The Aquabats comedy Punk gets an already packed Academy warmed up with some light jumping, crowd surfing and blow up sharks. Visually it’s great entertainment and with songs such as ‘Pool Party’, ‘Super Rad’, ‘Shark Fighter’ and ‘Pizza Day’ you’ll understand why they’re such a hit on the Warped Tour. Bowling For Soup arrives on stage to their own cartoon intro which is bellowed out by the fervent masses. Kicking off with ‘I Don’t Wanna Rock’ followed by ‘Emily’ it becomes apparent the band is playing the whole of 2002’s ‘Drunk Enough To Dance’ album. This means a very early ‘Girl All The Bad Guys Want’ which sends the sold-out crowd into raptures of bouncing nostalgic bliss. Here is where you feel the real tangible pull of BFS, their early success and younger ‘Punk’ crowd are now just hitting the big 3-0 and after going through the cool phase are now ready to re-embrace a band who may well have been their first love, gig, exam, fight or boy/girlfriend. It’s refreshing and re-affirmingly charming to witness.
Behind Jaret, Chris and Erik are tonight’s V.I.P’s who get to see what the band see while being served endless drinks from a mock bar, with its own bartender. They all look like they are having fun if not a tad uncomfortable at being in the band’s limelight. The between song banter goes on waaaaay to long but for the most part, it’s amusing enough. For all the fart, weed, weight, self-decrepitation jokes it’s the songs that are the real reason people are here and the patient crowd eat them up. ‘Surf Colorado’, ‘Where To Begin’ and ‘Punk Rock 101’ are all dispatched with consummate ease and are received like long lost college buds. After more talking, joking and waving, BFS is the band that waves back, the Academy goes totally loco for ‘The Bitch Song’ which literally sung word for word and break by break in its entirety.
Tonight was recorded for a live DVD so there is plenty of pyro, smoke, and smut. The between song chat is much better suited to Jared’s solo acoustic outings, where his stories and anecdotes are given the attention they undoubtedly deserve, tonight they get lost and slightly stifle set momentum. All said BFS is still a great night out and away from all the Pop-Punk, Kids TV and Ass jokes they have written some truly genre-defining anthems, which in 2018 can still blow the roof off London’s premier pogo friendly venue. High school never ends when you’re watching Bowling For Soup.