Reel Big Fish + Suburban Legends @ The Institute, 19th October 2015
Having seen both Suburban Legends and Reel Big Fish before I had high expectations for tonight’s show and I was not disappointed! With Suburban Legends kicking off, the six piece, Californian, ska punk band got the night off to an energetic start despite Brian Klemm having some technical issues with the guitar. Whilst we waited for the issues to be resolved front man Vince Walker decided to do a Q&A with the fans; we also sang happy birthday to trombone player Brian Robertson. With the guitar finally back up and running the band continued with their set which contained energetic choreography with my favourite dance moves being performed during ‘Hey DJ’.
With a band like Suburban Legends you can’t help but dance, they are so much fun. They have on stage banter and a lot of crowd interaction and it is clear from fan reactions that they are enjoying every moment. Knowing that the guys play shows at Disneyland, we were expecting to hear a couple of Disney covers and tonight was no exception, with them playing ‘You Got A Friend In Me’ from Toy Story, and ‘Under The Sea’ from The Little Mermaid. As always the Disney songs were a massive hit with the crowd , they also played ‘Kiss The Girl’ from The Little Mermaid but we had Brian Klemm taking lead vocals and Vince on guitar. Brian stuck with vocals for one more cover- Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’. Before Klemm returned to his post, he did a crowd dive and after returning to the stage he informed us that “Birmingham can’t catch for shit”. Unfortunately due to the time taken to resolve the earlier technical problems it had eaten into Suburban Legends set time meaning they had to cut a couple of songs to finish in time; this didn’t ruin their show at all and as always Suburban Legends were on point.
Exploding onto the stage with ‘Asshole’, Reel Big Fish were an instant hit. This became even more apparent as they played their hit ‘Sell Out’. The crowd made no hesitation in joining in as the band started to play Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’, there was practically a “boo” when they didn’t play the whole song! Front man, Aaron Barrett, joked with the rest of the band that he wanted to cover Journey because “everybody loves Journey” but his band mates had said no; he then said he was going to sort it for next time.
Reel Big Fish easily had the room under their ska-punk spell which had the fans dancing the night away; there was nothing at all to dislike about the set. It was fun, happy, energetic and full of everyone’s favourite Reel Big Fish songs such as ‘Ban The Tube Top’, ‘Monkey Man’ (Toots and the Maytals cover), ‘Where Have You Been’, ‘She Has A Girlfriend Now’; the list goes on! Introducing the next song as a song about their favourite drink, the band proceeded to start playing ‘Tequila’ by The Champs; it wasn’t the song we were expecting but naturally the crowd joined in.
They stopped playing the song and again introduced the next song as a song about their favourite drink, this time performing part of UB40’s ‘Red Red Wine’. For a third and final time the song was introduced as a song about their favourite drink and they played the song we were all expecting to hear ‘Beer’. Finally going out with a bang they played the last song of their set ‘Take On Me’ by Ah-Ha, it was comical listening to an entire room of fans trying to tackle that famous high note in the song.
There is no way anyone left The Institute disappointed that night, it was a lot of fun and full of enough happiness to cheer anyone up!
Review: Gemma Bywater
Photographs: Shaz Rafferty