The Mighty Mighty Bosstones are BACK!
“Medium Rare” is The Mighty Mighty Bosstones most recent release. It’s a mixture of old B-Sides and some new songs, two of which I got to hear on Sunday July 13th at the Starland Summer Campout in Sayreville, NJ. It wasn’t exactly a real “camp out” but then again I didn’t see any stars so its all good. What it was…was the first time I had seen The Mighty Mighty Bosstones in about 6 years after the band went on a hiatus. Now before I get to the Bosstones let me tell you about the venue.
This so called “Summer Campout” was one of the most unusual concert events I’ve been to. Now it sucked to pay $35 to see just The Bosstones because all the other bands on the list I had no interest in, but in comparision to how some people pay like $100 to see most shitty bands, I actually got a deal. What was crazy about this and maybe it was because it was staged outdoors in the Starland Ballroom’s parking lot, but you had to park in a vacant lot at the Garden State Technology Building about 2 miles away and then take a shuttle bus just to get there. It was pretty weird, but then again this is New Jersey, so I’ve grown to live with the weird.
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones took the stage at 6:30pm and the whole band was dressed in plaid. They were bad in plaid once again and it was amazing to see them! They played a great mixture of old school songs and more recent ones but my highlights of the show were when they played a cover of The Clash’s “Rudy Can’t Fail” and for the first time ever I heard them play “Toxic Toast” (they used a pretty cool guitar rift to fill in for the piano part of the song). The crowd was pretty young and older fans like I who had listen to The Bosstones in high school were definitely in the minority, but they can still rock, even if they are moving a little bit slower which was evident in Ben Carr’s dance antics which have slowed down a little bit over the years. Another thing to mention is that there should be some kind of unwritten law about “crowd surfing” in that if you weigh more than 150 lbs you shouldn’t be allow to do it. Numerous times during the show I saw kids getting crushed by these dudes who must have been over 200 lbs crowd surfing. But I also saw these crowd surfing douches eat dirt when then were passed along the crowd to an open space; with no one there to hold them up they usually went head first crashing to the concrete and that was good for a laugh.
The Bosstones played for an hour and I took the shuttle bus back to the parking lot because I really had no interest in hanging around for The Dropkick Murphys. It was cool because the show ended at 7:30pm and I was home by 9:00pm, unlike most shows you go to when the earliest you get home is usually around 1:00am. Overall, all I have to say is that The Mighty Mighty Bosstones are back!!! And I can only hope that this wasn’t just a one time thing. Because I’d love to see them again where they are the headlining band and playing to a non-festival crowd and all Bosstones fans at a place like The Troc or The Electric Factory in Philly. Someday I Suppose.
July 15th, 2008 at 8:59 am
toxic toast?!?! sweet man.