Tag Archives: concert

GOGO13 at the Irvine Regional Park

GOGO13

Last night I saw GOGO13 with The Hawkline Monster at Irvine Regional Park as part of the OC Parks Summer Concert series. I had a very fun time. I got there at the same time as my brother; I was right behind him as we parked. The bands hadn’t started yet, so I said hello to Tazy and headed toward the food trucks.

GOGO13

I had to get the Piggy Dog from the Stuff NIt Burgers + More food truck. It was a hot dog with savory pulled pork on it.

GOGO13

And then I made the mistake of going back for “Mexican Fries,” which are basically carne asada fries. They were good, but I really didn’t need more food.

I also got some free tickets to another ska show. Yay!

GOGO13

GOGO13 was a lot of fun and played basically every song I love by them. Here’s Parker Jacobs playing the ukulele. After the song ended, he realized his ukulele wasn’t connected.

GOGO13

He sure got the kids excited! Of course, he had to show them what to do with their hands.

GOGO13

At the end of the night, I had to get Parker Jacobs to pose with that ukulele!

On my way out, I succumbed to the call of another band t-shirt. In my defense, it was cool.

Ska Luau IV!

Starpool

Last night was the Ska Luau IV at the House of Blues! It was an awesome show, and I’ve learned about some new awesome bands.

Magnolia Polynesian Dance Troupe

The show began with Magnolia High School’s Polynesian Dance Troupe. I only took one photo, and it was pretty bad. Sorry! They had men and women, but they danced separately. They did dances from a variety of Polynesian cultures. Pretty interesting.

CodeName: Rocky

CodeName: Rocky was the first band to perform. I hadn’t heard their music previously but was very impressed. They had a great variety of instruments too. Sax? Of course. Trumpet and trombone? Yep. French horn?! Heck yeah!

Save the Swim Team

Save the Swim Team described themselves as “the most screamo ska band,” and I suppose that was true. I liked the ska, but didn’t particularly like the screamo parts. However, they did mesh it pretty well, and I could understand why they’d have a lot of fans. This was actually their last show ever.

Suburban Legends was absolutely amazing. I’ve actually been listening to their music all day today now because I’m hooked. The lead singer was a lot of fun, but their guitarist was pretty charismatic too! Their brass section consisted of two trumpet players and a trombone player. The band also danced together with great choreography. I wasn’t expecting it, but it was so amazingly good.

Starpool

Starpool came on the stage wearing tiki masks before starting the set and releasing the confetti that’s in the photo at the top of this post.

Starpool

Besides throwing bags with chocolate penises into the crowd (some sort of joke from previous concerts I’d assume), they also threw these glowing sticks.

Starpool

They played an amazing set full of a lot of songs that I loved. I sang along, danced, jumped, and was pretty tired at the end honestly.

Starpool

And what concert would be complete without a band member crowd surfing in a giant ball? That was pretty cool. Starpool ended the show with their cover of Shout that I absolutely love. This might have been my favorite concert I’ve ever attended. If not, it would be the show with the Aquabats and Starpool, so I guess that’s good for Starpool anyways!

Hopefully Friday’s Reel Big Fish show at the same venue is as awesome.

My fun Sunday: Aladdin, Social Distortion, and more

Last night was the rescheduled Social Distortion concert at the House of Blues in Downtown Disney, so we decided to spend the day at the parks. We went to California Adventure, checking out some of the shows between a few rides.

First, we caught the Red Car News Boys, a little song-dance show set in the 20s about Mickey wanting to move to Hollywood to make it big. These mini-shoes that Disney does really helps set the mood and magic, I think. Next we headed to Paradise Bay to watch Instant Concert! …Just Add Water. This was a show featuring recorded music, the fountains, and Goofy conducting. It was fun but nothing too special. We caught Operation: Playtime! – Featuring the Green Army Men as well, which is a percussion show (for the most part) featuring the green army men from Toy Story. It was mostly for kids, but it was enough.

The last show we saw was the most amazing. Disney’s Aladdin – A Musical Spectacular was a incredibly entertaining, albeit short, musical of Aladdin. The effects were great with clever use of smoke, trap doors, lighting, and character doubles. I also really enjoyed the genie’s use of current events in jokes. When Aladdin lamented that Princess Jasmine didn’t love him, Genie replied something like, “there are plenty of other princesses out there. I heard Disney just bought Star Wars. Maybe you could try Princess Leia!” If you haven’t seen it, I’d really recommend it. I’ll make sure to watch it again in the future.

Toy Story Mania

Among the attractions we rode, of course we had to hit up Toy Story Mania. I love this ride! I was wearing my new Evil Dr. Porkchop shirt that day, so I pretty much had to go on the ride. The game seems screwed up to me! If I beat gem, why do I get the stupid cat while she gets that super awesome beaver? I know, I know. It’s because she’s super awesome,  I suppose.

The concert itself was a lot of fun. The first opening band was The Interrupters, from LA. They’re a ska/punk band comprised of a singer, guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, and drummer. The three instrument-players are brothers, and they actually brought their dad on stage for one song during which he played trombone. I love brass, so it wasn’t unexpected that that song became my favorite. I’ll definitely need to keep my ears alert for them in the future.

The second opening band was Eddie Spaghetti on guitar and vocals with an accompanying guitar player. Eddie’s one member of the Supersuckers. Make note of this so you can avoid them, because I thought Eddie Spaghetti was pretty terrible. Wikipedia describes the Supersuckers as garage punk, grunge, cowpunk, and southern rock. I had to look up cowpunk, but I could guess at what it meant. Cowpunk is a genre fusing punk and country, and that pretty accurately summed him up. At first it just seemed okay. He wasn’t much of a live entertainer, and the music was only so-so, but so-so can be okay sometimes. When all his songs became about drugs (and not just marijuana), I started to lose interest. I realize this was a punk concert, but trying to use as many cuss words as possible isn’t cool, and getting the crowd to all flip you off at the same time isn’t some amazing feat. When he was done, the woman behind me said, “well, that was painful,” and I heard a lot of agreement. Some people clearly clapped and cheered just to be respectful, but I don’t believe it was warranted. Half way through his act, I pulled out my phone to continue reading my novel.

Eventually Social Distortion came on the stage. I don’t actually know many of their songs – maybe three, and of those, they only played one song. The lead singer did bring his adult son out to play with them for a little bit. I think one of the best parts of live music is having guests play with the band, so I always enjoy that. Social D was a lot of fun, but there was more than just music; watching the mosh pit was entertainment itself. From the large dude with the huge beard who seemed very friendly while slamming people, even offering onlookers the chance to shove him, to the absolutely crazy girl who would go nuts for thirty seconds before disappearing for five minutes again, it was very entertaining.

At 11:30, four and a half hours after the doors open, I left. I don’t know how much longer they played, but it was time for bed for me.