I hope I’m fifty years old and still singing Pizza Day. I can’t get enough of the Aquabats. Such fun, such enjoyent and soon I will enjoy it once again, November 20th to be exact. They are heading back to BB Kings. But first, below are two videos from their new show, enjoy and go to their website and help save them from doom… DOOM!

I can’t wait. Hopefully the show will be much like my first Aquabats concert I attneded a little over 2 years ago while interning for CMJ. After the jump, enjoy the article that first appeared on the CMJ website on June 10, 2006.

Entering B.B. Kings the other night, you knew you were either walking into an Aquabats show or a superhero convention. There was so much excitement in the air that kids were even into the pre-show music! After the openers, L.A.-based band the Aggrolites and Jacksonville’s Whole Wheat Bread, I stepped towards my destiny. Blessed with a photo pass, I began to plot out how I was going to enjoy this show wedged in the one-foot space between the rabid screaming fans and the equally rabid and energetic band. Starting their set with a preview of the 1986 skate boarding movie Thrashin’ the Aquabats took the stage and the audio/visual experience began. They played mostly songs off of their latest album, Charge!, with songs like “Fashion Zombies! and “Demolition Rickshaws! whipping the crowd into a frenzy faster than you can say, “Hot Summer Nights (Won’t Last Forever)!

The Aquabats have changed their lineup a bit since they began in 1994—only two of the five dudes onstage were original members. They have also put on a little more weight, but as the MC Bat Commander proclaimed “I’ve traded my 6-pack for a 12-pack. Hustling between stage right and left to get as many photos as possible (see below), I experienced something I had never before, kids started falling from the sky. The crowd surfing, with at least one or two kids falling on top of me per minute, calumniated with the ’bats bringing up Andrew, age 9, and Stephen, age 11, to engage in a race, surfing across the crowd to the wall and back. Both boys won (due to various disqualifications) and then the band promptly launched into “Pool Party. The band even played old favorites like “Giant Robot With Bird-Like Head and a song that anybody who has attended a public school can relate to, the aptly titled “Pizza Day. Even when a costumed villain, like Money Man or some sort of Lobster Man, tried to slow the band down, the show went on with the Aquabats squarely defeating him with love and nunchucks.

The show was full of drama: the band took sparse breaks every three or four songs to hype a fake commercial and, later, when the concert ended and the crowd started chanting for an encore, the band theatrically returned from their “private jet parked on 42nd St. to dazzle us with two more songs and several of their trademark backflips. All in all, I took about 150+ pictures and left the venue covered in strange fluids with damage to my ears that I will be feeling for days. So, if I was going to rank this show, on a scale of one to ten, I’d have to say it was super rad!
–Nick Brewer