Not Without A Fight Tour
What happens when you put three of the most high-energy hard-working and genuine rock bands on tour together? If you made it to your local venue for the Not Without a Fight Tour, you’d know the answer. Set Your Goals and Bayside opened for New Found Glory on the tour for NFG’s new album of the same name. The night was full of moshing, crowd-surfing and altogether punk rock pandemonium in celebration of these great acts.
Set Your Goals assaulted the stage with fast punk riffs slathered with heavy bass and Matt Wilson’s and Jordan Brown’s in-your-face tenor and shouting vocal duet. They played a few newer songs, announcing the release of their new album this summer on Epitaph records. They also played a few off their old EP Reset like “Goonies Never Say Die!” but mostly they played the favorites off of their 2008 full-length Mutiny, which is packed to the brim with rebellion, attitude and swashbuckling (Urban Dictionary defines this as “Anything and everything a pirate does that is awesome, usually involving a good amount of rum, jumping off shit, and screaming ‘ARRR.’” Sounds about right.). Songs like “Echos,” “To Be Continued,” “Mutiny,” and “Work in Progress,” had the crowd in a full-out mosh frenzy. Set Your Goals put on a great show and got the crowd pumped for the other bands to come.
There seemed to be a pervading question throughout the crowd after SYG’s set. What happened to the opening band? The tour was originally scheduled to open with the band Verse and their untimely break up brought Shai Hulud on tour, but the band was no where to be seen. Jordan of New Found Glory later explained that this venue, the House of Blues Disney (at Downtown Disney next to Disneyland) was the only venue that refused to allow Shai Hulud play due to the content of their lyrics. Bull hockey.
Bayside came on stage next. Their ironic and self-deprecating rock bled through the speakers to be met with eager fans, singing along at the top of their lungs. Anthony Raneri’s distinctly charming and gloomy vocals were accompanied by Chris Guglielmo on drums, Nick Ghanbarian slappin’ the bass and Jack O’shea’s fast-fingered guitar solos. Jack reminded me of the lead singer of H.I.M., Ville Valo, with his sweaty mob of black hair swinging around the stage and his teeth grit in rock-and-roll sweet anguish. Bayside rocked songs from all their albums, with a few of my favorites “The Walking Wounded” and “Devotion and Desire” with “Roshambo” off their newest (and excellent) release Shudder. Their performance seemed to come out strong and wane in energy as it went on, but all and all was powerful and the songs were flawless.
New Found Glory, still going strong after nine years, commanded the stage and riled up the crowd as they took us from 2009 to 2000 and back. Didn’t know time travel was possible? Try watching New Found Glory play “Dressed to Kill” and “Hit or Miss” as the entire venue sings along. They played some of the most memorable high school anthems like Sticks and Stones’ “My Friends Over You” and Catalyst’s “All Downhill from Here.” Then the more sentimental songs from Coming Home like “Oxygen” and an acoustic performance of “Too Good to Be.” To bring us up to date, they jammed out some of their newest soon-to-be anthems from their March release Not Without a Fight like “Right Where We Left Off” and “Truckstop Blues.” A guy in the front row was singing along with his middle finger in the air and vocalist Jordan pointed out, “how 2009 of him” but really this is the sentiment that Not Without a Fight provokes—attitude and passion. Before the night closed, the band made sure to let the crowd know that all the bands on the tour are sincere. They’re “not doing it to sell a tshirt.” And I think this is what made the show so great. Honest rock and roll is the best and only kind there is.
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