Show Review, Photos: Say Anything Celebrate 20 Years Of "...Is A Real Boy" In San Francisco
Say Anything
…Is A Real Boy 20th Anniversary Tour
w/ AJJ, Greet Death
The Masonic
San Francisco, CA
June 21st, 2024
Review and Photos by Jared Stossel
I’ve seen Say Anything three times now, all with different variations in their lineup. I can say without a doubt that last night’s performance at the Masonic in San Francisco was the best I’ve ever seen them. It’s been twenty years since the release of the band’s debut (technically, second) album …Is A Real Boy, and the manic and intense nature of the 2004 album was on full display throughout their incredible set. Brainchild Max Bemis - who formed the band in 2001 with drummer Coby Linder - is pushing into his 40s, yet you’d be hard pressed to think it throughout their set, as he and bassist Alex Kent, keyboardist/guitarist Parker Case, Linder, and guitarists Brian Warren and Fred Mascherino (ex-Taking Back Sunday, The Color Fred) blasted through the set with aplomb, playing as if they’d just logged out of their MySpace pages and walked onto the Main Stage of the Vans Warped Tour.
The show was opened with a dreamlike set from shoegaze entrants Greet Death. While it wasn’t the kind of band I’d have expected to open a Say Anything show, their billing fits. Bemis has explored a wide range of genres, branching off into the deep end of sound experimentation on Say Anything records (look no further than 2016’s I Don’t Think It Is or this year’s most recent effort …Is Committed for proof). Greet Death’s set was a welcome one, a steady warm-up and acclimation to the foggy San Francisco atmosphere before the energy gradually rose with each performance.
Folk-punk act AJJ were the main support on this tour, and I was thrilled that I not only got to see them after all these years but that they were wildly entertaining. The five-piece act traversed an energetic and lively set that went as far back as 2007, with entries from People Who Can Eat People Are The Luckiest People In The World. Even when a member doesn’t have a part in a song, they’re still part of the show, dancing around the stage and hyping up the crowd. Whether they were playing a song from People or from their latest entry, 2023’s Disposable Everything, AJJ was in top form, and the audience fed off of the energy.
That energy crescendoed the second that Max Bemis & Co. took the stage, with Bemis muttering the words “San Francisco, and the record begins with a song of rebellion”. A blast of sound signaled the beginning of …Is A Real Boy, with the six-piece divebombing into “Belt”, “Woe”, and quite literally every other song on the album. Bemis spews the words of his 2004 entry, regaling the audience with lyrics penned by the solipsistic character that led the charge through the pseudo-concept album about love, sex, anger, and every other emotion under the sun.
Sandwiched in the middle, between “An Orgy Of Critics” and “Every Man Has A Molly” was “Ahhhh…Men”, a song from the band’s self-titled record (and one of their best).
Well past 11 PM, the halls of the San Francisco Masonic echoed the singalong of “Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too”. While not the dirtiest of lyrics I’ve ever heard uttered in this building, it was thoroughly amusing to watch people yell the lyrics back to the stage at full-force, twenty years after the song’s release. The show finished with the six-and-a-half-minute-long “Admit It!!!”, in which Bemis’ Real Boy character rants and raves about everything and everyone, and a fitting conclusion to such an ambitious album. Max Bemis may not embody that character anymore, but I think that he, the band, and everybody else in their fanbase get a kick out of screaming those words together, like one big fucked up emo family gathering.
Say Anything Set List
Belt
Woe
The Writhing South
Alive With The Glory of Love
Yellow Cat (Slash) Red Cat
The Futile
Spidersong
An Orgy of Critics
Ahhh… Men
Every Man Has A Molly
Slowly, Through a Vector
Chia-Like, I Shall Grow
Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too
Encore:
I Want To Know Your Plans
Admit It!!!!
