A Starbomb Weekend in Tulsa, Part Two: The Concert
Welcome to the main event. If you missed the trip itself, the food, and my stance on the worst Wilbury, check out Part One.
But first, who is Starbomb?
Starbomb is a comedy rap group built around video games. It’s made up of Arin Hanson, better known to longtime internet folks as Egoraptor, and Dan Avidan and Brian Wecht, better known as Danny Sexbang and Ninja Brian of Ninja Sex Party.
Most notably Arin and Danny host Game Grumps together, so this is basically the Grumps with a beat behind it.
The group dropped its self-titled debut in 2013, followed by Player Select in 2014 and The Tryforce in 2019. Their songs take games like Pokémon, Zelda, and Dark Souls and turn them into fast, filthy, and surprisingly well-produced raps. For a while after The Tryforce, the band was considered more or less finished, until they came back with a fourth album, Starbomb Boom: Rise of Lyrics, in 2024. Then came the tour, aptly named Probably The Only Tour Ever, their first true headlining run.
Two fans, two timelines
Helen and I are both longtime Game Grumps fans, but we came to Starbomb from different directions.
Helen is a day one fan. Her path started with early Game Grumps, when Danny mentioned in one episode that Arin had animated the music video for his band’s song “Dinosaur Laser Fight.” She looked it up, loved that it was funny and sounded great, and as someone who loves both music and gaming, she was hooked on Ninja Sex Party from there. They only had two albums at the time, so she bought both digitally on iTunes, since there wasn’t any physical media to be had.
When Danny and Arin announced Starbomb, she bought that first album on iTunes the day it came out and listened to it backwards and forwards. To this day she remembers most of the words.
My road was a little longer. I’ve been following Arin since his Egoraptor days doing Flash animation on the early internet, but Starbomb itself took a bit to grow on me. Once it did, though, I really came around on The Tryforce. That’s the album where I feel the band truly came into its own.
Along the way, we’ve seen Ninja Sex Party and TWRP live together, and both shows rank among my favorites of all time. You can just tell the crowd loves these bands.
Another bucket list show
Seeing Starbomb live was always on Helen’s bucket list. She figured the best shot would be catching a rare one-off at PAX or a convention in Southern California someday. She never expected them to get big enough to support a full tour, let alone cram about 20 shows into a month.
So when the tour was announced, it was an instant buy. I saw the news first, and her response was basically, “I’ll come home tonight and let’s figure out which one we can make work.” Kansas City would normally be our pick since it’s closest, but that date landed in the middle of the work week. Tulsa on a weekend meant a longer drive, but it let us make a whole trip of it. Given our track record with these bands, I had a feeling we were in for a stellar night, and I was right.
The Very Important Crowd
We bought VIP for this one, knowing Cain’s Ballroom was general admission. The package included exclusive merch, a Q&A with Danny, Brian, and Arin, early entry, early merch access, a group photo, and a group gaming session.
Prior to any of the actual VIP festivities happening, I went and posted up front while Helen snagged our merchandise. A couple shirts and a signed poster. A shocking amount of merch was already sold out, you could definitely tell that this was the end-of-the-line for the tour.
The gaming session was Quiplash from the Jackbox Party Pack. It was fun, but the player limit meant I got stuck in the audience poll. The VIP group was far larger than I expected. It felt less like a VIP experience and more like a Very Important Crowd.
The Q&A was nice, but you could tell the crew was tired. They had just gotten off the bus from Minneapolis for the second night of a back-to-back. Questions were curated through a Google Form, and ours went unanswered.
Ultimately, the real value was early entry. We secured a primo spot at the front, stage left. Brian’s side. Holding it meant standing for around seven hours from VIP check-in to the final song. It was a grueling trial, but worth it.
That rail spot would end up paying off in more ways than one, but more on that later.
While we waited for the show to start, a super nice young couple started chatting with us. They talked about when they first got exposed to the Game Grumps, which was some time after JonTron left. Eventually, I mentioned that I’ve been following Arin since his Newgrounds days, and I realized I was officially the oldhead in the crowd. I may have aged myself - I was wearing knee braces after all.
A ballroom, or a gym?
Cain’s Ballroom goes down as one of the strangest venues I’ve ever been to. It’s legendary as the home of Bob Wills and Western swing, several famous musicians have their portraits hanging around the venue as a celebration of the history that has touched this odd open-floor ballroom. Overall, I did not expect to watch an internet comedy rap group in what ultimately felt like a high school gymnasium, but it was super fun to do, especially up front. Very few venues can conjure up this level of intimacy.
The starting lineup
Scoochie Boochie opened the night. I’d never heard of him before, but he has great stage presence and command. I’d be down to see him again.
The real wild card opener, though, was Brian’s smooth jazz alter ego, Trey Magnifique. As soon as I saw him walk onstage in that white suit, I just started screaming. I unironically love smooth jazz and own his first album, Mature Situations, on cassette. Hearing it live blew my fucking mind. I immediately dug out my sunglasses to join the vibes.
When the lights go down in the city
The show lived up to every expectation. The crowd was high energy and loved every minute of it. The cheering was so loud it bordered on painful at times. Genuine tinnitus levels.
The music and gags were great, but I can’t show you any of it. It was a camera-free show, with a ban on photos and videos. I pulled some of the photos from their social media and pasted it to the gallery. Given how close we were, that’s basically how good the photos would have been for us anyway. It was phenomenal to be literally right next to them the whole night.
Backing the trio were Jim Roach and Commander Meouch. As huge fans of TWRP, and of bassists in general, every time Meouch walked past us, we did the “We’re not worthy” bow from Wayne’s World. At one point he did a bass battle with Jim over the ToeJam & Earl soundtrack (a game which I love dearly). I never thought I would actually hear that song live, let alone from one of my favorite musicians.
The main star of the show was Arin. He killed it. Heading into the tour, he was the X-factor. Danny and Brian are seasoned from years of touring with NSP, but Arin had never truly toured musically in this capacity, and plenty of people wondered if he could keep up with the fast, intense raps. He answered that question with zero hesitation.
My favorite songs of the night were “A Boy and His Boat” and “Hardest Fucking Game in the World,” both from The Tryforce. It was blast to rap along with them live.
The spoils from our night
Being on the rail has one more perk: a real shot at concert memorabilia once the lights come up.
In our house, Helen is usually the one who goes for it, with great success. This time, I locked eyes with the photographer and gave her my best puppy dog eyes, begging for the setlist. It worked. After years of watching Helen pull this off, I finally have my own victory story, and it’s a major win.
We walked out with the setlist, a Shadow Academy guitar pick from Jim (the band he and Dan have together), and the VIP Q&A sheet with the Google Form QR code, proudly addressed to the “Tusla VIPs.” Nobody caught the typo, and honestly, that makes it a better souvenir.
Probably the only tour ever
If this really is the only Starbomb tour, I’m glad we were on the rail for it. We both got to cross this one off the bucket list. It was an exhausting trip, but well worth it for a memorable adventure we’ve officially put down in the books.
