3/4 - Bouncing Souls, Envy Arcadia

So today was something special, a BOUNCING SOULS show at Nassau Community College. Pretty cool right? It was also at 11:30...AM, definitely the earliest show I have ever been to. This show was only supposed to be for NCC students, however I was lucky and my friend Sean was partly responsible for this show, and he guestlisted me!! Thanks buddy! Once again I had Rob with me, what a good sport. I'm given this cool laminated guest pass thing after waiting on line and we go in. One major plus about this show is the free pizza and drinks. All shows should have this, seriously.

The opening band was called ENVY ARCADIA. They had won a battle of the bands at NCC at some point and I guess this was their prize. This is the only circumstance that they would get to play with the BOUNCING SOULS, as they are completely different types of music. Oh yea and the Bouncing Souls are awesome and this band blew. They play typical what's popular music, just all those bands on mtv who are trying to be alternative and wear make up and tight clothes and make really shitty unoriginal music. The singer definitely idolizes the singer of GLASSJAW, and likes to sing random high notes that sound fucking stupid. If you like good music, do not check this band out.

Ah, the BOUNCING SOULS, that band that got me into punk and hardcore. I love this band, and I try to never miss a BOUNCING SOULS show. One thing over the years that I've noticed is you can gauge how good they are gonna play based on how drunk they are. They play the best on a buzz. Today was a early show, so I don't think they were drunk yet. Greg (the singer) looked like he could have been drunk already, but I think he was probably just tired. They played a 45 minute set(12-12:45pm) which included: The Gold Song, Leen on Sheena, Lamar Vannoy, That Song, Private Radio, East Coast Fuck You, Hopeless Romantic, Sing Along Forever, Better Things, and closed with True Believers. The Souls were definitely happy to be playing, and were all moving around. However, Greg wasn't too energetic, but he did some dance-shuffling on stage. He has a very laid back style of singing, and it always confused me how he doesn't open his mouth all the way when he's singing, I guess he must have learned how to project his voice. They stopped and talked for a bit about how 2009 is the 20 year anniversary for the BOUNCING SOULS, and that they are going to be doing some cool shit for it. Awesome, if there's 20 year anniversary shows I will not miss them for anything. The crowd was pretty tame, but thats because it was only promoted at NCC, and not everyone at that school is a souls fan. The only bad thing about this show was that there was a barricade about 3 feet from the stage. But Greg made up for that by coming down and singing with us a couple of times. During the closer, True Believers, kids decided to dance around and it was stopped by NCC Security. LAME. But you know what, all in all it was a good show and totally worth me missing my first class.