Less Than Jake and Wilhelm Scream, HOB Anaheim

We caught Less Than Jake and Wilhelm Scream at the House of Blues in Anaheim last Monday.

I brought two newbies: one complete punk newbie (Dr Ron) and a guy that has seen a lot of alt.rock shows but maybe nothing as serious as these shows. For Wilhelm Scream, we pushed into the crowd in front of the stage, at the back side of the pit.

It truly was a kind crowd: everyone down in the pit knew what they were doing and were having a good time. Hardly any fights. Everyone that fell was picked up quickly. It was the way it was supposed to be.

Less Than Jake were on fire. The blasted through a set dominated by older tunes, plus played one song ("Overated") off of the upcoming CD. To push through a bunch of their back-catalog, they often would play just one verse and one chorus of a tune, like they did for "Dopeman". "Johnny Quest" didn't get played, which sucks.

In the past I've tried to describe why punk is great, and what the pit means. Why do guys like to run into one another, and push one another in some good-natured mock fight? It just makes sense to me. We are there, connected, unified. We are not alone.

Whatever. A good show. A good night.

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Via the magic of Technorati.com, here are other people that saw the same show: checkersnpink, atticus13 (oops, he saw same bands play at a different HOB)