Aug 15

A Parent's Perspective "IDOBI RADIO SUMMER SCHOOL" Show Review 7/8/2024

This past month, I had the opportunity to check out the Idobi Summer School Festival.

Idobi Summer School is the brainchild of Eric Tobin (Hopeless Records), Mike Kaminsky (KMGMT) and Kevin Lyman (Warped Tour founder). The three have been watching the trends of the touring industry as they’ve ebbed and flowed throughout these past few years, noting that there hasn’t been a push towards developing and supporting future headliners.

Alongside that, prices for tickets have gone through the roof, turning away potential new fans and playing to the current fanbase. Thus, the idea for Summer School was born!

This festival is SOLELY working with independent artists, record labels, venues and promoters and using 100% of any sponsorship money to pay bands reasonable rates and keep the ticket price as low as possible.

The inaugural lineup features some of the most buzzed about up and coming bands in the scene today — Stand Atlantic, Magnolia Park, The Home Team, Scene Queen, Honey Revenge and letdown. The founders selected this group of artists for the first run as they highlight the diversity of music and culture within our scene. Which brings us to the Pittsburgh PA date!

JULY 26th, 2024 PITTSBURGH, PA: The IDOBI SUMMER SCHOOL FEST featuring Letdown, Honey Revenge, Magnolia Park, The Home Team, Scene Wueen and Stand Atlantic come to Stage AE, smack dab in the middle of Pittsburgh, PA.

My first venture of the night was an interview with pop-punk band Magnolia Park who are one of my favorite new bands on the scene and have been absolutely murdering it for the last few years and the last time I saw them was at a music festival where an actual hurricane touched down!

After the interview it was just in time to catch Stand Atlantic’s set and shoot photos for them. The Sydney AUS, pop punk rockers dished out nearly a dozen tracks including some of my favorite tracks from the band GIRL$ which recorded features PVRIS and Bruses and track CRIMINAL which features POLARIS recorded before closing out with track “deathwish” which features nothing. nowhere. recorded, all tracks I highly recommend checking live.

Stand Atlantic is definitely one of the most fun bands to see live, they play with the crowd and even accidentially called Pittsburgh “Philadelphia” which is a BIG no-no in our city! To which the band asked the crowd to “shame” lead singer Bonnie Fraser for getting the name of the city wrong.

One of the things I loved about the Idobi Summer School was the background vibe and aesthetic. The “class bells” would ring. An announcer would come on and remind you to “get to class” or ask for the band to “come to the principals office”. All of that made for a real awesome play on the entire experience. On the sophomore run of the festival I would LOVE to see and hear more of this! Maybe even have a designated “MC” who plays as the “principal” or something who hosts the entire thing? That would be a fun idea! Possibly a pop-punk alumni. I could definitely see Jordan of NFG or Alex of All Time Low doing this.

One of my favorite new up and comers The Home Team was up next. I had the pleasure of seeing this band a few times last year and it was so awesome seeing them again.

They played nearly a dozen tracks as well kicking off with track BRAG from their latest album THE CRUCIBLE LIFE. The band played quite a few tracks from their latest album including ROOMATES, LOVE & CO., HELL, TURN YOU OFF and even closing out with LOUD from that album. But not before giving fans some older tracks like WATCHING ALL YOUR FRIENDS GET RICH.

MAGNOLIA PARK was one of my favorite bands and up next. The bland blasted through a dozen of tracks including MISFITS featuring Taylor Acorn (on the record) The Void (an unreleased track), Unhonly Revenge where they brought out Honey Revenge and Addison Rae which is one of my favorite tracks before closing out with tracks FEELING SOMETHING which originally featured Dereck Sanders of Mayday Parade and is one of their most well known tracks. They most definitely killed the set as they always have in the previous times I’ve seen the band.

Lastly, was nearly hometown band SCENE QUEEN, who played one of the the craziest sets I’ve ever seen. Opening with PINK PUSH-UP BRA, into 18+and WHIPS AND CHAINS before going into tracks PINK PANTHER, MILF, and PINK G-STRING. Before closing with tracks PINK PANTHER, PINK ROVER and BARBIE AND KEN which didn’t feature Set It Off but was still sick, and awesome none the less.

The show closed out and it was like a school closing out, or detention. It was pretty sick that those little audio clips played throughout the show that kept the entire “Summer School” vibe. I hope that next year’s keep up the same energy and I know that with the same people running the festival that it’ll be the same energy. Until next time!

THE IDOBI SUMMER SCHOOL are now on tour!

- You can check our photo gallery, and more below!