As I’ve said before, I am a huge fan of the “album” tours that a lot of artists are doing now. It’s a good chance to not only hear great albums live, but sometimes we are getting the chance to hear songs live that were rarely performed prior, and sometimes haven’t been played in over a decade. For a band like The Ataris that already had quite the catalogue before So Long, Astoria, some may never have been played at all.

It’s also hard for someone like me to write a review, because I am not a writer by trade, and it was pretty straightforward. They played all of the songs in order, took a break, came back out to do a few acoustic numbers, and then a final song with the whole band. We were kind of waiting to see if Kris Roe would break down and fire the whole band onstage, but it was a relatively drama free show. So, here are some of the highlights of the show for me.

– Donald Spence (Versus The World frontman) had one unruly fan tossed in epic fashion. First he called her out on the mic for coming to a show just to dis the band, then, when she wouldn’t relent, he had her thrown out. I normally would hate when a band acts like this, breaking character to address one person, but she was being really obnoxious, so, thank you sir!

– This was an alt-punk show people! One lousy crowd surfer. ONE! I know it’s a bit more difficult at the TLA with the barricade and all, but I expected more from Philly.

– I did not recognize a single member of the group. It was odd, I haven’t given them much thought in the last decade since they parted ways, but Roe in particular seemed like a stranger to me.

– It’s nice to see a band that has all the alt-rock tropes down and doesn’t make them feel forced like they had been rehearsing them for a Broadway show (bouncing around the stage, hyping the crowd, et cetera).

– They were genuinely happy to be there. At one point Spence hugged Mike Davenport and they smiled at each other. It was spur of the moment, and it seemed like in that instance the crowd wasn’t even there. It was just some old friends having a good time.

– They didn’t trash “The Boys Of Summer.” I really expected them to hate this song and that it is what they are most known for commercially. They respected it, they played the hell out of it, and they forced us all to join in on it.