Reel Big Fish @ Wolverhampton Slade Rooms – 13th August 2014

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So the last time I saw ska-pop-punk band Reel Big Fish (affectionately known as RBF), I was about 17. Unfortunately, that was quite a few years ago now, way over a decade.

Like that gig back in 2003 (it could’ve even been 2002 thinking about it…), this one was cursed with the fact that it was a school night and I would have to be up early the next day.

Regardless of this my expectations were high, both emotionally and musically and I was super excited. I have fantastic memories of ‘skanking’ to RBF all night long in Eddie’s (again, on a school night) and holding fast in the front rows at gigs and coming home with a bruised ribcage from being squashed up against the barriers. My husband, who joined me at the gig, was prepped for the ‘worst’.

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The Slade Rooms at the Wolverhampton Civic is full of tartan mini-skirts, hawaiian shirts, vans trainers (both new style and old), bench jeans and trendy hair. Not forgetting of course the obligatory sticky floor.

The JellyCats were first up — I didn’t see any of their stuff (but would do, briefly, later), and then caught the end of Magnus Puto, a young band one of which — my husband remarked, was “wearing a nice cap.” Hmm. Helpful review contribution there, Warren.

The theme of ‘Superman’ eventually booms out, and we’re greeted by a flurry of block 80’s colours and silly (but well groomed) facial hair.

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I was missing Scott Klopfenstein almost immediately. The former trumpet player and singer left the band in 2011 after suffering with a disorder that affects his nervous system and, I assume, he also decided it was time to settle down with his wife and kids after blowing his trumpet, literally, with RBF for over 16 years.

Scott was a great addition to the band and I missed his clear harmonies and steely focus on stage. However as ‘Everyone Else Is An Asshole’ came to an end and everyone started doing the ‘fish’ to ‘Trendy’, I’m soon into the swing of the new vocal sound and impressed by the alternative, slick ending to Trendy’s more usual frantic finish.

A lot of my enjoyment came from the fact that the majority of their set-list was made up of the best bits of their first 4 studio albums (of a total of 7), peppered with a few newer numbers from the likes of Candy Coated Fury, released in 2012.

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As lead singer and longest standing member, Aaron, sips his “ice cold tap water” (yeah right…), and leads the band into ‘Everything Sucks’, the bands experience from years of touring and playing live really becomes apparent. Each chorus brings the band together, reinforcing time, keeping pace and staying tight. Without this type of awareness (and indeed, with six performers, skill), ska music can rush off into a cacophony of horns and mistimed upbeats. It was nice to see they hadn’t got complacent.

Only at ‘Suckers’ did it occur to me what wasn’t sitting quite right. It was pretty simple, really, now that I thought about it. The desperation was gone. That sadness of being the ‘geek’ that none of the girl’s fancied, the frustrated and repetitive cries that “No matter what I do, somebody hates me…” and the self-deprecating “No one listens anyway”, don’t seem to be quite as honest anymore.

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Plenty of girls that night were giving a number of band member’s the ‘eye’, there was a lot of love in the room, and we most certainly were listening.

You could say they were singing it ironically, but it didn’t feel ironic. It felt like old miserable RBF teenage-angst classics, sang by happy, relatively balanced (but a little bit immature), middle aged men.

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Saying that, it was still playful. It was colourful and engaging and fun. Lead singer from The JellyCats, Emma, comes on stage to sing ‘I Know You’ with the band, and a cute rendition of ‘She Has a Girlfriend Now’ — difficulty here being that Monique Powell’s vocals are so engaging on the original it’s hard to imagine it sang anyhow else.

The next highlight was most certainly ‘Beer’ which seamlessly, and somehwat surprisingly, segued into The Offspring’s ‘Self Esteem’ and back again, with Aaron stating, “It’s the same song… honest!”

It was now that I realised my skanking days were far behind me. Halfway through a chorus and I’m out of breath, clutching at the air with one hand and gesturing frantically to the bar-staff for a bottle of water with the other.

An encore of ‘Monkey Man’ and ‘Sell Out’ are set to finish off the gig nicely, but with an extra treat of the cheesy ‘Take On Me’ cover, even my husband can’t resist a quick (attempt at a) skank, before swiftly navigating the crowds back to the car to get us home. It’s a school night after all.

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Words by Zoë Albutt
Photos by Steve Gerrard

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