You know it’s a good concert year when you get to visit your old stomping grounds six months apart. I saw many shows at Chain Reaction in my younger days. While each of them has great memories attached to them for different reasons, by the time I was a fan of Home Grown, they had outgrown small clubs. The Orange County pop-punk band has experienced a resurgence in the months since I spoke with Adam and Johnny back in February. What seemed like a few shows here and there has turned into more and made the band the most active they’ve been in almost two decades. The unsurprising part of all this is that they’ve still got it.
This year marks a big anniversary for the band: the thirtieth anniversary of their first full-length LP, “That’s Business.” A ska punk album that was very much written by a young band learning the ropes and finding their voice, it still manages to be the perfect document of their sound in the mid-1990s. Appropriately, the band played a one-night special show at Chain Reaction to celebrate.
Pop punkers Overlap opened the show. Overlap was a three-piece pop-punk band that were peers of Home Grown in the mid-1990s. With a style close to Home Grown’s own from this time, minus the ska, they were a good choice for a band that probably didn’t get their due when they were active. Their thirty-minute set was energetic, and their songs were pretty damn good, too. Overlap’s short-lived career made it possible to play most of their songs, even some that hadn’t made it to an album quite yet. By looking at their social media, Overlap doesn’t seem sure what the future holds for them, but I hope they keep going.
Up next was Mercy Music from Las Vegas. They were another three-piece pop-punk band that kept the energy going as more people filled in for the main event. Mercy Music had the hallmarks of great pop punk: palm-muted guitars, bass lines that actually move around the neck rather than just follow the guitar, and double-bass pedaled punk rock. Mercy Music played their hearts out and kept the stage nice and warm for Home Grown.
Since reuniting, Home Grown has played a few of the songs off That’s Business: “Hearing Song,” “Face in the Crowd,” and “Get A Job,” specifically. “Surfer Girl” is also, of course, part of their set, but has been for quite a while. The rest have fallen by the wayside, and this show felt like a way to give some of the other songs a proper send-off. If nothing else, it was a celebration of the band at a venue they had played so many times before.
Video credit to Rock Show Videos
I have the same thoughts now as I did back in May. The band is still on the mark, if not better than their initial run. Time has done that to the punk rock bands who are still passionate about their music, whether they stuck together or reunited. Home Grown played every song off That’s Business, even the ones that didn’t age well, but let the crowd sing the unfavorable lines. While the band seems content with putting songs like “One Night Stand,” “Impotency,” and “Worthless” to rest, I hope they saw the love the crowd had for “Ubotherme,” “Wanna-Be,” and “SFLB.”
Home Grown closed the night with a trio of songs from their next two albums: “Nowhere Slow” from Act Your Age and *King of Pop* tracks “Kiss Me,” “Diss Me,” and “You’re Not Alone.” Overall, it was a great night. The mood inside Chain Reaction was super positive. It was mostly an older crowd, with the kids that mostly seemed to be dragged there by their parents, mine included.
The band has been very open about this being a one-time thing for various reasons. Like most of us, they’ve grown. This was evident as Home Grown’s sound evolved during their initial run. If this is the end for some of the songs off That’s Business, Home Grown did it right. The show was full of die-hard fans at the venue they grew up seeing shows at and playing an album that meant a lot to the people in that room. It was probably a reunion for a good number of people in the crowd, but it was a celebration for all.
