Jerry’s Pizza played host to a concert for punk and ska bands of different ages and different sounds. Bands were playing constantly, both in the restaurant and in the basement.

The first bands to play were Betties Undead and Reyes. Betties Undead is a horror-punk band, and Reyes plays reggae. The lead singer of Reyes, Mac Cavern, said the show was great.

“We felt some cool energy from the crowd,” said Cavern. “It was nice to open up. It was packed.”

Both bands played at roughly the same time, but the audience was split between the two bands, sometimes with people leaving one band mid-performance to catch the second half of the other band’s set. This was a recurring situation with the crowd to try and catch every band playing.

Mike Rushbie, who is in town from Scotland on business, really enjoyed it.

“It’s not the sort of thing we have in the UK, a pizza place with a bar and two simultaneous gigs at the same time,” said Rushbie.

The next bands, We Are Late and Hillsvainkill, also had the audience pretty evenly split with people continuously alternating between each band. While Hillsvainkill plays more melodic punk, We Are Late played a set of fairly short songs with titles like “My Grandma Watches Porn.”  We Are Late were also the first band to have people moshing.

Next, Dr. Devito brought almost everyone upstairs to see their set. Dr. Devito plays more of a surf-rock sound than a punk or ska, but regardless, they had the majority of the crowd watching them. Dr. Devito had their parents at the show to support them. Most of the members of Dr. Devito have previously attended Bakersfield College.

I’m Not Scotty then took the stage following Dr. Devito and really impressed the audience.

“As young as they were I was pretty impressed for their musicality or whatever you call it.  I don’t know anything about music, but I know they sounded great,” said a woman that didn’t want to give her name because she had been drinking.

The guys in I’m Not Scotty are all still students at Bakersfield High School and are managed by the man that organized the show, Mike Scarfo.

Lead singer Alex Olcott said, “Me and Jordan [guitarist] were talking about how we need a manager and who better to manage us than the guy who puts on the shows.”

The last two bands were the ska bands The Easy In and Top Shelf. The Easy In, in addition to guitar, drum and bass player, has a trombone player, a trumpet and keyboard player, and two saxophone players. The Easy In had almost everyone dancing and at times had people skanking. Skanking is how people dance to ska music. In their set they also had Joe Vazquez of Mento Buru play trombone with them. The Easy In also had flute solos in their set.

Top Shelf closed out the show with ska songs about peace and pot. At one point during their set they smoked a blunt among themselves and sang a song about smoking pot.

“The songs were a different genre that I’ve never heard, and it’s definitely a new experience for me in music so I thought it was pretty cool,” said Mia Rodriguez, who was there with a friend.

At the end of the show, most people were pleased with the quality and diversity of the sounds at Jerry’s that night.