Fall Out Boy offers a welcome serving of musical nutrition

As a society we have to ask ourselves: what are we feeding our children? This is not intended to be a discussion about mechanically separated chicken or high-fructose corn syrup. No, another kind of food: music. It is, after all, the singular most powerful expression of the human soul.

Yet, in today's consumer-based capitalistic society, music has been sterilized, homogenized, desensitized and, worst of all, commoditized into an entity designed not to enrich the listeners but to make rich the purveyors.

If this sounds highfalutin, then you weren't at the Tacoma Dome on Wednesday night because this concert was the epitome of what is wrong in music today.

Exhibit 1: Cobra Starship, a band whose claim to fame is the song "Bring It (Snakes on a Plane.)" Yes, from the cheesy action-packed flop of a film starring Sam Jackson. Dear reader, the only thing worse than a stupid song is a song that makes you stupid. For this, Cobra Starship is guilty and should be ejected from Starship Earth.

Exhibit 2: The Academy Is ..., a band that thankfully had its name emblazoned on a giant banner, otherwise their power pop, bubblegum rock would not have been identifiable from the 237 other bands that have this exact same sound. Generic? Guilty! Driven by gimmicks and cheesy clichés? Guilty! Send the Academy to the gallows!

Exhibit 3: +44, the band former Blink-182 members Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker formed when Blink went on indefinite hiatus. These are not punk preservationists or even revisionists. No, +44 is simply thieves with guitars who would rather count their money than write an original, that is to say fresh, song. This L.A. band romps through power chord after power chord while Hoppus sings sensitive, surefire lines like, "Baby come on." The best part of this band is the banter, "(guitarist) Shane Gallagher likes to cut his hair like Britney Spears." (He's bald. Har-har.)

Now, the exception to the rule and perhaps our hope for the future: Fall Out Boy, the emissaries of emo who wittingly nabbed their moniker from the Simpsons. (Fall Out Boy was Radioactive Man's sidekick.) This Chicago four-piece added all kinds of lights, flames, streamers and explosions to a show that could have been just as successful without the hoopla. The reason: The songs are well-crafted, interesting and exciting compositions, topped with ample wit, humor and irony. In other words, the music could stand alone.

"This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race" is a perfect example. This infectious concoction is also a stirring anthem; played live or on the radio, it changes the room; it demands fist pumping and shouting; it gets blood flowing.

The same could be said of "One & Only," a song from "Timbaland Presents Shock Value" that supposedly features Fall Out Boy, but the way FOB plays it, the song its own. To make it even better, bassist Pete Wentz and guitarist Joe Trohman snuck out to the sound stage to play the song while standing on top of a Honda. Of course, the young girls went crazy, sending high-pitched shrieks into the ears of whatever journalist happened to be standing nearby.

It was more than these two hits. FOB played a full set of rip-roaring rock 'n' roll ("Sugar We're Goin' Down," "The Carpal Tunnel of Love," "Thnks fr th Mmrs," to name some high points) that breathed new life into the genre. They even reconstituted Michael Jackson's "Beat It." That's food for the soul.