WHEATUS
Wheatus at World Cafe Live.
It’s always exciting to shoot a band with an all-time song like Teenage Dirtbag. It had been a while since I was last at World Cafe Live and was surprised to see it set up with seating knowing Wheatus to be a Punk Rock band. The first opener of the night was local legends Pokejawn who is a Pokemon themed cover band. The crowd was packed with Pokejawn fans right from the start of the show. The singer was jumping all over the stage getting way up and then began throwing Pokemon cards into the crowd. They played a cover of the Cranberries “In Your Head” which had a punk/metal feel to it that got everyone bouncing up and down. The highlight of their set was definitely when they played their Pokemon version of “Teenage Dirtbag”. After they were done it was time for Todd Morris who came out and thanked Pokejawn for letting him play in front of their fans which got a laugh from the crowd. He played a Rancid cover which everyone in the crowd loved but the highlight of his set was when he asked the crowd if they wanted a cover of “Born to Run” or an original and the crowd choses original which was a song about COVID called “Armageddon”. The crowd anxiously awaited for Wheatus to come out. With an interesting stage set up with the singer being on the left side of the stage and the middle completely open the singer came out and moved around the stage as well as the bass player. They went on to play all of their hits like “Fourteen” and “Lemonade”. During the set the singer spotted someone in the audience wearing a bucket hat and leaned over and took it right off the guy’s head and wore it for the duration of the song and then returned it to the excited fan. When the time came for “Teenage Dirtbag” the crowd was totally ready for it and sang every word of it with the singer stopping at one point to let the crowd shout the lyrics. The band was very thrilled with Philly’s performance so after leaving the stage they were willed into coming back for an encore and even an acoustic solo song.
Shot and Written by Jonah van Bemmelen.
