Yesterday I went to see the Joey Cape/Tony Sly/Jon Snodgrass show to which I was looking forward for over a few weeks now.
Well, I got disappointed… You know you didn’t get what you expected when the highlight of the show is Joey saying “Aaah, you’re THAT guy! The guy you just wanna punch in the face” to the annoying drunk heckler in the crowd..
Let me paint the picture a bit. Lagwagon has been my favourite punkrockband, ever since my brother brought home a tape that had “TRASHED” written over it. I was also a huge fan of everything Bad Astronaut released and still think Joey has one of the best voices in punkrock music. No Use For A Name was also a personal favourite, but I must admit that I drew a line after “More Betterness”. They didn’t really do it for me afterwards, with a few exceptions. Jon Snodgrass was, until fairly recent (2 years), unknown to me, but I knew him well enough to know I didn’t want to miss his part of the show.
So I think it’s normal I had high hopes. I hoped that we would get to hear new stuff. Exciting stuff.
But it wasn’t exciting new stuff. Or at least, not enough. I’m not talking about Jon “the screaming duck” Snodgrass. He was great! He’s been doing the acoustic thing for a long time already, and is great at it! Too bad not enough people in the crowd knew him or his material.
But Joey and Tony… I really wanted you not to take the easy way out. Not to be just an acoustic version of your bands. Not to be your own bad coverband. But unfortunately, for most of the time, you were…
I understand that Tony was sick, so I can live with the out of tune singing from time to time, but some NUFAN songs he played became extremely corny in their acoustic version, and made me wish that the show would be finished soon.It actually only worked for maybe 2 or 3 of them.
Joey tried to be the saviour, but didn’t succeed. His acoustic Lagwagon songs were nothing like the nice arrangements on the Joey/Tony split of a few years ago.
And where’s the fire guys? I’m not even going to make the Frank Turner comparison, because I understand that this stuff is totally different. But in the future, try to do your own stuff guys. Please. For nostalgia’s sake.
Tony said they were still looking for a name for their “band”. How about “The Old Punkrocker Pension Plan”? Because face it, that’s what it is.
