The Moshville Times - Reel Big Fish

[full gallery of photos in this Flickr set]

I missed openers The JB Conspiracy, which is a shame. Main support Orange didn’t get a great reception, though. I saw most of their set and they were OK but nothing brilliant. No faulting the effort they put into the set, and it was a shame – frankly – to hear them being boo’d off stage. I wonder if the same thing happened when they opened for Bowling For Soup recently?

Despite the fact the band have been going for over 20 years, I’ve still never seen Reel Big Fish live. The closest I ever came was in Adelaide a couple of years back, but I couldn’t get hold of a ticket (full story in the fourth paragraph of this post on my travel blog). Funnily enough, I seem to remember more than one person saying they sucked live – and this was from fans.

Maybe they caught a duff gig as tonight’s show was excellent. Without wishing to insult either band, I’d pigeon-hole them as “Bowling For Soup with a brass section”. Both have infections songs and don’t take themselves too seriously. They’re energetic on stage, communicate with the audience and really know how to get a crowd bouncing.

Now, I only know a handful of RBF songs… and they opened with three of them. They also encored with the other, but thankfully they’re enjoyable enough to watch that you don’t really need to know all the words. In addition, they’re fairly well known for their cover versions which get dropped into the set here and there making them good value for the curious who don’t own an album.

A highlight, and something I gather is a regular feature, was the song “S.R.” of which they played 5 versions (I believe they have 10-12 up their sleeves). We got punk, country, death metal… all good!

Definitely glad I made the effort to see them this time around and I’ll be up for their next show, whenever it is.