On March 27 at Irving Plaza, it was a Friday night punk rock show. The audience was ready to shed all the stress of the week and party hardy. And Pennywise was playing so I knew it was going to be a rowdy show.

Teenage Bottlerocket
Whoa! These guys wanted to throw an onstage party and they were not going to stop until every last person did a keg-stand’s worth of moshing and singing. If you’re into the kind of dumb fun-style, fast, rocking pop-punk you used to go see in your local scene around the turn of the century then these are your boys.

A Wilhelm Scream
You can’t see this band without being blown away, no matter what album they’re favoring that night (it was their stellar new one, Partycrasher, at this show) or how many times you’ve seen them before. Nuno, Trevor and Co.’s enthusiasm for passionate, fun-loving shredding out and bro’ing down was downright infectious! The stage presence, attitude, and sheer ear-to-ear grin power behind their music made their stage show incredible.

Wilhelm Scream:
Mute Print
Skid Rock
Me vs. Morrissey in the Pretentiousness Contest (The Ladder Match)
Ice Man Left a Trail
The Horse
I Wipe My Ass With Showbiz
Born A Wise Man
Boat Builders
The Last Laugh
Famous Friends and Fashion Drunks
The Rip
The King Is Dead

Pennywise
Pennywise is always great to see live, but I need to confess something: I really wish they’d freshen up their set list. Out of the 10 times I’ve seen Pennywise in the last decade or so about 75% of the set has been exactly the same, every single time. They treat themselves as a legacy act that plays lots of “old shit” and lots of old school covers. (Hell, their “new” record went back for a re-recording of their “old shit.”)

The truth is that there are plenty of gems on newer Pennywise records that would be awesome to hear live, even if only to vary up the predictable one-two punch of Society and Perfect People or Same Old Story and My Own Way. Admittedly, these are all awesome songs to experience live, but it’d be swell to see some love for Zoli’s brief era, or hell, even anything that was recorded in the last decade.

If there’s one thing you can say about Pennywise it’s that they gave the room great energy. The crowd loved it and partied like it was 1995. Their performance was solid and they were deinfitely still having a good time covering their favorite bands, engaging the crowd and inviting up guest singers. This time it was Nuno who sang Minor Threat and Millencolin’s Nikola Sarcevic (who was a) apparently in NYC and b) had apparently given a flat out “No” to coming onstage for a song earlier in the show) to sing Bro Hymn.

And whether you agree with every iota of passion and sentiment behind Fletcher’s varied rants, it’s fun to watch the man to motivational speak at the crowd before every other song. That’s talent.

Pennywise:
Fight Till You Die
Rules
My Own Country
Something to Change
The World
Same Old Story
My Own Way
Do What You Want
Minor Threat
(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)
Pennywise
Violence Never Ending
Fuck Authority
Living for Today
Society
Perfect People
Alien
Stand by Me
Bro Hymn