Streetlight Manifesto, a band that basically revolutionized ska music, just made their (more than likely) final appearance in Pittsburgh’s own Carnegie Music Hall. A band of such high caliber is calling it quits as a “full-time” band and moving on to bigger and better things after their current tour, “The End of The Beginning”, which is only a few shows away from being over. Streetlight has been around for a solid decade and over those years, they have had a lot of issues with their record label, Victory Records, which seems to be a re-occurring event for any band signed to them lately. Not just because of that though, but they feel as if it is time to settle down a bit and move on with their lives and musical careers. Start fresh, enjoy time with family and friends, and simply look back on everything they accomplished. The main concern they said, was that they were afraid of growing old and playing the same songs over and over again by just going through the motions. Any band could agree with that statement; mainly because it just takes all the fun out of playing shows. To quickly sum this all up before getting into the details, if you missed this show… you missed a fine spectacle and the end of a decade of dedication and fun filled adventures.
When arriving to the Carnegie Music Hall in Homestead (and searching for quite awhile to find parking), you could just feel it in the air, that their was a ska concert about to unfold upon us all. This being the last time anyone could ever see Streetlight Manifesto, it was not surprising in the least. After entering the Music Hall, it was an odd venue to be playing in, but the band later announced, and I quote, “We were sick of playing in churches and bars, so we said, lets play a show in a library!” When gazing upon the crowd from up above on the balcony, it was impressive to see how many people were there; at least five hundred, give or take. When Streetlight came on, you just knew that the crowd was going to go insane. They started off very strong with their first couple songs, which included: “With Any Sort of Certainty” and “We Will Fall Together”. As the third song kicked in, “Down, Down, Down to Mephisto’s Cafe”, Streetlights frontman Tomas Kalnoky had to stop the song about half way through to stop the security guard from kicking someone out. Tomas started to tell the security guard off because all the kid was doing was dancing and NOT hurting anyone. After that incident before they finished the song, Tomas stated that “Everyone have fun, dance and sing, just don’t hurt each other and have a good time.” I could not agree more with him.
Later on, after the security guard issue, the band changed up the pace of the show with some more laid back acoustic songs that had the crowd in a huge sing along. But of course, it was only for a few songs before they kicked back in to some more of their up-beat songs. Throughout the night, everyone in the band got to “strut their stuff” with their instruments to make it quite entertaining for the crowd. Everyone had good vibes and having a good time singing and dancing which is what a ska show is truly all about.
The last couple of songs that the band played was: “A Moment of Silence” right into “A Moment of Violence”, then finishing up with “Watch it Crash”. This was all before their encore of course, which was “Somewhere in the Between”. To think that after all the previous songs they played, that the crowd would be dead out of energy; well that was not even close to being the case. I don’t even remember their being a moment during the entire show that they stopped moshing, dancing, singing, etc.
In the end, I was beyond ecstatic to see Streetlight Manifesto this one last time. Their stage performance was extremely entertaining, consistently on time and highly energetic. This was a show worth not just seeing, but experiencing to say the least. Lastly, huge props to Tomas for standing up for the kid who almost got kicked out and correcting the issue. To stop a show dead in its tracks to do that, shows a lot in character and gains my respect by making sure the fans are taken care of.