Starting off the summer touring season our old friends from Orange County, Lit. Lit is chipping away towards a triumphant return with a new record and a couple of fresh faces. Starting in Ft. Lauderdale florida, Lit set out to make a statement, and that statement is, "Were not done yet."
Incase you were in solitary confinement from 1998 to 2003, you could not have escaped Lit's radio domination. They had become one of the few thriving faces of Rock music when the Brittney's, Ricky's, and boy bands took over. Much like their contemporary No Doubt, they were a definitive representation that the anger/ apathetic grunge movement was coming to an end. They were in that rare space of being accesable enough to play on top 40 stations, and hard enough to play on rock stations, safe enough for Hot AC, edgy enough for Alternative. MTV's final days of being a music formatted station had plenty of room in their programing to show Lit's stylish fun loving music videos over and over. Lit was any record label's dream come true.
Backtrack, I went to this show under a pretense that I might be uncomfortable reviewing it. For one, I can't help that I am a fan and have to try and remain objective. More importantly, I have an old friend who we used to play music together in my early rocking days. His name is Ryan Gillmor and he has been added to the Lit roster as a second guitarist, backing vocalist, keyboards and song writer. Unbenounced to Ryan I showed up ready to give an honest review despite my reservations. Luckily, giving an unforgiving review will not be an issue.
Curtains were drawn for an anticipated arrival of a crowd of approximately 250 eager fans. 250 didn't make for a packed house, but what they lacked in numbers they made for in fervor when guitarist Jeremy Popoff tour into the chords of their semi-hit "Four." Ajay Popoff strutted on the stage with no humility, no apologies, he came on like he had never been gone, just they way you would want him to come on.
The sound was pristine, its obvious they take the sound seriously, lit is not a bunch of rookies, they were polished before they hit it big. Lit also takes the stage show seriously. Watching the band play is like they are doing a rock zoomba class on speed. The band moves with an intensity like Mr. T in Rocky 3, you can't take your eyes off them for a second. But the most glaring observation that I could make is that the band doesn't have appeared to age a single day. From ten feet away I couldn't tell that I didn't fall into a time warp of the '90s. Lets face it, even when they were just a burgeoning on the national scale, they were not kids anymore, I would be surprised if they had a gold record before their ten year high school reunion. So imagine my surprise when the entire crowd seems to have aged older then the band.
The addition of Ryan Gillmor seems to have brought in a grander arena rock element to the ensemble. Growing into the music scene with Ryan I can vouch that he is the perfect combination of talent and humility, perfect to supplement the already supperior lineup that hadn't been altered for nearly 20 years prior.
Deeper than just making a live stage show interesting with energy, maintaing the youthful exuberence like the Stones, sounding as good as the record and adding a gunslinger to the mix, Lit seems to be out to out make some waves one more time.
They played at least 8 new tracks from their up coming record being released in mid june. All of which present material equal to or greater than what was on the record that put them on the map. However, anyone who knows anything about this unscientific business, is that there is no gaurantee good material will get noticed even if the band has Marquee value. Regardless, these guys are not rockers on walkers phoning in the new CD early just to have something to put out, they seem to have an agenda and that agenda could get interesting in the coming days. Lets put it like this, there is a good reason they are on the tour that Rolling Stone Magazine is calling the number 1 tour of the year.
At the end of the day, let it be known that when I am a multi-millionaire living on beach front property, Lit is high on my shortlist of bands who I want to come and entertain 1000 of my closest friends.
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