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| Photo courtesy of myspace.com/alkalinetrio. |
Alkaline Trio holds a special place in my heart.
During my formative high school years in the late ‘90s and early zeroes, the Chicago punk band won my favor with masterful albums such as Goddamnit, s/t, From Here To Infirmary and Maybe I’ll Catch Fire, albums that I find myself listening to and still enjoying more than a decade later.
But as happens sometimes, Alkaline Trio lost its luster in the years and albums to follow. Call it a combination of me growing up and gaining exposure to new, vastly different music while the increasingly popular band changed for the worse with a handful of mailed-in albums.
Saturday night at the U.S. Cellular stage, I imbibed in a generous helping of nostalgia as I decided to see what was left of this very special band in my life. I hoped for the best, expected the worst. Some 90 minutes and one tremendous Alkaline Trio’s greatest hits show later, I left the Henry Maier Festival Park surprised, satisfied and voiceless.
Trio’s performance began as I expected, with some dreadful post-Infirmary song about skeletons or something similarly dark. As half the crowd bopped around atop the metal bleachers, the other half seemed to echo my disinterest. But when the band chased the opener with “Snake Oil Tanker” (one of its oldest songs), you could feel a shift in the muggy, cloudless Milwaukee air.
One after another, Alk 3 capably crossed songs off my mental list of songs I hoped to (but never would’ve guessed I’d) hear. Before night’s end, “Clavicle,” “Goodbye Forever,” “I Lied My Face Off,” “Bleeder,” “Nose Over Tail,” “Private Eye,” “My Friend Peter,” “Trouble Breathing” and many more graced the band’s set list as the majority of the band’s holdover fan base appreciatively belted out every word.
Of course, the performance wasn’t immune from a few newer cuts, but for much of the crowd, those songs just served as dance breaks or opportunities for temporary rest for vocal chords. All the while, the band seemed to play a genuinely appreciative host, joking with one another and working in a few mentions of the band’s history, its love of malt liquor and the Cubs (the only time the band was booed, for the record).
By the time, Matt Skiba introduced the closer “97” saying, “This is the first song I ever wrote for Alkaline Trio. I wrote it in 1996,” it came to focus how much both the band and I have changed since that song came out. It became even more apparent exactly how drastically the music of Alkaline Trio has shifted through time and fame. But for an hour and a half, none of that mattered.
Of course, the band came back for an obligatory “Radio” encore, which left any remaining doubters smiling and singing along. Even the disorganized shuttle bus debacle couldn’t kill the unexpected high I was riding from revisited youth.
