Prior to this year’s Summer Circus tour, it had been a while since yours truly saw Less Than Jake headline a show. Sure there were Warped Tours and more Warped Tours and even more Warped tours, and a Vans Triple Crown skateboarding thing with Andy MacDonald and Bob Burnquist (and I think Radish also played), but if memory serves, the last time I saw Less Than Jake headline a club show was the long-since defunct Elvis Room in Portsmouth New Hampshire. So long ago that Jessica and Derron were still in the band and JR was still (Re)Pete from Spring Heeled Jack. I don’t call myself the resident old guy here for nothing…BUT I DIGRESS! The Boston stop on the Summer Circus tour seemed as good a time as any to both return to the House of Blues for only the second time since Covid, and more importantly to check out the Good Ship LTJ again, especially with the dynamite lineup they put together for the early summer festivities.
Bite Me Bambi were first out of the gate for this night, as they were for the entirety of the three-week East Coast run. I was as eager to catch Bite Me Bambi as I was to catch anyone else on this stacked bill, in part because the Orange County-based ska punks don’t make it up to this corner of the globe with any regularity, and also because they’re one of the few modern ska bands that reignited my interest in the genre I first fell in love with three decades ago. Led by the enigmatic Tahlena Chikami, the band kicked off their half-hour spot with “Too Many People” from their most recent release, Eat This. A large portion of the crowd at the 2200 capacity venue had arrived early enough to catch BMB’s high-energy set which included the evening’s first attempt at a circle pit (very much not a Bosotn thing) alongside tracks like “Strippers On A Sunday,” “Gaslighter’s Anthem” and their cover of The Offspring’s “Want You Bad,” a song that is now somehow a quarter-century old and that makes me want to walk into the ocean with rocks in my pockets. Bite Me Bambi’s set was super fun and they sounded super tight, which was especially noteworthy as the touring lineup is a bit of a moving target.
Speaking of bands who feature bold, enigmatic leaders at the front and center, the incomparable Fishbone were up next. Somehow, it was yours truly’s first time shooting Fishbone, and it was every bit as wonderfully chaotic as I’d hoped. Speaking of moving part lineups, the current touring iteration of Fishbone features the iconic Angelo Moore, the return of Tracey “Spacey T” Singleton on guitar, OG trombone/keyboard player Chris Dowd, and newer recruits Hassan Hurd (drums), JS Williams (trumpet/vocals) and James Jones (bass). It also features Moore’s daughter Cheyenne aka Whoop-Dee-Doo, who joined on guest vocals right from jump street on a rousing rendition of the classic “Skankin’ To The Beat.” The stage was constant motion, pure frenetic energy. In addition to lead vocal bandleading duties, Moore oscillated between the theremin and a few different horns (shoutout to Lucero’s longtime stage man Scott for keeping the ship running; not an easy task). The band blitzed through a tight 40 minute set that included classics new and old like “Party At Ground Zero,” “Last Call In America” and of course “Racist Piece Of Shit” before bringing the set to a fun, dancealong close with “Dance To The Music/Everyday Sunshine.”
Suicide Machines occupied the third spot on the four-band bill. My memory from shows from two and three decades ago is more than a little bit foggy, but I do have a vivid recollection of Suicide Machines playing early in the day at my first Warped Tour (Northampton MA 1997 – who was there???) and I definitely remember sneaking my Kodak Fisher Price 110 film camera in and shooting some pictures at that show. I’d never snuck my camera into a show before, and so that means there’s a very distinct possibility that Suicide Machines were the very first band I “shot.” Those pictures may be lost to time, but I should look for them. Anyway, the Detroit four-piece are as good or better now than they ever have been. The always fiercely anti-racist, anti-fascist quartet kicked things off with “Too Good” from their landmark 1996 debut LP Destruction By Definition and never really took their collective feet off the gas pedal. Spearheaded by the dynamic Jason Navarro, the band squeezed fifteen songs into their thirty-five-ish minute set. The bulk of the setlist consisted of songs from Destruction… – an album that they promised to revisit in full on an anniversary tour next year, with a smattering from A Match and Some Gasoline and Battle Hymns and Revolution Spring composing the other half of the set. Brand new standalone single “Never Go Quietly” fit right in as a new classic.
Which brings us to the piece de resistance, the one and only Less Than Jake. With a stage adorned in full Bit Top Circus-esque regalia, the Gainesville-based quintet kicked things off with their ode to their hometown, “Gainesville Rock City,” from 2000’s Borders & Boundaries. “Lie To Me” and “Johnny Quest Thinks We’re Sellouts” followed, with the latter still being one of my favorite songs in the ska/punk world. Pezcore and Losing Streak (and Losers, Kings… and Greased, if I’m being honest) were staple albums in my crew in the days they came out, the soundtrack to endless adventures packed into a friend’s station wagon, singing along at the tops of our lungs while searching for anything at all to do in our corner of suburban New England. I had a moment while standing in the wings, looking at the constant motion on stage – Chris and Roger constantly moving around and playing to the audience when off mic, Buddy never standing still for more than maybe 9 seconds, stage managers endlessly bringing different circus-themed props [rainbow wigs, clown noses, some strange banana-weilding guy in a monkey costume (hi Warren!)] that this is now the fourth decade I’ve seen Less Than Jake in. Sure maybe a little of the hair is greyer (mostly mine) but the band really show no signs of slowing down.
And so, as you might imagine, it was a personal high point of the set when JR’s former Spring Heeled Jack bandmate Chris Rhodes came out for a few songs toward the end of the set. Rhodes and JR occupy a great many memories in my increasingly foggy brain, as Spring Heeled Jack felt like they were one of our bands, even though they were from Connecticut and I was from New Hampshire. Static World View remains one of my favorite albums by anyone, and so it warmed the heart to see two-thirds of SHJ’s OG horn section (RIP Tyler Jones!) side-by-side again. That’s not to say the evening was ALL nostalgia. Less Than Jake played about half of their new EP Uncharted across their set, and the new tracks rock just as hard as ever, especially “Walking Pipebomb.” There have obviously been some weird and misguided jokes about ska and ska punk music for a while now, and I’m not really sure where they come from (sort of like the bad rap emo gets for some reason), but I do believe that bands like Less Than Jake and, really, all four of the bands on the bill for the East Coast leg of the Summer Circus Tour (West Coast gets Catbite and they certainly count too!) demonstrate what is really good and true and positive and celebratory and unifying about the music and the scene, especially given the seemingly neverending shit storm going on outside the venue walls.
The West Coast leg of the Summer Circus tour kicks off July 25th in Phoenix and runs through August 13th in Dallas. Check the full rundown here, and check out more pics below!