Sayreville, NJ – 13 Jan 2024
I think you need this now, ‘Cause I know I sure did
My wife can be something of a butthead sometimes. Once a month or so she finds a meme about all my playlists being stuck in the past and sends it to me because I'm consistently still listening to the same records I was listening to 20-25 years ago. Its mean, its hurtful and its 100% accurate. And let's be honest, why the hell wouldn't want to immerse myself in those days before mortgages and utilities, the days when hours could be dedicated to finding the perfect Myspace profile song.
That's the backstory to finding myself at Starland Ballroom on a Saturday night to see Story Of The Year perform their 2003 debut Page Avenue. This was my third time seeing the boys from St Louis, I saw them on side stages at both the Asbury Park, NJ and Manassas, VA stops of the Warped Tour in 2003, a few weeks ahead of the album release and then a few months after the album release at Skate and Surf Fest 2004. This would be my first chance to see them on their terms rather than a festival schedule, and let me tell, these dudes thrive in that headliner slot. But first there were a few treats in the opening and support slots.
The evening kicked off with Youth Fountain, a young band I was unfamiliar with. Boiling over with raw emotions, Youth Fountain vocalist Tyler Zanon has a way of singing stories that could make everyone of us inside Starland feel a little bit better about ourselves. Canadian as they may be, for an old schmuck from NJ, they certainly brought the vibes of Lanemeyer and The Early November in their performance. They brought a good energy and had a good time which made sure the crowd had a good energy and had a good time.
Next to the stage was one of the biggest surprises of the last few years for me, We The Kings. I know of the band, we all know “Check Yes Juliet,” and while it is a bop, I never gave them much of a chance beyond the single. I was wrong in doing so, because these guys bring arena-rock pizazz to the pop-punk vibes. It was an absolute delight to shimmy and shake my ass along to these uber-catchy and absolutely delectable melodies. We The Kings shocked with their ability to win even over the most jaded attendees. I came in utterly indifferent but certainly left a fan of the quintet and their sincere and jubilant love for being on stage sharing their sound with the crowd. It was a humbling and powerful performance as I opened the gate I'd been keeping and couldn't stop humming and clapping along. Bravo boys!
Finally, Story Of The Year takes the stage to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Page Avenue by playing the record in its entirety. Well, kind of… Normally you go to an anniversary full album playthrough it starts with track 1 and closes with the final track. That's not how Story of the Year did it though, instead performing every track in a new order. Did it catch me off guard for them to do so? Yes, but was it problematic to play the album on shuffle? Not at all. And it made perfect sense that they'd break from the album mid set… it's almost like they wanted to promote their catalogue not a record. An original and refreshing take on a classic format. Hmm, who'da fuckin' thunk?
Despite changing the track order, everything else felt the same tonight at 42 as it did when I was 22. Frontman Dan Marsala still performs with the same passion, energy and album-perfect pitch that he has had for decades. Adam Russell and Ryan Phillips still possess the frenetic energy of a couple of 20 year olds, and while backflips may not be the norm any longer, that doesn't mean the band has forgotten how to utilize the environment to enhance the show, in this case, Russell climbing atop a member of the Starland security team's shoulders without missing a beat.
The crowd was on fire across the set, no moment more embodying that fact than when a number of crowd-surfers showed up amid the band's performance of slow-jam “Sidewalks.” It worked and Marsala was clearly amused by the whole thing.
Leaving the stage at an album playthrough before performing all of the tracks on the album? Well that wasn't the best plan and didn't work, if you ask me… or even if you didn't, fuck you I'm writing this. Luckily SOTY made it fun by teasing the moment with the line “We're going to walk off stage and pretend we are done, so you can cheer and yell and pretend you want us to come back.” The cheering and yelling occurred, but there was no pretending, this was a crowd hungry for more and a band ready to provide.
Embracing the nostalgia of the moment, Story of the Year performed a brilliant snapshot of 2003 with a medley of their contemporaries' hits; Yellowcard's “Ocean Ave,” Taking Back Sunday's “Cute Without The E (Cut From The Team),” My Chemical Romance's “I'm Not Okay (I Promise), The Used's “Taste Of Ink” and the previously mentioned and performed “Check Yes, Juliet” from We The Kings before closing it out with their own killer single “Until The Day I Die.”
Story Of The Year understood the assignment, understood the crowd and understood what we all needed. A trip back in time to the summer's shouting along to all of our favorite lyrics in parking lots and amphitheaters. A trip back to the days that made us, us and made the scene a fucking a masterpiece.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed's musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he's self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/