Ahead of Tampa concert, The Used's Jepha reveals the best gig he ever saw

There’s a song on The Used’s second-most-recent album Toxic Positivity called “I Hate Everyone,” and it sums up the themes of the band’s most recent work.

On the albums (the most recent one being Medz, stylized in all-caps), Bert McCracken and friends vent about declining mental health, people “dying in [their] sleep from the American dream,” and how other people can just fucking suck sometimes. You’ll hear a few tracks from the sad AF albums, along with a good chunk of its sophomore album In Love and Death, which turns 20 on Saturday.

Ahead of this stacked emo gig, bassist and founding member Jeph “Jepha” Howard told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay about Incubus, Hed PE, and Snot being the best concert he ever saw. Read his full quote below.

A lot of the bands that I wanted to see, I've never been able to see because I grew up in Utah Valley. It's about an hour away from Salt Lake and I didn't really have money to drive growing up. All that fun stuff. I went to Incubus, Hed PE, and Snot, back in '90-something. Obviously, Incubus got big. The other bands...the singer of Snot died a couple years later, which is too bad because they were a great band.

That was one of the first concerts I went to where I actually wanted to see all the bands, and that definitely pushed me, because I liked all the bands that were playing. I liked all their music, and being able to watch to watch them play live and see how good it could be, because other than that, it would be watching Rage Against The Machine live videos or like, whatever they'd have on MTV at the time. Like Nirvana's 'Unplugged,' or even just live videos of Nirvana playing. They were a mess. They weren't great live, but it was so cool to watch them still. All that definitely aided in pushing me towards 'this is what I have to do. There are no other options.' -Jepha, The Used

Tickets to see The Used play Tampa's Hard Rock Event Center at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on Wednesday, Oct. 2 are still available and start at $45.

Readers are invited to submit their own events to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s things to do calendar.

Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.

Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter