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Kick Out the Jams

Riddlin' Kids, Reel Big Fish at the Huntridge, Aug. 4

Based on the number of cars in the parking lot (many) and the number of adults in the cordoned-off drinking section (few) during last Monday's Riddlin' Kids/Reel Big Fish show at the Huntridge, only one conclusion can be drawn: The kids love the pop-punk. And they would have to if they were going to find anything redeeming in the Riddlin' Kids' performance. Between frat-boy jokes about the bass player's penis and shameless pleas for people to buy their merch, the Riddlin' Kids put on a wholly uninspired show that proved once and for all it isn't just their albums that suck, it's the whole package. Stale lyrics, endless stage chatter and synchronized leaping (not to mention the fact that every song sounded exactly the same)--the Riddlin' Kids lingered for a 12-song eternity before conceding they had to get back on the road (off to San Francisco where the dot-commies would no doubt have more dough to squander on their shitty wares).

Their long-overdue exit cleared the way for the pseudo-Sublime ska-punk of Reel Big Fish. If the name fails to ring a bell (the maritime moniker obviously leaves much to be desired), their songs--make that song--probably will. A few years back, "Sell Out" ("Sell out with me, oh yeah, sell out with me tonight/ Record companies gonna give me lots of money and/ Everything's gonna be all right") made the pop cultural rounds as the theme song to an X Games or a Circuit City commercial or something, effectively branding it on the brains of most everyone who owned or had access to a television between 1996 and 2000. And Reel Big Fish took advantage, using it to open its set (a risky gambit considering that, by comparison, the rest of the band's catalog seems a little thin).

For the short run, it paid off. The kids went crazy, crowding toward the stage and turning the floor into a friendly merry-go-round of a mosh pit (remember: pop-punk). Making the most of the vibe, Reel Big Fish followed with a double-time cover of A-ha's "Take on Me." And while it's perhaps worth noting that much of the crowd was still a bottle of Thunderbird and a bad decision away from being conceived when the original debuted in 1985, the song provided the night's only true highlight--Swedish synth-pop making a surprisingly robust transition into ska. Unfortunately, the rest of the show was sort of ho-hum, the crowd's hyper-kinetic energy waning through renditions of "Beer," "Ban the Tube Top," "Join the Club" and "Brand New Song."

While some of this lag might be attributed to broken curfews and forgotten bed times, the rest can be attributed to the show's mind-numbing tedium--the bright and brassy openings to each of Reel Big Fish's songs running together in a muddle of mindless, peppy drivel. But perhaps that's what the kids want: something easy, boring and repetitive. Like a video game. Or high school.--Newt Briggs