The Menzingers, Tiny Moving Parts and Red City Radio at Vega

It could have been 2007 at Vega last night.

Minnesota trio Tiny Moving Parts took the stage after Oklahoma’s Red City Radio (who played promptly at 7:30). The former was all wailing guitar and sharp, emotive vocals familiar to anyone who grew up on early Taking Back Sunday and Say Anything records.

Later, when The Menzingers closed their set with a two-song encore, singer Tom May noted they were about to play the title track from their first album, A Lesson in the Abuse of Information Technology, a song that’s “nearly ten years old.” It was among the band’s best received.

And Vega might be the best place in Lincoln for pure throwback re-creation. It’s the dry-erase board of Lincoln venues.

With its nearly blank grey walls, non-descript stage, still-new-enough-to-be-nice furniture, Vega’s personality, as a place to see shows, depends entirely on what’s going on there. This is unlike, say, the Zoo Bar, which will always and forever feel like the blues.

You could say the physical place of Vega lacks any character, and you might be right, but it uses that to don whatever costume will feel comfortable on a given night.

And last night it was mid-2000s emo revival.

The 80-or-so people in attendance never threatened to fill Vega to capacity, but still pressed each other close to the stage. Drinks and fists were held aloft, choruses screamed along with. The sheer exuberance, the good buddies embracing during favorite songs, vocalist/guitarist Greg Barnett remarking “this is fucking awesome,” would have you believe that music was never going to be the same after tonight. That we were all seeing something brand new that surely was going to change things.

Or maybe that we were seeing something for one of the last times, forgotten en masse but still well-loved by a persistent handful.

For their part, maybe The Menzingers believed it too. If I didn’t know that they were in the middle of a national tour and on the cusp of another run in Europe, I could’ve thought it was some kind of farewell show. They played each track like it was the last song in the last set for a long time. May couldn’t keep his eyes off the audience, a sure sign of appreciation.

Something about seeing a band move in sync, even if they’re just bobbing their heads, feels special, like each member is genuinely having a good time.

All of it was punctuated by an encore in earnest. The Menzingers clearly hadn’t planned one, but it was obvious 20 minutes out that the crowd was going to ask for it. They were old songs, from 2007’s A Lesson in the Abuse of Information Technology, like a “thank you” to everyone who had been there since the beginning.

But, of course, The Menzingers aren’t a dying band by any means. They released Rented World earlier this year on Epitaph Records and premiere songs at places like Pitchfork. Perhaps it’s fairer to call what they do melodic punk than late-era emo, if only to disassociate the band from washed-up peers.

Still, the desperate energy of a Menzingers show is undeniable, but hasn’t that always been the appeal, since Rites of Spring in the ‘80s? It’s the feeling that everyone in this room right now shares your particular defeated worldview, everyone outside doesn’t get it, and this show is our last chance to bring it all together in a frustrated, last-gasp of camaraderie.

It could have been 2007 at Vega, but it also probably could have been 2014 or 1985 or 1994.