The Get Up Kids
Novemer 16, 2008
The Record Bar
By AARON LADAGE
Photos by FORESTER
“When the hell did the Get Up Kids get back together?”
Give or take the superfluous swear word, this was undoubtedly the question on most people’s minds when word of a TGUK reunion show started trickling in over the last few months and culminating in a hush-hush show announcement last week.
To answer that and several of the inevitable follow-up questions: yes, all five members of the Get Up Kids performed a full set for the first time in three years at the Record Bar on Sunday. If you couldn’t make it, don’t panic – the band has promised a few more shows in 2009 to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of their breakthrough album, Something to Write Home About.
Click on photo for slide show.
Yes, the show was crowded (RB staff even posted warnings to out-of-town fans not to bother making the trip due to a 200-person limit, although not everyone listened). And no, I doubt this signifies a full-fledged rebirth of Kansas City’s favorite emo grandpappies – although stranger things have happened.
There was a stark contrast between Sunday’s quickly and quietly assembled performance and the band’s sold-out final hurrah at the Uptown Theater in 2005, and not just in size and scope. Three years is an unusually quick turnaround for a band to reunite, but in the case of TGUK, it seemed to be plenty of time for the tensions of being in a road-weary band to dissipate.
Even before the show started, the atmosphere in the Record Bar felt a bit like a high school reunion as the five Kids – guitarist/singer Matt Pryor, guitarist Jim Suptic, bassist Rob Pope, drummer Ryan Pope and keyboardist James Dewees – mingled with old friends in the crowd.
When the band took the stage for their track-by-track playthrough of Something to Write Home About, wide grins broke out on dozens of faces in the crowd as the first familiar notes of the album’s opening track, “Holiday,” hit the air. This tiny show was clearly a nod to the longtime fans from Kansas City, and Kansas City was eating it up.
Click for slide show, yo.
Of course, playing through an entire album is all well and good, but it doesn’t leave a lot of options for an encore, especially when the fans are begging for a few more tracks. The Kids dug deep in their encore, playing six more songs that spanned several albums.
If you weren’t aware of the fact that the Get Up Kids hadn’t played together in more than three years, you wouldn’t have been able to tell from Sunday night’s performance. Every song was a spot-on reproduction of its album counterpart, save for a few well-placed vocals liberties taken by Pryor.
Despite Suptic’s and Pryor’s Danny Glover-esque “getting-too-old-for-this-shit” banter onstage, the band sounded tighter and more visceral than they did in their final few years of touring. But even though the stage show was more intense, they looked like they were actually having fun again.
Ah, to be a Kid again…
Setlist
Holiday
Action & Action
Valentine
Red Letter Day
Out of Reach
Ten Minutes
The Company Dime
My Apology
I’m a Loner Dottie, a Rebel
Long Goodnight
Close to Home
I’ll Catch You
Encore
Campfire Kansas
The One You Want
Up on the Roof
Beer for Breakfast (almost)
No Love
Mass Pike
Walking on a Wire
Critic’s Notebook
Personal Bias: I lobbied (unsuccessfully) to have “I’ll Catch You” as the first dance song at my wedding reception.
Random Detail: A different Matt Pryor served as mayor of Troy, Michigan, from 2001-2004. The Get Up Kids have a song called “Anne Arbour.” Ann Arbor is 56.8 miles from Troy. Coincidence, or elaborate ruse? Discuss.
By the way: The Kids covered the Replacements’ “Beer for Breakfast” on the 2001 B-sides collection Eudora and share a record label (Vagrant) with several of Paul Westerberg’s solo albums.
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