SAVES THE DAY, ARMOR FOR SLEEP, & SET YOUR GOALS @ the TLA

On Thursday, May 1st, Marty and I attended the Bamboozle Roadshow featuring Saves the Day, Armor for Sleep, and Set Your Goals at the TLA. Luckily there were no Flyers games to contend with so we didn't have to worry about watching any games before / during the show. Quick preface, we missed the first two opening bands (don't remember who they were) in favor of having more time to get to the venue and to also grab a beer at Mako's Bar, across from the TLA.

We arrived at the TLA just in time for the start of Set Your Goals set. I've been a passive fan of SYG, mainly because a lot of their songs are pretty short along the lines of traditional punk. I hadn't taken the time to see the dynamics of the band beforehand and was really surprised to find that they employed two lead singers, one tall, overweight guy and the other a short, skinny guy. So automatically, that catches more of my attention than the actual music so I was distracted by that for most of their set. Aside from the makeup of the band, their set was pretty solid and there was a bit of circle pit going on in the center of the floor as would be expected with their brand of music.

Next came Armor for Sleep's set, which we took in from the bar area, on the side of the TLA. One uncomfortable note about the bar area is that it's small and they pack the people into this little area. And also, the waitress walking around the bar area decided not to wear deodorant this night and she was continuously walking around with her arm up holding the tray, thus putting her armpit area right at face height for me. So I was getting some pretty clear whiffs of her every time she walked by... pretty gross. Aside from resonating B.O. smell, Armor for Sleep put on a typical set with a brand of music that has you tapping your toes and nodding your head a little bit, but nothing else. Don't get me wrong, I love Armor for Sleep's music, but their music is more of a background sounds kind of music, not necessarily the best to see live. This was probably about the 5th or 6th time I've seen them so I would know. And they didn't help their cause by getting into the music a little too much on stage and asking for circle pits during songs which they falsely identified as heavier songs. But musically, they're right on par with their albums.

Finally, it was time for Saves the Day to hit the stage. I had only ever seen them one other time, during my Freshman year of college when they were on tour with Dashboard Confessional. I had shunned the band for a little while after they released the album, "In Reverie" which had taken the band in a completely different direction from what they originally were. But they've made a comeback as of late (in mind), releasing two great albums, "Sound the Alarm" and "Under the Boards" and adding two members of Glassjaw to play bass and the drums. So I was pretty psyched to see them again. after a bit of a hiatus from the band.

Chris Conley entered the stage and immediately made the announcement that usually their setlist would consist of them playing a song they want, then playing a song requested by the audience, but on this night, they were only going to play songs requested by the audience. I had seen MXPX do this one previous time, but they wanted people to write down requests on pieces of paper and throw them on stage (which isn't the best idea), but Chris was just going to take requests from what he heard from the people up front. So the show, ended up being a good mix of mostly older songs from "Can't Slow Down", "Stay What You Are" and "Through Being Cool", probably one of my Top 5 Albums of All Time. (Actually, you know what, for my next posting, I am indeed going to post my Top 5 Albums of All Time... more on that later). They also played some songs from their latest album, but only seemed to play the filler songs of the album, not the songs that I considered to be the best off that album. So that was a bit disappointing. But they ended up playing close to two hours altogether and you could see towards the end of the show that a lot of the crowd was starting to get a little anzy for the show to be over. And in fact, there were a good amount of people that just left early because it was a marathon of a set. I spent the whole night hoping that they would play "Rocks Tonic Juice Magic", my favorite song off "Through Being Cool" and they ended up closing with it, which was pretty awesome! For the most part, the crowd seemed pretty satisfied, except for the fact that they didn't play "All-Star Me", which was routinely chanted for by the crowd, but fell upon deaf ears in regards to being played.

All in all, it was a pretty awesome show. I got to hear basically every Saves the Day song I would ever want to hear played live. And additionally Saves the Day was selling accoustic albums of their best songs which could only be picked up at their shows. I ended buying two of the three albums. Why I didn't fork over the extra five bucks to get the third album boggles my mind. So I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't pick up the third album but the two that I do have are pretty amazing...