
Bowling For Soup + The Dollyrots + Lacey + MC Lars @ 02 Academy, 6th February 2016
“Fancy Another Round?”; Another round of Bowling For Soup that is and the answer from the people of Birmingham was clearly yes as masses of them queued in the almost torrential rain to get into the sold out Birmingham Academy show. Tonight was a night many people thought would not happen as the last time they were in the UK was on their 2013 ‘Farewell Tour’ as at that time the band did not know what the future would hold and wouldn’t be coming back to the UK ‘for the foreseeable future’.
Thankfully the tough times that the guys were facing back then seemed to be over and the new tour was upon us. Anticipation and Excitement brewing amongst the queue of people waiting to see those cheeky 4 chaps from Texas. What was evident about this crowd was that there was a fair amount of children (8+ show), which made it apparent that the teens of the noughties had grown up and were passing on the pop-punk torch to their kids which was nice to see but clearly the 90’s and noughties generation were still just as avid fans.
Our host for the evening was Californian MC Lars who did an outstanding job of keeping us entertained between bands by telling jokes that were so terrible that they were funny (at least I found them amusing!) and performing two or three of his songs in between each band which equated to a full set. Highlights which included a skanking competition to ‘This Gigantic Robot Kills’ between three audience members (they were all so awful!) and a freestyle rap about items people pulled out of their bags and pockets.
I did hear a few heckles thrown out towards MC Lars; I personally find those people incredibly rude! MC Lars may not be your cup of tea but you cannot deny the man has talent and in my opinion it is ignorant to throw insults out to anyone who is making an effort to entertain you! Overall as expected an amazing show from MC Lars and hopefully he will be back in the UK soon.
The first of the three bands to play tonight was Nottingham band, Lacey. I’ve said it before and I stand by it- Lacey have the potential to be a big band; with their boy band look and a sound that resembles the likes of you me at six, they really have a winning combo. They well and truly won fans over tonight by performing Blink 182’s ‘Dammit’ which they added just the right amount of Lacey to, to make it their own. Like I said I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see these guy just keep getting bigger- watch this space!
Next up was The Dollyrots. Personally I wasn’t a fan of the female fronted L.A. band, they just didn’t do it for me. The crowd seemed to agree and everything about their set was very mediocre and amateur. The biggest cheer was heard when they announced they were finishing their set, the audience obviously eager to hear the main act of the night!
Bowling For Soup exploded onto the stage to their trusty ‘Bowling for Soup Intro Song’ diving headlong into ‘The Bitch Song’ causing the entire room to instantly regress to their high school selves! The feeling continued as the jumped straight into another fan favourite, ‘Emily’. After their explosive 2 song opener Bowling For Soup greeted their fans and in true BFS fashion the comedy was immediate with Jaret making a jibe at his own weight gain ‘Guess some of you might have noticed ive put on a bit of weight over the summer’ and telling us that someone had asked “Who’s the new guy in Bowling For Soup who looks kind of like he ate the original singer?” Poor Jaret! But at least he has a sense of humor about his current image and it takes a lot of balls to do that.
If it wasn’t already clear how involved the fans were it became very apparent as they played ‘Ohio’ (Come Back To Texas), everyone in that room including everyone in the seats on the balcony had their arms in the air swaying side to side getting involved with the band at every opportunity. During ‘Punk Rock 101’, they guys in the band decided to have a break and off they went to their on -stage bar (an actual bar!) which was named ‘Ye Olde Soup Inn’ and once they all finished their refreshments they returned and with yet another explosion only this time of fire which made Jaret tell the people at the on stage bar to ‘Stop farting with pyrotechnics going off!’ and then finally resuming the rest of the song. Going slightly off-piste Jaret performed the acoustic song “Turbulence”; once up on a time we would have had our lighters held in the air for such a song but times have changed and this saw us illuminating the room with out phone lights. Recently it has been said that pop-punk is dead and with Bowling For Soup being within the pop-punk genre and in fact I would go as far as to say they helped form the pop-punk scene as we know it they wanted to prove the the genre was not dead at all!
With that they proceeded to play a pop punk medley which included Blink 182- All the small things, Green Day- Basket Case, Good Charlotte- Girls & Boys, New Found Glory- My Friends Over You and Jimmy Eat World- The Middle; this entire medley was completed with Fountains Of Wayne’s Stacey’s Mom in its entirety — which they have previously been told that it was their song by unknowing fans so why not embrace it. The noughties teenagers of Birmingham proved for sure that pop punk is far from dead as they sang those songs word for word! Bowling For Soup have always had such good rapport with fans at their shows and tonight was certainly no exception with banter being batted back and forth between fans and the band; whenever someone yelled out from the crowd Jaret joked that because of the English accent all he heard whenever we shouted out was “storm the castle!”. Next they then pulled up a lady onto the stage, who was out celebrating her hen do (or as our friends in the US call them- bachelorette party); they had 2 of the crew perform some stripper style “sexy” dancing. Jaret wished the “hen” good luck even though he had just got divorced, then they proceeded to perform ‘Since We Broke Up’.
We greeted Kelly Ogden (front-woman of the Dollyrots) back onto the stage, she and Jaret performed their duet ‘Love Ya, Love Ya, Love Ya’. The night was so fun it seemed to be over in a flash but of course we all knew we would be getting an encore and we all knew what song we would be hearing- there was no way the night would be over until we heard it and low and behold after our chants of “soup, there it is” (as the guys had a drink at their bar) they returned with ‘Girl All The Bad Guys Want’; the room went insane, an absolutely perfect way to finish of a fantastic gig.
Set lists:
Bowling For Soup:
The Bitch Song
Emily
Ohio (Come Back to Texas)
The Last Rock Show
Punk Rock 101
Today Is Gonna Be a Great Day (Phineas and Ferb)
Turbulence
Friends o’ Mine
1985 
(SRâ€71 cover)
All the Small Things / Basket Case / Girls & Boys / My Friends Over You / The Middle
Stacy’s Mom
I Don’t Know
Since We Broke Up
Love Ya, Love Ya, Love Ya
Almost
High School Never Ends
—–
Shut-Up and Smile
Girl All the Bad Guys Want
MC Lars:
Intro
Hurricane Fresh
Dragon Blood
This Gigantic Robot Kills
Signing Emo
Mr. Raven
Download This Song
Freestyle Flow
The Dollyrots:
Come and Get It
Twist Me to the Left
Brand New Key
Save Me
My Best Friend’s Hot
Get Weird
Satellite
Jackie Chan
Starting Over
Because I’m Awesome
Lacey:
The Last Time
Hometown
Tonight
Dammit 
(blinkâ€182 cover)
Contender
Shadow
Review: Gemma Bywater
Photographs: Shaz Rafferty