Catch 22 / Boys Night Out / The Goodwill

live in Providence (2003)

Brian Shultz

Tiny Providence received the honor of having the first show of the tour, and we held our own.

After a couple delays, Worthless United took the stage and brought along their fusion of an And Out Come the Wolves…ish Rancid and the working-class punk rock of the Dropkick Murphys; perhaps, dare I say it,
a dash of the Clash. Midway through their set things finally started picking up in the crowd and the quiet storm
started to brew for the night.

A little more heavy and a little more sloppy than usual, which actually added a nice effect, the Goodwill's brand
of harmless pop-punk didn't get a whopping response from the crowd, but at the same time everyone else kept their negative feelings to themselves. The Long Island boys started off with "That's What Sean Said," and played right into "Let it Go." They also managed to get in "The Boyscout," "Doesn't Even Matter," "Forgotten Feeling"
and closed up with "Sometimes the Radio." I still love the terribly cheesy finger-points by the lead singer. It
never gets old.

Boys Night Out seemed to have a small following here (including me) that was raucously responsive to every
song. Surprisingly starting with "Yeah…No, I Know" (the closer off Make Yourself Sick), BNO let one verse drag on before using the trio of string-pickings
to jump right into "Where We Breathe." The hardcore verses were eclectically nerve-inducing, the poppy vocals right on.
The band derived their set both from the Broken Bones
and Bloody Kisses EP and the aforementioned album, playing favorites like "Sketch Artist Composite" and
"(Just Once) Let's Do Something Different," and "It's Dylan, You Know the Drill" among others. Much to the chagrin (because
they wanted more songs which would've messed up set times) of the finger-pointing, fist-throwing members of the front
crowd, they wrapped things up with "I Got Punched in the Nose for Sticking My Face in Other People's Business." An
energetic, angst-ridden, emotively far-ranging set. In other words, fucking awesome.

So after punk rock, pop-punk, and pop-hardcore, the only thing that could really stretch the diversity of the show
anymore were the headliners themselves; Catch 22. They started off with what would be the first of five or six new songs
from Dinosaur Sounds. Although the actual
tracklisting is on their Victory page, the song titles of these
new ditties I caught were "Rocky" (the first), "Motown Cinderella," and "Dripping Faucet." And no, I'm almost positive
they didn't play "Wine Stained Lips". How are the new
songs you say? A much better, more diverse feel than the aforementioned mp3, with occasional hints of heightened ska
and reggae that we didn't really get to hear in Alone in a Crowd. As for all the bitching and moaning that got me worked up
about the band playing every song too fast, they only did this with two songs in particular - "On and On and On" and
"Keasbey Nights." It doesn't have much of a negative effect on the first, but I will admit it does a slight amount of
damage to Tomas's masterpiece, forcing you to speed up to sing along. Everything else was gold, from "9MM and a Three
Piece Suit" to "Straight Forward" to "Arm to Arm." The shared vocal duties flowed nicely, and the horns were
tight as hell. The whole floor was skanking it up, in occasionally sloppy circles and sometimes free-styling
motions in the center. They also played the "Intro/Point the Blame" pair, "It Takes Some Time," "What Goes Around
Comes Around," and "Bloomfield Ave." from AiaC. The encore had them finishing with one of the new songs, and then,
of course, "12341234." They could've really fucked that up trying to speed it up, but left the tempo as is,
and it worked like a charm.

If you're still bitter about Tomas, I don't think this would be the best thing for you, with the extremely
different vocal styles Catch 22 currently contrasts (and lyric base). If you're like me and paired the past with the past, the street with the light, consider it a show worth going to.