The Get Up Kids

The merch table looks like an Orchard St. boutique. The wall behind is covered in a quilt of t-shirts, jackets and zipper sweatshirts?hoodies?sporting each band's seven or eight different logos. I wouldn't be surprised if the guy working the table offered the kids a sneak peek at the upcoming fall line.

It's early Sunday evening at the Sunset Strip House of Blues. I'd never been here before. The place looks like it was constructed from the same fake wood that's used to make a log flume. The amusement park vibe is appropriate, as tonight is the first of three sold-out all-ages Get Up Kids shows and I am surrounded by hordes of children.

I arrived in daylight walking past brokenhearted teenagers pleading to anyone who might have an extra ticket. At the industry window, I am given a ticket for myself and my plus-one. But I couldn't get anyone to go with me because all of my friends are adults. I consider offering my ticket to one of the kids on the sidewalk but refrain for fear of it being misunderstood as a solicitation.

The bands tonight are all cute boys jumping up and down shouting out bad girlfriend poetry really, really fast. The crowd is composed of girls who dig designer eyewear and boys who dig protracted, unrequited crushes. And everyone loves to shout along to maudlin kiddie-punk anthems.

Opening act the Jealous Sound was onstage when I arrived. Their music sounds like it should swell up at the end of a Dawson's Creek episode when Dawson realizes gay people are okay too. The crowd dug them, though.

The Jealous Sound have the worst t-shirts at the merch table. So bad, in fact, they were forced to lay their shirts down on a separate table off to the side, so as not to sully the shared display of Get Up Kids and Hot Rod Circuit apparel. The Jealous Sound's design is just a drawing of a makeup case with the words "The Jealous Sound" emblazoned across it. Really fucking boring. That design is offered in a short and long-sleeve t and hoodie. Even if they were my favorite band I would be hard-pressed to get excited by their shirt-wear. In fact, their shirt-wear might make me reevaluate my opinion of them as a band overall.

While Hot Rod Circuit clearly put a lot more thought into their designs, their selection leaves something to be desired as well. They went for an overall faux-Chinese-takeout theme that's more than a bit derivative of the aborted Abercrombie & Fitch line that made the news this spring. The problem is they just don't look like concert shirts. I like an enigmatic concert shirt design as much as the next guy?it makes the kid in homeroom take a closer look at your shirt and ask you about it, allowing you to explain to him that it's a t-shirt for a band he's never heard of and that you bought it at the concert he never went to?but no one's going to ask about your shirt if it looks like you could've bought it at fucking X-Large. Pisses me off.

But their shirts are selling. The girl in front of me already changed into hers and tied it into a knot above her bellybutton so as to display her ass-crack tattoo (she got the tiger lily). The gaggle of girls to my right is tearing the shirts out of one another's hands to see who bought the coolest one. One runs to the table to exchange hers when Hot Rod Circuit themselves take the stage.

Hot Rod Circuit's CD Sorry About Tomorrow (Vagrant) filled me with dread for tonight's performance. But I'm digging them. On the disc, the vocals are far too plaintive and they sound like pussies. But live, it's gale-force pop-punk. The band is either bouncing up and down or leaning back on their heels under the weight of their guitar riffs. There's actually a mosh pit and a few kids are crowd-surfing. The fat, goateed bouncer is having too much fun pushing the crowd-surfers away from the stage, as fat, goateed bouncers are wont to do.

The Get Up Kids have a few different designs to offer. The flagship t-shirt sports a kind of Partridge Family logo, a simple half-oval shape beside the band name in a sporty font scrawled across the chest. And then there's a baby-blue t with the band name above a gathering of pandas. This one seems more for girls. The design would look great if gently stretched across a developing bosom. In fact, both of these designs seem more appropriate for girls. Boys shouldn't buy them.

For the boys, there's a pretty cool windbreaker and a zip-up hoodie, both with an ironic insignia over the left pectoral that reads, "The Get Up Kids Parks and Recreation." Yeah, the gag might be a little too snarky, but either the windbreaker or the hoodie would look great on a girlfriend. If I were a girl and I wanted to let a fan of the Get Up Kids know that I liked him, I would go to his lacrosse practice and find his Get Up Kids hoodie on the bleachers and wear it until he was pulled off the field and he asked me for his hoodie back.

Just as the curtain rises on the Get Up Kids, my foot gets stepped on by a guy who's dragging his girlfriend through the bar by her wrist until she slaps him to let her go. He keeps walking and she follows. They were my age.

The Get Up Kids open with the synthesizer of "Let The Reigns Go Loose" off their new disc On a Wire (Vagrant). What was a light countrified track on the album sounds just majestic tonight. The disc is calmer than their previous releases. The punk anthems have been replaced with pop ballads. And thanks to producer Scott Litt, the disc is much quieter. It doesn't prepare you for the sound of their live show, which is big and very pretty. Matt Pryor sings every song like he's under a bedroom window in the rain.

The crowd sings along perfectly to the disc's opening track, "Overdue," and I spot another pretty cool Get Up Kids t-shirt. It's the Godfather logo but with the marionette strings attached to the words "The Get Up Kids" in the Godfather font. This shirt, however, is not for sale at the merch table, which means the kid wearing it bought it at a previous Get Up Kids show and wore it here to tonight's show. Not cool.

Pryor, a new dad, introduces "Stay Gone" as what you can learn about being a parent by not being like yours. He doesn't like his parents. "Fuck them," he says. The crowd concurs.

It's near the end of a stellar set. They're screaming through the rocker "No Love" off the '97 disc Four Minute Mile. The guy next to me looks like Frank Stallone and he's pumping his fist in the air like we're listening to "Pour Some Sugar On Me." A look out at the crowd says he is not alone. It's hard to say whether the band or the crowd is having a better time. The Get Up Kids clearly have every intention of sending their fans to the sidewalk sweat-drenched and elated.

If I became the girlfriend of a Get Up Kids fan, I'd never take off his Get Up Kids windbreaker. And I would try to get my best friend to date his best friend, who would no doubt also be a Get Up Kids fan and would also have a Get Up Kids windbreaker. Though it wouldn't really matter who his best friend's girlfriend was, since she and I would have to become best friends no matter what. But it'd be nice if she and I already had a history.

My best friend and I would go through school swimming in our matching boyfriends' too-big Get Up Kids windbreakers and our boyfriends would wear their Get Up Kids hoodies and everyone would call us the Get Up Gang. We would be Get Up Girls. And during those exciting days when I've decided we're going to fuck soon, if the windbreaker was really big I would slide into the windbreaker while my boyfriend was wearing it and we would walk home after school like that, bundled up in the windbreaker, his erection poking my lower back with every step. I'd wonder if that hurt him.

The Get Up Kids play Tues., July 2, at Roseland, with Superchunk and Hot Rod Circuit, 239 W. 52nd St. (betw. 8th Ave. & B'way), 247-0200.