photo credit: Eric Sperrazza | Mayday Parade

Written Eric Sperrazza

In 2011, emo pop/punk wunderkinds, Mayday Parade, released a self-titled album that would go on to be one of their best-selling and most memorable LPs. With that album, the band gave us the classic track, “Oh Well, Oh Well.”

Ten years later, Mayday Parade decided to celebrate that seminal record release with a tour playing the record’s hits for the fans and sharing the stage with the likes of bands, Real Friends and Magnolia Park.

I headed out to one of my favorite venues in Philadelphia, Union Transfer. This old 1800s Farmers Market-turned-music venue still has that solid 19th-century wooden architecture intact on the inside as well as chandeliers of the period hanging from the tall ceiling. It always provides a uniquely vintage backdrop to whatever live act is performing and I can also confidently attest to the fact that, acoustically, there is not a bad seat or even a bad vantage point in the house.

The first to take the stage was Magnolia Park. So a bit of a backstory. In February, my oldest daughter came down to my office, and said, “I have a band I want you to hear. I found them on TikTok.”

photo credit: Eric Sperrazza | Magnolia Park

The video she played before me? Magnolia Park’s video for “10 For 10.” I was instantly blown away and was legitimately excited to see this band perform. Perform they did with the explosive electricity of a pop/punk band that is having just as good of a time as the crowd and is legitimately excited to be there.

Lead vocalist, Joshua Roberts, stayed in constant motion as if being propelled by landmines from point to point, on stage. Playing viral hits like “Sick of it All,” “Back on My Bullshit,” and “10 For 10,” the crowd was energized and in the palm of their collective hands.

Real Friends was the second to perform and I got the biggest ringing endorsement of this band from fans right on the floor. In between Magnolia Park and the Real Friends sets, I began talking to a couple that was equally blown away by Magnolia Park. These two random would-be music historians were filled with excitement about Real Friends, comparing them to some of the biggest names in punk and hardcore. Names like Black Flag and the Descendants. If these two individuals are not part of the Real Friends PR team, they should be. They had me so excited to see this band, I was actually mad at myself for not being in the know, before.

photo credit: Eric Sperrazza

To that, Real Friends ripped into songs like “Me First, Nervous Wreck” and “From the Outside.” I felt like I was wearing my Santa Cruz Skateboards Corey O’Brien t-shirt while reading Thrasher Magazine and listening to kickass hardcore punk once more. It’s amazing how closely music can take you back to an exact time and location in your life and Real Friends did just that.

Finally, Mayday Parade arrived and gave the audience the entirety of their album, A Lesson in Romantics, which was celebrating its 15th anniversary. Every track was performed in chronological order from “Jamie All Over,” “If You Wanted a Song Written About You All You Had To Do Was Ask,” “Take This Heart and You Be the Anchor…,” from start to finish. They even encored with a snippet of “My Hero” in honor of Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters. The set wrapped up with “Oh Well, Oh Well” and a gracious bow out before the lights lit back up Union Transfer.

I’m compelled to first address the fact that there was not a fair-weather fan to be seen in that venue. Every single person from the balconies to the front row came for Mayday Parade. They knew every word to every Mayday Parade song and they came to the party with Mayday Parade. The sheer static electricity from everyone’s excitement on that floor was enough to charge an iPad. That crowd was an essential piece of the success of that show and lead vocalist, Derek Sanders, knew that and was a kind-spoken tour guide through it all. He brought the fans in and the audience claimed the show as a result. It is always like watching a miracle take place when I witness people of all walks of life, united in being a part of a musical experience that moves all of them equally. That is something I will always remember about this show.

The greatest takeaway for me, however, will be getting to say that “I was there” when Magnolia Park broke. Mark my words, they are going to be the future of pop-punk.

Connect with Mayday Parade

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Connect with Magnolia Park

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Connect with Real Friends

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New Zealand has already given this world Middle Earth, a gift that has made life a whole lot better, and one that is impossible to reciprocate. It would be unreasonable to expect New Zealand to give us anything more, and yet, she gave us the alternative indie rock/pop group, Mild Orange, anyway. 

The Roxy Theater opened in 1973 and has seen some truly remarkable performances upon her stage from Neil Young, Bob Marley, Chaka Khan, and so many others whose music has shaped our lives. I stood outside The Roxy for some time, watching the line to enter that wrapped around the corner quickly disappear through the metal detector and into the door, only to wrap around the corner again and again and again before I even had a chance to finish my coffee. This, and the level of excitement from almost everyone in the line, were the first indications that I was about to experience an amazing show. 

Upon entering, I quickly became overwhelmed by the number of people inside this small-ish venue. The opening act wasn’t scheduled to begin for another 20 minutes, but already there was very little room to move. I found a spot by the front of the stage and readied myself for the evening to come.

Opening for Mild Orange, was the synth-pop project Low Hum, a.k.a. Collin Desha, accompanied by the drummer and multi-instrumental artist, Keveen Baudouin. Low Hum has a unique sound that I had never heard before, mesmerizing auditory dreamscapes that both evoke and suppresses, all manner of realities.

Low Hum played a forty-minute set that included “Model Me,” “I Don’t Know Me Like You Do,” “All I Know,” “Nebraska,” and “Comatose.” During the set, Low Hum took a moment to recognize a young man in the audience, Josh, who was at the front of the stage rocking out and headbanging to all of his music. Low Hum couldn’t have been more humbled and grateful for Josh, and the rest of his fans who came out to see him.

Mild Orange, Josh Mehrtens (lead vocals, guitar), Josh Reid (guitar), Tom Kelk (bass), and Jack Ferguson (drums), stopped at the historic The Roxy Theater in Hollywood, CA, for their Looking For Space Tour to promote their new album, Looking For Space. By the time they took the stage, The Roxy Theater was packed from wall to wall. There was no room to move anywhere near the stage. As the curtain went up, a wave of pure joy and energy washed over the entire venue. 

The music of Mild Orange, named for the sense of calm elicited by the color, is beautiful and very calming. It’s the kind of music that fills your mind with pleasant imagery, your soul with peace, and before you are even aware, your entire body is moving.

“This Kinda Day,” from their new album Looking For Space, is Mehrtens‘s story of his six-month battle with pneumonia and pleurisy. He wrote this song to inspire people to reach out for help if they are suffering in any way mentally or physically.  

They played Looking For Space almost in its entirety from the singles and most-streamed songs “This Kinda Day,” “Clourise,” “F.E.A.R.,” “Hollywood Dreams to Aurora,” “Oh Yeah,” and “The Time Of Our Lives.”

Mixed into the set were fan favorites from their past two albums, Mild Orange and Foreplay, “Getting Warmer,” “Share This Dance,” and “In The Living Room” included. No one was ready for the night to end, but like all things, it must, and did, with one of their new songs “What’s Your Fire?”

Connect with Mild Orange

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photo credit: Rich Myers

Written by Killian O’Neil

Anyone who grew up in the Philly area and listens to pop-punk knows who The Starting Line is. They are one of the building blocks of the Philadelphia pop-punk scene as far as I’m concerned. The Starting Line has been around for well over two decades and still brings the same energy as when they were just starting out.

This past week I had the pleasure of being able to catch one of their live streams. On January 29th, they took to the cameras for the last installment of the live stream with a “Best Of” live stream, which featured some of the band’s best and favorite songs.

I was forgetting what it was like to hear music live (well, as live as I was going to get right now) and was somewhat skeptical of this whole live-streaming business these days, but boy was I wrong. I was eagerly sitting on my couch ripping a bong when the music started to blast through the speakers.

The Starting Line decided to turn it up to 100 right out of the gate and play the track, “Up And Go,” which immediately made me want to be in a sea of a hundred sweaty people around me who were all belting lyrics at the top of their lungs. The energy that the band was projecting made me, and I’m sure every other The Starting Line fan, felt like we were in the early 2000’s back at a show at The Electric Factory.

For anyone who doesn’t know that song, it is a lively and danceable treat for the ears and soul. If you don’t know the lyrics, you will wind up belting them out anyway. It was only a matter of seconds before I noticed myself tapping my foot and thrashing my head as if I was pressed against the barricades. There is something to be said about the energy of this band and how it is evident in their performances. If it’s one thing I know about life, it’s that you cannot fake chemistry in anything, and especially with music. Watching this live stream, I’ll tell you something, and that is that they still have it all these years later.

Before the music, there was a Q&A with the band touching on how all of this came together and their thoughts on it. I was blown away when I heard Mike Golla (guitar/vocals) say that “Twelve to fifteen of those songs we haven’t played since we recorded them.” The next thing you know, it just cuts to The Starting Line in front of a camera jamming like it was the mid-2000’s.

For a band to pick up and basically relearn every song they have ever put out, is extremely impressive and almost unheard of. According to Kenny Vasoli (vocals/guitar), This live stream, in particular, was all of the “deep cuts” that we miss and love from The Starting Line. The majority of the setlist seemed to be split up between Say It Like You Mean It and Anyways and a few other fan favorites sprinkled in.

You know when you’re at a show and the singer just stops and goes on a rant about something? It’s the single best thing because at that moment you’re reminded they are exactly like you. Right, it’s awesome. With that being said, this little rant made my night.

“This next song went gold and that just happened within the past couple of months and this is my first gold record ever and we really appreciate that. I mean it’s fucked up like twenty years into our career getting that, it’s like fucked up. So deep gratitude and thanks,” is what Kenny had to say about, “The Best of Me,” which is what they closed out the live stream with. It is an all-time favorite to the masses.

I have found that there is a correlation with artists that don’t sugarcoat shit during shows when they perform. They are the ones that are still around twenty years later playing their hearts out because speaking their truth is their passion.  Shortly after that song ended he continued on with talking about how they have never done an encore in the last ten years and how he’d like this to be called a “non-core” which had “Classic Jazz,” “Surprise, Surprise” and “Island.”

I will be honest with you here, I wasn’t sure how I was going to react to watching The Starting Line as a live stream. The entire concept of watching someone play live music via the Internet alluded to me until the other night, but my mind has been changed. The only thing to make that night even better (considering the obvious) was hitting the merch table before leaving the show. A girl can dream, but I can only hope that we get blessed with another live stream or new music in the not-so-distant feature.

Connect with The Starting Line

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written by Teyquil Skelton

Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson, professionally known as Tove Lo, is described as a Swedish dark-pop export, by Rolling Stone. She’s known for her grungy, raw, and gritty approach to pop music. In Philadelphia at the Fillmore, the saddest girl in Sweden left an imprint on the stage from her honest and sincere lyrical content that had her DNA all over it.

The night was electric, emotional, sensual, heartfelt, sexual, inviting, and bold. It was also a bit tearful, somber, charged, vulnerable, passionate and full of truth. Lo led the pack with her music and the crowd fearlessly followed. The audience sang along, recorded their favorite moments on their phones, screamed lyrics back to her, and created a sea of hand waves whenever she requested. The magic was prevalent in the room and Lo maintained the spark she possesses with each song she sang.

As the night proceeded, the stage was presented in a manner where it made sense in the world and mind of Tove Lo. Bright lights full of color, big drums, and wide open space for Lo to dance. Loud, artistic images made its appearance on the screen in the background as the smoke from the stage floor surrounded her stillness. 

Lo had something to say and her fans were eager to hear and see how she would convey these experiences up close and personal. There were periods when the concert went from upbeat to slower tempo. One of the times it did was when Lo mentioned to the crowd that she would sing a song relating to love and the song was “Come Undone” that was well-received by the audience. Fans chimed in as they assisted her with the lyrics. Suddenly, the room temperature changed, and I felt the space become a therapeutic session as people merged in unification.

Tove Lo strikes me as one of those performers who really strives to make her work fun and she loves including her fans in on her journey. There was a moment when she jumped off stage and ran up to the audience to slap hands and sing to as many as she can face-to-face. The crowd ate it up and was super grateful that she took the risk in doing so.

Speaking of risks, Lo is the perfect example of someone who takes lots of them as she provocatively grabs her boobs and shakes them at the crowd. Bending over and slowly twisting her hips is quite an enticement that certainly captures the attention of thousands watching. Queen of the Clouds was Lo’s first headline tour back in 2014 and now that five years has past, Philly has come out to once again show massive support to the Swedish Queen of Stockholm, Sweden.

One of Lo’s mantras is this idea of never getting too professional or too perfect in her live performances or recording process. If it does, then it becomes a bit too structural and she prefers staying away from those kinds of confinements. All she wants is to have access to being and feeling free and it’s something that she continues to reach for not only for herself but for her fans as well. As Lo transitioned from one song to another, her single “Stay High” began and the lights changed colors. As the stage grew darker, it supported the mood she was creating with much stimulation, style, sexiness and seduction all wrapped up into one. The room itself was Tove Lo’s oyster and we, in the crowd, were fully engaged and submerged in her sea.

Whenever you can find an artist that holds that much power through their art, it’s possible to find a similar or same power that we all share. When that much empathy, vulnerability, honesty, anger, sadness and truth is acquired, it will always give you something to leave with and think about. Messengers come in all kinds of ways and as a performer of some sort, our job is to send out those messages through our own creative process and watch it reach someone in ways unimaginable.

This is just my own personal connection, and attending the Tove Lo show, I’ve discovered a message given to me through her music that we all suffer at one point or another, but we live to fight another day by dancing it off, crying it out, sleeping it off or meeting it head on and never backing down under any circumstance.

If you’re in a city/town that Tove Lo is coming to visit, I highly recommend you go and see her live. Pop music is fun, it’s danceable, relative and moving. However, Tove Lo also approaches pop music from a darker spectrum with loads of things that makes you go, hmmm. Her music hits square in the heart and the concerns she has living her own life may very well be relatable in yours. So give it a try and venture into new territories, you may just find that we all share a common theme in our versions of this imperfect path that we call life.

Hailing from Atlanta, 68, a bluesy, noise rock duo, is definitely best served live. Scogin is a musical pundit, structuring songs full of raucous energy paired with lyrics that are both upbeat and melancholy in the same breath.

The two are in the middle of a tour supporting their latest LP, Two Parts Viper. The album is organic, but with a savage mix of raw distortion and energy. Viper is the band’s sophomore effort, with their debut, In Humor and Sadness, released in 2014. While Humor garnered comparisons to Nirvana’s Bleach, the chaos felt somewhat controlled and the instrumentation lacking — not ideal for a noise rock release. Humor left room for expansion, and the new record has moved in to fill that space with a vengeance. Two Parts Viper, it djents. But it doesn’t even come close to how explosive the pair is live.

Spontaneity is key when talking about 68, especially considering they never used a setlist during the entirety of the show. They play from the album, but with enough room to riff on each other for fresh inspiration and new interpretations.

Throughout the night, the pair played with the concept of letting songs collapse and rebuild on stage. Yamada’s innovating drum grooves and surprisingly captivating stage presence make it hard to believe he recently joined for this tour. Scogin’s intensity as a singer is almost indescribable. His vocals conjure images of Jack White and Kurt Cobain, but with an element completely his own.

At the conclusion of a frenzied fill, Yamada stands, pausing briefly upon the precipice of the stage and flings himself into the welcoming crowd. Josh Scogin found his way to standing atop the drum kit before returning to the stage level with relative ease. 68 concludes by derailing a song midway through, with Scogin setting his guitar on the speaker cabinet, allowing the feedback to run for a couple minutes, while Nikko kept frenzied time. Scogin knocks over the speaker cabinet and the show ends. He’s again soft-spoken while thanking the crowd, venue, and city while we are left to wonder exactly what it is we have just seen and where we can hear more.