I stayed up way past when I should have last night to watch the ustream live feed of Cobra Starship's set last night from their Boys Like Girls date in Los Angeles, when I also caught the first song of the Boys Like Girls set, "Love Drunk".
At their last show, I had a blast. I loved that the set heavily relied on Viva La Cobra!, which is their sophomore album as a band. Devoid of the August 31st show was any music from the album they had released the week before, with the exception of "Good Girls Go Bad". The set was amazing, and thought I never got the chance to put up the review here, I did take a lot of notes. The whole set there were no songs that I didn't know. It was a constant dance party besides "Pleasure Ryland" and Gabe seemed completely alive and pulsating. These same antics are what made me fall head over heels for them when I saw them on tour with Fall Out Boy this May. All these antics are slowly but surely toneing down, and it's kind of a big disappointment.
From this writer's viewpoint, it seems they are slowly adapting their live shows to try and relate to a larger audience and that includes cutting out a few songs of their set that have always made the crowd go crazy at their shows. Songs including "The Church of Hot Addiction", "Send My Love to the Dance Floor", "The World has It's shine (but I'd drop it on a dime" and "Hollaback Boy" were not present in their set. Yes, a lot of these tracks are from their first album and maybe they aren't in the set because of time constraints but while watching the live feed of kids updating their facebook statuses in comment to the stream, it seemed that most of these kids were fans that have been listening to Cobra for the same amount of time that I have and were wondering where these songs went. The set included some songs off Viva La Cobra! ("Smile Wide For the Papparazzi", "Guilty Pleasure" and "The City Is At War") but void of any songs from their debut effort besides Snakes On A Plane which may I remind you was Midtown, as is clear in the introduction of the song. Yes, this song is amazing and it was really seen as a supergroup (featuring William Beckett of The Academy Is, Travis mcCoy from Gym Class Heroes and Greta *last name* from The Sounds) but the group is no longer existent. I love the track and am glad it was included in the set, but I think more of an effort should have been made.
What I really did enjoy seeing in this set though was the integration of their latest album "Hot Mess" which was huge for them. It had only come out a week before my last real Cobra Starship show on August 31st and wasn't present in their set besides their current single "Good Girls Go Bad" like I previously suggested. This time around, there were only four tracks used though! We saw Good Girls Go Bad, Hot Mess, Pete Wentz Is The Only Reason We're Famous, Wet Hot American Summer. I'm a huge fan of the new album and I realize that a band can't always play all of their songs obviously but huge crowd favorites like "The Church of Hot Addiction" and "Hollaback Boy" should not be missing..
Another high point of the set were the appeareances of Pete Wentz. I knew that he wouldn't disappear from the scene completely. Hello, he is pretty much the king of it with Gabe Saporta one of the princes. The whole best friend thing counts for something and it was pretty much expected considering the show was in Pete's territory. There was a great point during the set where Pete Wentz was pretending to be Gabe and telling the whole crowd how" I am a homosexual; I will now take my shirt off and give it to Pete to sniff". These two are always involved in crazy antics together may it be Pete making a shirt with Gabe's phone number to Gabe turning around and doing it right back with a shirt with Pete's personal email, all in jokes of course. Afterwards, Pete Wentz even followed through on his side of the bet that if Hot Mess was a top ten single on the Billboard 100, Pete would get a tattoo of Gabe's choice, and last night he did it. Mr. Wentz is now the proud owner of Gabe's elementary school class picture on his left ankle.
There was also a much larger vocal presence by Alex Suarez, Ryland Black and Victoria Asher last night, all with individual parts instead of Gabe shining in the spotlight. IT was something I was very excited to see.
Overall, I will give this set 8/10. There were several very disappointing moments but a few more great ones. Good job cobras!
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