Photo by: Flickr.com

When Bowling for Soup played the Bluebird Theater last week, the performance ran more like a comedy show than a concert. The members of this Texas quartet couldn’t keep their minds—or balls—out of the gutter.

The veteran punk rockers of Bowling for Soup know how to work a crowd, especially a crowd of 13-year-old boys.

Case in point: the way Chris Burney made fart noises and shook his butt as he played guitar.

But that was only a warm-up to all the penis jokes made by Jarret Reddick, the lead singer.

“I want Kool & the Gang to play with us every day,” Reddick said to the audience. “No, not play with us. That would be dirty.”

But the penis jokes didn’t end there.

During a lull in the show, Burney tried to salvage the crowd’s energy by defining a word that belongs in the Urban Dictionary.

“You know what’s a funny word?” he said. “Poopyballs.”

So when did the band actually play music? Between all the jokes and slapstick.

Bowling for Soup performed an hour’s worth of songs during a two-hour show.

None got the crowd going more than “Ohio,” “Girl All the Bad Guys Want,” “High School Never Ends” and new single “No Hablo Inglés.” But Reddick refused to play “1985” until the end of the show.

“When we ask you want song you want to hear, never say ‘1985,'” Reddick said to the audience. “When a band only has one hit song, they’re gonna play it last. If they play it before the end, the crowd clears out and we’re up here playing with ourselves.”

Another penis joke.

This humor may be part of Bowling for Soup’s charm, but that’s no justification for the band to cut the music mid-song to crack another joke.

It was funny initially, but this potty humor reeked by the end of the two-hour show. After all, when the jokes start detracting from the songs, it’s time to shut up and play music.

One request to Reddick and his crew: bring on “1985” already.