There was a point in the early 2000’s where teen comedy movies ruled the box office. You could usually find the main character starting off the flick at a kegger. Pop Punk bands narrating the soundtrack of them drooling over their crush. Then, being massively embarrassed by the varsity quarterback.
Well, we’ve all grown up from our “Not Another Teen” blah blah blah days, but one thing hasn’t. Our love for beer and Pop Punk anthems!
And who’s been keeping that love burning all these years better than MTV’s morning lineup stars Bowling for Soup, the kings of Hawaiian shirts Reel Big Fish, and your adolescent guilty pleasure Mest? Take all three of these bands and put them at Brooklyn Bowl for a Motley Brews Beerfest. You’re sure to start a comedy movie of your own in no time!
Mest
Scream your heart out from the rooftops, Mest is back in Vegas! After a huge hiatus (that I’m sure racked up a bunch of pink envelopes on these guys’ kitchen tables) Mest have been touring again! They finally came back to The Strip for a look back on a style that has since gone extinct.
From “Fucked Up Kid” and into “Jaded”, you can tell that this crowd had been ready for this set since their graduation. By the time “Cadillac” closed out the set, singer Tony was already stripped down to his underwear. He was ready to get the night going!
Typical that someone would get too wild in the first hour of a party, but we were just getting started!
Reel Big Fish
Could there be a better band to play a Motley Brews Festival?? Seriously, I’ll have myself a beer, and another, annnnd another!
For a band that continues to releases album after album of party anthems and drunken breakup songs, you’d think their setlist would change. You’d be wrong! Everybody’s doing the fish, and they won’t stop!
The usual “Trendy” and “I Want Your Girlfriend to Be My Girlfriend Too” will always be millennial anthems. Newer jams like “Everyone Else is an Asshole” give the young and old a chance to scream out their true feelings along with hundreds of strangers.
It isn’t an RBF show without Reel Big Fish ‘s famous “Sell Out”. And the inevitable “Beer” put a cap on the set. If this was your first time seeing this rambunctious bunch, then lucky you. But even Ska vets enjoyed this special occasion that’ll be sure to stay in our memories forever.
Bowling For Soup
Remember that song from the early 2000s? Yeah, it wasn’t Bowling For Soup, but they sure as shit play it! Bowling For Soup have taught us that dreams can come true, even if they aren’t your dreams, and even if they don’t come true. Doesn’t make sense?
Well, if you didn’t write songs like “Stacy’s Mom” and “1985”, but everyone thought you did, would you play them live at EVERY SHOW? No, you wouldn’t, but Bowling For Soup would!
Besides their favorite covers, Bowling For Soup have been a Pop Punk main act since most kids in this crowd were in diapers. So when “The Bitch Song” and “Trucker Hat” start making your toes tap, you’d wish these songs were a part of your teenage mixtapes too. “Punk Rock 101” and “The Girl All The Bad Guys Want” are sure to peak your nostalgic interest and get the biggest shit-eating grin on your face for the rest of the show.
If everyone wasn’t a grown adult here, I would have expected a football jock to hang some nerd off the second floor balcony. But like these bands, we all grew up to enjoy these times and look back on the glory days we worked so hard to leave behind. Each of these acts continue to release album after album while we go to day job after day job. Shows like this leave a reminder that there’s still a kid that wants to run away in all of us.
All Live Photos by Courtney Ware for ZrockR Magazine 2019, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.