Bowling For Soup - 'Acoustic In A Freakin' English Church'

All the elements of a Bowling For Soup show are there, but just a little calmer.

Bowling For Soup in church, who would have thought it? Of course, it's not a church now (is it?), but would this curtail the usually unrestrained banter between the members during their set? To clear one thing up immediately, it's not BFS as such, rather just Jaret Reddick and Erik Chandler without guitarist Chris Burney and drummer Gary Wiseman. They are listed on the DVD cover and they do appear, but not to play, only to bring drinks on stage for the other two.

Back on point, I did wonder whether playing in a church (is it?) would curtail their banter and language, but that was a silly idea because of course it didn't. Ask the guy who shouted out from the balcony that it was his birthday. Reddick takes no prisoners. So while the show obviously lacks some dynamic compared to the full band electric thing, all the other elements are there.



Anything is up for discussion between songs; the English language, the Mexican merch guy, Mick Jagger and Chandler's black eye, for instance. The pace is also much more relaxed, as proved by the fact that by the seventh song, the runtime had already reached some forty-six minutes into the DVD. The set itself includes 'Me With No You', 'Two Seater', the Rush-inspired '2113', 'Punk Rock 101' and, what should have been a bigger hit than it was, the ballad 'Turbulence', alongside favourites like 'Almost', 'The Bitch Song', 'Ohio (Come Back To Texas)', 'Emily' and to close the night '1985'. Chandler also gets to present one of his solo songs, 'Tonight's The Night', which was very good, but strangely not listed on the album sleeve. Notable by its absence was 'Girl All The Bad Guys Want'; maybe they played it but decided to leave it off the DVD?

If you would rather just listen to the music than watch them play, the set can also be purchased on CD. There is nothing wrong whatsoever with this video (unless maybe you are religious, then you might consider it blasphemy to be doing this in a church (is it?)), despite the fact that the event was around three, maybe more, years ago. All the elements of a Bowling For Soup show are there, but just a little calmer.

Andy Brailsford