean one thing, the Bowling For Soup ‘Get Happy’ Tour is in town and they’ve brought some friends with them. 

Opening the show are Army Of Freshmen, who are returning to the UK in what feels like forever. Unfortunately, because of an interview with the second of the nights support acts we missed Army of Freshmen but photopit and crowd suggested they had a blisteringly energetic set full of some good old fashioned Pop Punk. 

In order to maintain full fairness, we have to admit, for HUSH it wasn’t necessarily all about seeing the nights headliners, we’ve seen Bowling For Soup before, we were there mainly to see some of the raddest dudes in the universe, we were there for The Aquabats! How many bands can say they open their set by playing their own theme song? 

Five years or more have passed since The Aquabats last toured the UK, during which time they have become a Saturday morning staple, with their ‘Aquabats Super Show!’ on CITV. Their live show, brings all the humour and over-the-top hijinks fromthe TV show, with various villains appearing throughout the performance, which are, of course, vanquished by our heroes. All this happens as The Aquabats belt out some of their classic tunes from their twenty year plus career. The highlight of the set, is easily ‘Pizza Day’ during which a young girl had her first (and probably last) experience riding a slice of pizza across the Rock City crowd. 

Sometimes when a band plays an album in full, in can be a little awkward and self-indulgent especially when unannounced. Other times when a band plays an album in full, it can be Bowling For Soup playing ‘Drunk Enough To Dance’ from front to back, meaning the crowd erupts not once but twice in a row following the double header of ‘Emily’ and ‘Girl All The Bad Guys Want’ all within the first ten minutes of the set. You forget how many bangers BFS have, especially from this one album alone. They bring a comedy feel to the Rock City stage, with their hilarious banter having the crowd chortling all night long, pair that with their songs, fan favourite after fan favourite, they really put on one hell of a show. We’ve not seen Rock City this full for YEARS, and from the get go too, which is also accredited to their stellar choice of opening acts.