American pop punk band The Get Up Kids return to Barcelona after 10 years

Badalona (CNA).- Concertgoers filled the Sala Estraperlo venue in Badalona (a city in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area) on Friday night for the long-awaited return of the American band 'The Get Up Kids'. The band, which broke up in 2005 after being together for 10 years, is currently doing a reunion tour throughout Europe.
Fans packed in tightly to get a good view of 'The Get Up Kids’ long-awaited Barcelona performance. The crowd must have doubled in size after the performance of the two opening bands. The 'The Get Up Kids’ opened the show with a relatively new song, ‘Your Petty Pretty Things’ from their 2009 reunion record ‘Simple Science.’ The older songs clearly received the most attention during the show. People were singing along, jumping up and down, crowd surfing, stage diving, and dancing. Fans even crowd surfed and stage dived during their slower, acoustic songs such as ‘Overdue.’ Somewhat struck by this, The Get Up Kids’ lead singer Matt Pryor stated, mid-song, “seems like a kind of odd song to crowd surf to.” The crowd was full of energy throughout their performance, which ended after an encore at around 2:30 am with a fan favourite ‘Ten Minutes.’

Pleasant surprises to the night were the two opening acts, local bands 'The Destroyed Room’ and ‘Bullitt'. Fans of these bands filled the club, singing and dancing to their American inspired local pop punk.

The Destroyed Room formed a year and a half ago and have already put out 4 EPs and toured throughout Spain. The band plays both pure electric pop punk and acoustic folk, successfully managing both styles. “The idea was to move between folk, a new terrain for us, and punk, something we had always played,” said the band’s lead singer, Sergi. The band seemed to have a pretty large following at the show, with several crowd members singing along to their English language music. Sergi explained to CNA that it is becoming much easier to get your music out to a world audience. “It’s really an illusion for us to see that people from Russia, Chile and Melbourne are listening to our music”.

The 2nd band to play, local band Bullitt, put on an energy-filled set with very little stopping in between songs. Their power punk style is influenced by 90s American punk bands like Bad Religion, Jawbreaker and Fugazi, though they also owe a lot to the Spanish bands No More Lies and Aina. The band has a primarily local following, as they have not played outside of Spain. “We really want to but it is a matter of time for us as we have jobs and it’s difficult for us to find the time to tour,” said the band’s drummer, Enric.

Both of the bands sing exclusively in English. “It is natural to write in English because it forms part of my life. It was not a conscious decision, it just worked out that way,” said Sergi of The Destroyed Room. It is a similar case for Bullitt, who sings in English because of their American and English influences. “We never found anything we were looking for in music when listening to Catalan rock bands.”

As for the future for local bands like The Destroyed Room and Bullitt: “We like change, being able to play a rock concert on a stage and then play an intimate acoustic set in a garden or in someone’s kitchen. We don’t have any problems with that. The only important thing for us is to have fun playing and creating new songs. If we could only do it everyday,” said Sergi of The Destroyed Room.

“It is almost impossible to have a rock band as a job in Spain. The past year we have played around 30-40 shows and have still lost money. So we really are very grateful when people like you take some interest in what we do. Our next step is to publish our second album titled ‘Love or Die’ this September and play as many shows as we can around Spain,” said Bullitt member Enric.