If you’re in a band, there’s a fine line about celebrating the anniversary of an album. If it ages well, playing shows to commemorate a release can be a nostalgia trip for fans and the band alike. If it doesn’t, it can be a reminder of the cruelty of the passage of time for everyone involved. Fortunately, for The Get Up Kids’ “Something To Write Home About,” 25 years have passed and it is much more in the fine wine territory than it is milk, which made Tuesday night’s celebration of the album at The Rave basement special.
Openers Smoking Popes were also celebrating an album anniversary to an extent, looking back at 30 years of “Born To Quit,” with the band peppering material into their set. The Chicago natives, much like The Get Up Kids, were still very sharp, and woke up a Tuesday night crowd that were mostly seated comfortably until music from the PA drew them towards the stage. By the time the night’s headliners were set, though, everyone migrated to the front of the room, ready to celebrate a seminal album at full volume.
As it turns out, they would need to sing along. After blitzing through opening tracks “Holiday” and “Action & Action,” frontman Matt Pryor would bring things to a halt during the middle of “Valentine.”
“You guys, I’m sick. I sound like shit right now” he admitted to The Rave crowd. “I promise we’ll come back and I’ll sing my heart out for you guys.”
It very much looked like the night was going to come to a quick end, before a brief discussion amongst the band onstage. Thankfully, everyone in the room was ready to sing along to a record that introduced The Get Up Kids to their largest audiences worldwide, and the band opted to continue, with the crowd picking up when Pryor’s voice wouldn’t let him go. While he’s certainly hurting this morning, he would chug water between songs, and power through the entirety of the 12-song album play.
After that early stoppage, though, the emo pioneers wouldn’t let things derail once again. “Red Letter Day” re-ignited the room, and the crowd’s collective voice reverberating through the hall on “Out Of Reach” would carry the band through one of the slower tracks on the record where Pryor’s voice would normally have to do the heavy lifting. Guitarist Jim Suptic would also take his usual reins on “Ten Minutes,” which gave Pryor a couple of minutes to recover. The band would leave the stage after playing the record from front to back, and at that point, most would have understood if there was no encore to be had on Tuesday night.
However, Suptic and keyboardist James Dawes were the first back through the curtain for an encore, which would touch on some of the band’s other material quickly before calling it a night. Mostly acoustic track “Campfire Kansas” was up first, with the band coming back to full strength for the rest of the night, including “Forgive and Forget” and closer “Don’t Hate Me.”
Even with a limited lead singer, The Get Up Kids made the most of their set on Tuesday night. Suptic would thank the crowd for allowing them to be a band for 25 years, and hoped to see the crowd once they would meet again in the future, which sounds like there’s no slowing down anytime soon. Once they do return, Pryor, as well as Milwaukee, will sing along even louder.
