12

Astoria bowled over with giggles

Packed out in the capital, the walls are expanding with hysteria filled kids wanting to be entertained. It's an interesting bill that has a real feel-good factor about it.

Despite my personal disagreements with security an hour or so ago, they appear to be doing a better, and more sociable job now, so I guess they saved themselves an ass whipping!

MC Lars is in full swing and to be honest I'm slightly disappointed with his performance. As a live spectacle one guy and a laptop is not what I consider to be particularly entertaining. His vocals were also slightly distorted so we were unable to enjoy his witty and amusing lyrics, which makes the whole experience rather pointless, again it's a shame as he has stage presence and bags of confidence - I guess this just wasn't his day.

American Hi-fi come out to screams and applause and waste no time in cranking it up with their spectacular songs 'Art Of Losing', and 'The Break Up Song'. Playing a good tight set with other crowd favourites like 'Geeks Get The Girl', and 'Flavour Of The Week', American Hi-Fi could well be onto something, though a couple of songs sound pretty ordinary even if they do go off into an epic of guitar playing at the end of the song! The anthem, and hard rocking songs are the best by far, and really show what a great band they can be - Although that said slower song, 'Perfect Day' still sounds fantastic...

When it comes to value for money Bowling For Soup are always worth every hard earned penny. There aren't too many bands that can pull off happy-party-pop-punk with random acts of comedy, but BFS manage this each and every time. The band come out shortly after we hear the voice of Jaret telling us of his many midget theories - one being that if you decide to fight a midget, and lose, then you will instantly become one, thus you should be the bigger man and walk off...Wise words, sir...

You only have to watch Kerrang TV to see just how many decent catchy tunes these cheeky Texans have come out with. Once an encore, 'The Bitch Song', which arguably brought the band recognition now starts the shows, with other great songs like, 'Emily', 'Trucker Hat' and 'Home Town', following.

Tonight bassist Erik is sporting a quite punk-tastic red Mohawk, which upstages singer/comedian Jaret who's 'do looks rather subdued and tidy tonight. Big Chris - who not only is a real gentleman if you ever get the chance to meet him - has the ability to play the guitar, throw picks and shoot people with his finger-pistols whilst never missing a cord. Drummer Gary has the flu, but as we know even if he was up the front, he's the Silent Bob of the band.

It's not long before an inflatable pair of balls and a penis find their way up on to the stage, and we have a comical moment of firstly Jaret bent over and Eric - with an evil twinkle in his eye - getting ready to run and make the said air-filled object rather uncomfortably disappear. Then we see Chris wearing the aforementioned inflatable on his head with the balls wrapped around his head - cue a whole host of gags...

As great as the songs are - which as usual are played at twice the speed of the CD versions - the tomfoolery of the in between song japers is so entertaining that you wonder why they don't also do stand up. At one point both Eric and Chris are cracking jokes at the same time, and Jaret finds himself having to repeat both for the crowds benefit whilst telling off his buddies for their unprofessionalism. There's more crowd participation when someone throws a bra onstage and after being goaded by the crowd to put it on, Jaret decides one of them should do it, and proceeds to make a girl's day, year and probably her lifetime by getting her up on stage to that very thing.

We have large 15ft rock hands either side of the stage pop up as, 'Punk Rock 101' kicks into action. We also have 'Belgium', the song that appears on everyone of their albums and is always one of my favourites as halfway through they decide to start playing other peoples songs - tonight we get snippets of the support act's songs, whilst chart songs from the likes of uber-cool Gwen Steffani. We also have Bryan Adam's, 'Summer Of 69' (another former encore song), and new single, 'Almost'.

You will see bands that will play their instruments better. You will hear bands that will play more original songs. But will you ever be quite as entertained by a band other than Bowling For Soup? I doubt it. The best fun you can have with your clothes on...