Bouncing Souls & more @ Starland Ballroom 10/13/06 On Friday October 13th, Jim Testa (from Jersey Beat), and I went over to check out Bouncing Souls at Starland Ballroom. Now I first became a fan of the Bouncing Souls back when they were a local New Brunswick band playing to small crowds at all the clubs in New Brunswick (of which, sadly, only the Court Tavern remains). Back then they had killer mohawks. These days they have more normal hair-dos, and their sound has skewed from ska influenced punk, to pop punk, with the occasional alt-rock mid-tempo song (like the awful, "pizza song" from their most recent album, which I had to endure hearing at this show). However, the Bouncing Souls have still got it. They rock! They're fun! And, they even can slip in a nice anti-Iraq war message, and when they do that, they bring up soldiers that fought in Iraq to say it, making the message all the more potent (although at this point they are probably preaching to the choir, with the approval rating of the war hovering in the mid 30 percentile). Opening for the Bouncing Souls was a hodge-podge of different styles of punk sounds. The World/Inferno Friendship Society, who, "perform red-eyed soul show tunes for the swarming punk rock masses", were highly entertaining, and set a high bar that the other opening acts that followed. Whole Wheat Bread sounded like a band raised on Face To Face and Rancid (the latter of which they covered during their set), but, and this may be partially because of the band sound mix, they sounded a little messy, and the vocals were hard to hear. I would be interested in hearing their album though. And lastly, The Street Dogs, who not surprisingly sounded like the Dropkick Murphys. It's not surprising since the Street Dogs in fronted by original Murphys vocalist, Mike McColgan. While I respect the Dropkick Murphys, I've never been a huge fan, and I guess the same could be said about the Street Dogs. They're good at what they do, but when I want Irish punk rock I listen to Flogging Molly.