Every year, the band Mustard Plug puts on a post-Christmas holiday show in their hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. This was the first year I'd attended, and was happy to see an entire show dedicated to the local music scene – all 3 opening bands were from the same city!
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| Ugly Flannel, 2019, photo taken by author |
First up was Ugly Flannel. Echoes of Switchfoot and Good Charlotte mixed with the thematic elements of The Used, in a tarantella of mid-00's indie music that brought me straight back to high school and early college. There's a certain somethin' somethin' about that specific style of music – certainly not pop-punk, a little later than the emo craze of Panic! At The Disco and Fall Out Boy, but slightly earlier than when Mumford & Son and Wilco dominated the iPods of guys wearing ironic facial hair and chunky glasses. I must say, I was firmly entranced by the band Ugly Flannel, and their ability to defy genre. Ugly Flannel were a fantastic opener to the 2019 Holiday Show, and I'm eager to see where this band goes and grows!
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| Dance Contraption, 2019, photo by author |
The second opener was a fairly straightforward ska band called Dance Contraption. Very clean and modern; the bright overtures of early 00's skater-punk mixing with the brass section (TROMBONE SOLO!), making me want to play Tony Hawk Pro Skater really, really bad. They were great showmen as well, working the crowd with incredible ease!
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| The Lippies, 2019, photo by author |
The third opener was a modern-sounding band with an old-school ethos: The Lippies. Led by a total firecracker of a lead singer, she belted songs of female empowerment. Honestly, not something I expected, but man, it was cool to see their set! Their sound was a little Save Ferris mixed with The Screaming Females...specifically, their cover of Taylor Swift's Shake It Off on the A.V. Club's website(seriously, I kept waiting for the lead singer to bust into that exact cover). They wore their hearts on their sleeve, and were unapologetic about the message they presented; very much punk rock, and very refreshing in this age of music specifically engineered to be catchy.
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| Mustard Plug, 2019, photo by author |
Finally, the main event. Mustard Plug, formed in 1991 in Grand Rapids, rode the wave (the third one, to be precise) of ska and ska/punk to great success in the mid- to late-90's and early 00's. Despite the band being older than nearly all the members of the aforementioned bands, Dave and crew still put on one hell of a show. The band lamented the fact that there was a steel barricade about 4' in front of the stage; they said they felt disconnected from the audience. But, they utilized it by anchoring their back foot on the stage, propping their front foot on the barricade, and leaning out over the audience. They played all the songs, too! Including favorites of mine, like Everything Girl, Thigh High Nylons, and We're Gonna Take On The World.
The venue, The Intersection, underwent some renovations in the recent past, and I honestly hadn't been there since 2006. Things were well-lit, yet still maintained the ambience of a nightclub – I was nerding out over the ambient lighting hanging over the stairs, in accordance with the fire code. Small details (like correctly lightening emergency exits, in a tasteful manner) make all the difference, and show the amount of thought and care that went into the renovation. It no longer felt like the scuzzy basement bar I remember from 2006, and actually felt like a proper, professional concert space. Earplugs were still beneficial, as there's an inordinate amount of reverberation off of glass, concrete, and metal surfaces, but that's to be expected in every single venue I've ever been in.
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