Better Late Than Never: My Jukebox the Ghost at 92Y Review

by Michael

Woooooo, I return to the blogging world with fantastic news!!!!

So since I have been home in PA for the summer, I have had little reason to blog, since nobody comes here, but on one of my many sojourns into NYC last week, me and my two old roommates Cal and Marcus were able to catch possibly the most exciting surprises of the summer.

Let me just start with the venue, 92Y Tribeca. an off-shoot of the 92nd st YWHA.  Now, when I hear YWHA, I think a pool, a gym, maybe some daycare, and maybe a racquetball court. I figured they must be playing in either the gym, or maybe some social area.  What we got was a swanky lounge complete with tables, plush seating, and get this A FULL BAR.  Not just a full bar, but a nice glass-topped bar with a huge selection and exorbitant prices ($3 for a PBR?  Get the fuck out).  I also don’t remember there being any age restrictions on the show, so the bar was a double surprise.

We got to the show right as the show was starting, and JtG was opening with perennial show opener “Good Day.”  After getting the audience on their side, they dropped a bomb so explosive I was taken aback.  They played their entire new album “Everything Under the Sun” in its entirety.  I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty effing amazing.  The audience was into the show the whole time, from the favorites that they have been hearing for months like “Empire” and “Mistletoe” to the new songs that they just started playing this summer like “Summer Sun”(my personal favorite) and “The Sun” (I see a theme forming here).

Due to my incessant stalking of JtG, the only song I hadn’t heard before was “The Popular Thing” (which apparently was used in the film Diary of a Whimpy Kid, and is a pretty damn solid song) but by hearing them in the album order they gained a new layer of amazingness.  I’m also super upset that “Ghosts in Empty Houses” did not make the cut onto the album, despite it being their only song ever about ghosts.

After giving the crowd such a treat, it was almost heartbreaking to know that we won’t get to hear these songs again until September 7th when their album comes out, or even later if like me you are gonna wait to buy it at their album release show (or you can go see them at Lollapalooza, which I am too poor to do but I like speaking for large crowds of people).

Not ones to leave a crowd on such a down note, they came back out with an encore of old classics, including their current terribly awesome 90′s cover in this case “I Love You Always Forever” which really seemed to piss off the asshole in front of me who had no sense of personal space, and really loved dancing like an idiot for the rest of the show.  Direct Quote: “I came here to hear their songs, not some shitty 90′s cover” I feel like he kinda missed the point.

To cap off everything, and to make a perfect show even more surreal, before the encore, Jesse whipped some random object into the crowd, only for an Everything Under the Sun themed stress ball to serendipitously come to rest between my feet (insert scene of Katie screaming with jealousy).