The Get Up Kids rocks Malaysia again after three years

As the band members and their crew moved around onstage setting up instruments (plugging in guitars up front, assembling the drums in the centre and arranging keyboards over on one side), fans waited patiently offstage, watching the silent commotion (“silenced” by the rock music playing in the background, blasting through the venue’s speakers).

Just moments ago, the opening act, local band Milo Dinosaur, was rocking the stage. So there were their guitars and drums to be removed before The Get Up Kids could set up their own.

Both bands shared the same uber chic flamingo backdrop, however.

The lights dimmed, everyone walked off stage. Fans continued to wait. When asked if they were old or new fans, most of them said that they practically grew up listening to the band’s music, though some of them admitted they weren’t quite familiar with the band’s newer releases.

The fans were unanimous in their reply, however, when asked about their anticipation for the show. By and large, everyone was looking forward to hearing the band perform more songs live since the last time that they were here (also their first), it was for 2016’s Rockaway Festival where they had to share the stage with several other rockers and had a much shorter time to perform. (Not to mention the rain didn’t exactly allow for a safe multi-instrumental show in an open-air stadium).  

More waiting. The crowd buzzed with excitement, the volume of the fans’ murmurs increasing until finally, bright lights flooded the stage. Murmurs turned to screams.

Out came Jim Suptic, heading straight for his guitar on the left side of the stage; Rob Pope, stationing himself and his bass guitar next to Jim; Ryan Pope, settling down in the drummer’s seat; and Matt Pryor, taking up the mic on the opposite side of the stage, with Dustin Than Kinsey joining them on keyboards. 

The Pope brothers rocking the stage.

Amid loud cheers from the crowd, the band plunged straight into their opening number, “Satellite”, off their latest album, “Problems”.

While talking to Jim and Matt in an earlier interview before the show, they jokingly expressed hopes that the crowd would be not be quiet and would sing along to some, if not all, of their songs. They needn’t have worried because fans did enthusiastically belt out most of their songs during the show. 

Jim, who wanted fans to “live in the moment” and not get carried away filming, would’ve been proud of the fact that only a few fans had their phones out while most were either singing along or bobbing their heads and tapping their feet rhythmically to the music.

There was some filming but nothing excessive.

This time around, with a stage all to themselves, the band was able to churn out a much longer setlist, performing 22 songs in total.

It was a mix of their older and newer hits, songs like “I’m a Loner Dottie, a Rebel”, “Shorty” and “No Love” interweaved with the more recent “Better This Way”, “The Problem Is Me” and “The Advocate”.

Jim was momentarily alone on stage when the rest of the band took a short break while he performed “Campfire Kansas”. Following that, Matt then took the lead again singing “Red Letter Day”.

After the band rocked the stage with “Action & Action”, the lights went off, signaling the end of the show.

But was it?

The band trooped off stage but since fans shouted for them to come back on, they obliged. Matt appeared first. Picking up his guitar again, he talked a little bit about “Out of Reach” before performing the song. 

Matt took the stage to talk about “Out of Reach” before performing it.

He said that it was about the band flying to Europe for the first time (“Someone likes Germany,” he said in amusement when a fan cheered loudly the moment he mentioned the specific country), they felt like it was on the other side of the world, flying from Kansas. Since then, they’ve been flying everywhere across the globe and he thanked the fans in Malaysia for their support which gave them the opportunity to travel even further from their Midwest home.

The whole band regrouped onstage to perform “Holiday”, “Don’t Hate Me”, and “I’ll Catch You”, before wrapping up the evening’s show with “Ten Minutes”.