One of my favorite Underage columns was back in 2002, when I
attended a Saves the Day show at the Showbox and met 18-year-old
Nichole. I heard her before I saw her. We were both standing toward the
back of the crowd, waiting for the show to begin, when Saves the Day’s
then-bassist, Eben D’Amico, made his way through the crowd to the back
of the venue. She screamed. She leapt toward him with a slur of
incoherent compliments pouring out of her mouth. Eben took it all in
stride—Saves the Day had yet to release In Reverie, the
biggest mistake of their musical career, so he was no doubt used to
teenage girls confessing their love on a nightly basis.
Once Saves the Day took the stage that night, every girl in the
crowd became just like Nichole—screaming, singing along,
professing their love between songs, and begging for Chris Conley to
sing violently melodramatic teen anthems like “As Your Ghost Takes
Flight,” with its chorus, “I’d drink your blood/and feel it dripping
down my throat/as it heads for my heart.”
In their heyday, Saves the Day were the shit.
Then the band jumped from Vagrant to a major label, DreamWorks. Eben
left the band, they released In Reverie, and it was terrible.
The band seemed to become overly conscious of their music, losing their
loveable spirit. The album tanked, the band got dropped, and, of
course, I grew up—that, perhaps, was the biggest blow to our
relationship.
The band never recaptured the brutal honesty and uncontrived
attitude that made 2001’s Stay What You Are so successful in my
mind. And now, Conley is the only remaining original member.
So on Friday, March 28, should you go to the StD show at Neumo’s,
the best advice I can offer you is that you arrive early enough to see
Set Your Goals, a pop-punk band who plow through two- and
three-minute songs built on anthemic breakdowns with melodic
hardcore influences (they’re named after a CIV song, after all).
Their songs are about the usual suspects (girls, the need to escape,
backstabbing friends) and there’s nothing new to the sound (pop punk is
a genre with little room for innovation), but just a couple years ago
they were playing the Viaduct in Tacoma, when it was a
windowless hole that could hold about 30. Now they’re touring venues 20
times that size with Saves the Day.
If it hasn’t happened already, 18-year-old girls will soon be
screaming at the sight of singers Matt Wilson and Jordan Brown. I just
hope the band won’t go the way of Friday’s headliners. 
