The Gaslight Anthem, Jimmy Eat World and Against Me! @ The Mann Center.
Text by Gabi Chepurny. Images by Jesse Marass.
The Gaslight Anthem brought Jimmy Eat World and Against Me! with them to The Mann Center Friday night, for a show infused with punk, blues and good old fashioned rock and roll.
Against Me! opened the show with a Transgender Dysphoria Blues-heavy set, playing the albums title track along with others like “True Trans Soul Rebel” and fan-favorite, “FUCKMYLIFE666.” Lead singer Laura Jane Grace introduced “Thrash Unreal” by saying the song was about coping mechanisms. While most of the lyrics she sang that night involved identity crisis and gender dysphoria, she couldn’t help but flash an infectious smile throughout the entire set.
Arizona’s Jimmy Eat World had the crowd dancing with tracks like “Work,” and “Sweetness.” Lead singer Jim Adkins interrupted the set to say, “Good Tunes, good friends, good weather. The weather sucks in Arizona. Does everyone know each other here? Everyone turn around and give each other high fives. Now we’re really having a party.”
New Jersey natives and the night’s headliners, The Gaslight Anthem, came on stage and announced that drummer Ben Horowitz had to leave that afternoon for personal reasons. But rather than cancel the show, they were able to get Against Me!’s Atom Willard to fill in.
Halfway through, vocalist Brian Fallon pointed into the crowd to a father with his young daughter on his shoulders and said, “The little one on the shoulders, that’s a good look. That’s the future.”
Without their drummer the band could only play a few full songs before switching to an electric-acoustic set that would have been better suited for a coffeehouse. While it may not have been preferred by fans, Gaslight did the best with what they had and as one fan said, “At least they didn’t cancel!”
JUMP: The Philly Music Project 
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