Get Up Kids/Rhett Miller/Hot Rod Circuit

live in Hollywood (2002)

WussEmoRock

After failing a chem final, I realized that tonight was the Get Up kids show at the House of Blues. I conversed with my friend and realized we both had different opinions on when to get to the show. He wanted to miss the opening bands, and I wanted to see them, because Hot Rod Circuit was opening, and who in the world would want to miss Hot Rod Circuit? That's right, No One! We finally decided to get there at 730, because my persuasion seemed to work, or maybe it was just my charm. In any case, we arrived at the venue right as planned, and parked and stood in line. It was now 745, 15 minutes until the first band would start, who we found out was an acoustic act, Rhette Miller. We didn't know who he was either, so I stop worrying about that and read on, I explain about him later. We get closer to the door, and I hear music being played, What the Hell!!! It is Hot Rod Circuit, I give my friends a glare, and quickly get a wristband on and run into the venue only to be stopped by a sold out crowd, with no where to go but standing on the far right hand side next to the bar and a smelly old lady, old as in 45 years old. I still don't understand why Hot Rod Circuit was playing first, but enough of the complaining and onto the review…

…Hot Rod Circuit, if you do not have their new album "Sorry about Tommorrow," I highly suggest you go out and purchase it, because it is a great album. My friend pointed out to me that they are comparable to Limbeck, but better than them. What he was saying was, their sounds are the same, but with Hot Rod they throw in very clean harmonizing vocal lines, and guitar solos here and there. Talk about the soloist, their lead guitar player plays his guitar way up at his chest, and even though that just looks plain dumb, I have never seen a guitarist jumping all around stage while playing a tough solo, it just doesn't happen every day. So for the close minded person, Hot Rod Circuit fits perfectly onto the Vagrant roster, not just musically but also with their tight clothes. I missed half of their set regrettably, but the songs I remember them playing in order were "Radiation Suit" (wonderful vocals in this song), an older song I didn't know the name of, "Cool for One Night" (a softer song), "Now or Never," and then they closed with my favorite song, "The Pharmicist." This song starts off very soft with singing abruptly, and then changed quickly into a poppy punk mood, which blends in just fine with the rest of their songs. Everyone seemed to enjoy them, not by moshing or anything to that standard, but right after they finished, a ton of people went to their merch table and after every song people gave them the recognition they deserved. Now onto the solo acoustic act…

…Rhette Miller was his name, which didn't mean much of anything to anyone in the crowd before he played. Matt of TGUK explained to us later when they were playing that they found Rhette In Amsterdam, and that he was in the band The Old '97's, which still meant nothing to me, or anyone around me. But, in any case, Dashboard Confessional came out onto the stage 15 mins after Hot Rod. Rhette really could have easily been mistaken for Chris Carraba (DC), even he made the joke about it, the only difference is that Rhette is newly wedded, has strange hair, and has a much cooler song than any Dashboard song. He started to play his first song and surprisingly it engaged me, the lyrics were straight from the heart (mostly about his wife I am assuming-either that or he has a side project, if you know what I mean), he could sing in a low and high key, which gave him more of a range which allowed him to show off his talent much more than the King of Bland voices, mark Hoppus, who is monotone, unlike our Rhettester. The crowd seemed to enjoy him, but by the 3rd song, I was very bored and tired, I felt like I should be going to bed with the music on in the background. This was the trend for the rest of the night. By the time his last song came on I had already left the floor, but then I heard the notes for "America the Beautiful," and it caught my ear so I went back down onto the floor to give Mr. Miller another shot. He played this song awesome, only changing the lyrics to about his wife, Erica. This was the standout of his set, and the song that kicks all of Dashboard's songs right out of the screaming infedelities…or something like that..now can we please all be emo and sit on the ground…next time don't cry when we trip over you, geese…

… Did I mention that this show had the most wide range of kids at it. It had the normal 4 or 5 assholes, where you just can't figure out why they're at the show, because they seem to hate every band, but they always seem to come anyway. Then there was young kids with parents, older kids, like 30 year olds, and then the normal teenager, between the ages of 14-19. beleive it or not, this was the first show I had ever seen a group of Asians at, besides Wapred Tour. I'm telling you, Get Up Kids has a very diverse following, but that is a very good thing in my opinion, now onto their performance, well sorta…

…The House of Blues has a screen that pulls down where they play show little clips of things, mostly ads, inbetween bands. After 20 mins they finally pulled it back up and TGUK was about to play, so we thought. 10 minutes (great song) later, they pulled the screen back down and "Tommy Lee is coming back to the House of Blues" was written on the screen, while yelling and boos were thrown out of everyones mouths. People were starting to get agitated about how long it was taking for TGUK to come out and play…I mean all of their stuff was already set up during the acoustic set, so who knows what they were doing back their this whole time. But, before I could keep on thinking about this, everyone started cheering and I looked at the screen, it had written on it this:…

The Get Up Kids
"Overdue"
On a Wire
Vagrant

…they played us TGUK's new video for their "single" on their new album "on a wire." All I can say is this video sucked big time. It was a playoff of their album cover, the whole video was a cartoon, with the same images used on the cover and back and inside of the jacket on the new CD, leaving me with no other feeling except knowing that it was a strange video, and being relieved that they won't be playing that song live now (way too slow-if you catch my drift). I don't think you do understand me, so let me explain: When a band comes out with a new album, they usually play a lot of songs off of it, which means everyone in attendance of this show tonight is in trouble because every song on "on a wire" is a song you listen to while you go to sleep or in the background while you are studying, or pretending to at least. So now back to the show…they opened up with in my opinion, one of the two best songs on the new cd, called
"Let the Reigns Go Loose", it is quite slow but the ending instrumentally is awesome. They then went into "The Worst idea," which has the worst intro ever made in music…go listen to it if you don't trust me, the keyboard will make you go crazy. "Stay Gone" was next, and then "Valentine," by this time the crowd hasn't moved one inch, and everyone seemed pretty bored. I think the band realized that too, so they broke out with a new guitar for Matt and played the crowd pleaser "Holiday," which made the place go nuts. I somehow ended up in the front after this, which made me happy. What made me even more happy was that there were barely any crowd surfers the whole night, which means less boots into the head. TGUK played 3 songs off of the old cd, about 5 more off of the new cd, and 1-7 on "something to write home about." In my opinion, their lead guitarist has the two best songs written by the band. The first one he performed acoustic called "Campfire kansas,", it is on the new cd and it is an awesome song..it isn't acoustic on the cd, so you have no reason to not check it out, if you were sitting their saying to yourself I don't like acoustic songs. It seemed the whole show Matt (singer)was getting jealous when the other lead guitarist would sing his two songs or even talk into the mic, he even at one point said to the crowd, "give it up to the band!" Which means one of two things…he thinks he is the leader and they are just the band who plays the music for him, or he is not a very modest person…even though it is both, I think it is much more the first one. They had an encore of course, and then came back out playing a song off the old cd, "Four Minute Mile," entitled "coming clean." They then played the crowd favorite, Action & Action, played another song I forget, and then my favorite song by them, Ten Minutes off of their second full length. Wow, what a great song live, it definitely had the most energy of all of their set, and the crowd definetaly noticed that. Surprisingly, their other guitarist sang it, he has a great voice so I am confused as to why he doesn't do any back up vocals in the whole show. They ended their set with the last song on "something to write home about," I forget the name of it though. I really wish they would have played Anne Arbor, and they were going to, but the stubborn lead guitarist didn't want to play it for this girl who asked them to play it for her birthday, what an ass! The Keyboardist, James, had the most energy out of all of them the whole show, well maybe their drummer tied for that category, but doesn't matter because 70% of the show the crowd was sleeping because of the new cd that they way overplayed. Personally I think Vagrant tells them to do that, they did the same thing with the Anniversary when they went on tour in support of their new cd.

I give this show a 3, not because I didn't like it, but because Get Up Kids weren't up to my expectations. Musically they were hitting every note, but they shouldn't play all of their songs off the new cd, they should learn how to work the crowd a little more, and play some tunes we can move to, and stop progressing in the wrong direction. Someone should call them and tell them to go home and write a letter, maybe then they will come out with a better album to play live, but for now "on a wire" is great to go to sleep too, in all honesty I do like the CD, just not in concert. Hot Rod was very good, and Rhette Miller was entertaining for the most part..so that is my score, take it or leave it.