True Reliever - The Bouncing Souls

Review at the Vans Skate Park By Ashley Kiana
Photos at the Palace by Jenifer Hanen

The Bouncing Soul’s appearance for their “True Believers” Tour, at The Van’s Skate Park in Orange, the afternoon before their evening show at the Palace was a fun experience. Seeing the band and scoring free stuff was so relieving after a week of school. The Souls were supposed to be at the skate park at 4 but showed up at around 6 because of the “LA traffic”. The line to get into Vans kept getting smaller because people were getting sick of waiting. Besides having to wait for 2 hours, the appearance was exciting, with Vans videotaping the event and taking photographs for their web page, www.Vans.com, while the band sat on a black, velvety couch provided by Vans, signed free posters, met, greeted, and took pictures with their fans.

The entire band was at the appearance but; the vocalist, Greg Attonito, kept walking in and out of the skate park. I could tell he was antsy. The rest of the band was left to sign autographs and meet fans. They gave out nice black and white signed posters of themselves walking around on the rainy East Coast. While the band was signing and talking, a guy was walking around giving out Epitaph Records and Bouncing Souls stickers. Lots of free stuff for the fans!

The turn out for the appearance ended up a good but small turn out of about 30 people, mostly younger kids, some parents, and some young adults. I was surprised so many younger kids showed up and how many adults (parents) stayed to see the Bouncing Souls, must be those new Punk-O-Rama albums (everyone seems to love them). If the younger kids can like them, us young adults can like the Souls, too. Go out and support them on their next show. They are a great band with a rocking new album, How I Spent My Summer Vacation . To remember them by, the Souls gave me some quotes, “Slowly the banana grows” (Pete, guitar), “Be like water” (Bryan, bass), and “Smoke well and prosper” (Mike, drums).

---Ashley-Kiana