Reel Big Fish, Anti-Flag and Mad Caddies @ O2 Academy, Leicester - 13/10/17

Has it really only been a year since the last “Fireball: Fueling The Fire” Tour? Apparently so! This year, we’ve got the same graceful hosts in Fireball Whisky, which is surprisingly smooth with a fiery kick, but this year a roster of different bands are travelling up and down the country.

The show is opened by local act Last Edition and one of 2016’s local act winners Sweet Little Machine who are this year playing all the dates of the tour. Unfortunately due to interviews (keep your eyes peeled for that) HUSH doesn’t get into the venue until a few minutes before the night’s third band hit the stage.

Mad Caddies are almost the polar opposite of the night’s headliners in terms of the breadth of the Ska sound, Mad Caddies have an air of chill about them, it is a relaxed smooth performance. Despite this laidback sound, the band manage to get the crowd moving in a slow Jazz kind of way, the most chilled skanking you’ve ever seen.

You perhaps wouldn’t have ever put Anti-Flag on the same bill as Mad Caddies and Reel Big Fish, but having done it successfully in the USA, bringing it to the UK was only a matter of time. The current climate is one in which bands like Anti-Flag thrive, when politics is flavour of the month, people listen to the music and message of Anti-Flag, it happened during the Bush era and it looks to be happening during the Trump era. Even if half the crowd might not necessarily be there to see Anti-Flag, they are keen to make sure their message is heard and use the platform given to them at every given opportunity, and the crowd were all ears. Riled by the power of their performance Anti-Flag easily won the Ska room over.

At HUSH, we don’t hide the fact that we are massive fans of Reel Big Fish and even twenty years after releasing their big hit from the nineties, ‘Sell Out’ they are still rocking as strong as they were during the Summer of Ska. Reel Big Fish are infectious, its doubtful you could find a soul in the O2 Academy that wasn’t dancing like a madman. The fact that Reel Big Fish still have the same appeal and draw as they’ve always had, even without releasing an album since 2012’s ‘Candy Coated Fury’ is a testament to the fact that Reel Big Fish have something that a lot of their Summer of Ska contemporaries don’t have and whilst other Ska bands have had to call it a day, Reel Big Fish continue to have that cult appeal in the UK.

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Fireball Tour 2017 - Live Revew