Show Journal 2004-05-15
Finally, finally, finally … we got to play a big all ages show in Seattle. We’ve been trying for how long now? I don’t even want to think about it as it’s somewhat depressing. Since The Flood opened and the story how they got on the show is pretty cool. They are out on a long tour from Boston and were supposed to play a matinee show with 3 Seattle hardcore bands. All three bands cancelled so they were stuck without a show today or the following day and basically nowhere to play until Tuesday. Anyway, it turns out the band that was supposed to be touring w/ Zebrahead couldn’t make it tonight or the following night either. So the folks from Double Tee said “ok, you guys can play tonight and tomorrow night in Portland”. Talk about being in the right place at the right time! They totally rocked it too. The only downer was that they play absolutely brutal hardcore and the majority of Zebrahead fans didn’t know what to think of it. We thought they rocked and plus they were cool as hell to talk to. We played second and I was totally nervous. I had waited so long for a big show in Seattle, I had forgotten that I’d be playing to a few hundred people that had never heard of us, and might see us not as a possibly cool opening band but rather as a holdup until Zebrahead. Everything turned out well and had a good time playing. It was cool seeing so many people in front, beside and above you as well. It was not cool having Chris yell out “amateurs” after every song. He’s a bastard though and we’ll just have to accept that. Zebrahead was last and sounded great … best I’ve ever seen them. After the show we had hotdogs and neither Dave nor myself can say enough about how satisfying a hotdog is after a show. Thanks to Double Tee, Chris, Sam, Al, Michelle, Heather, Carrie, Zach, Monica, Sarah, Kevin and all the staff at Studio Seven … easily the coolest club owners and staff we’ve ever met.
Show Journal 2004-05-14
Tonight was our first trip to Astoria and hopefully not our last. Pretty solid show even though Jackmove and The Hordel were both MIA tonight. We arrived late and caught the latter half of Penny Lane’s set. I gotta admit I thought they rocked. Of course I’d be playing hard too if I moved from Hawaii to rainy ass Oregon! Imbroglio was next. They covered ‘Raining Blood’ be Slayer. They could have sat there belching into the microphone for the other 30 minutes and they would still get a thumbs up in my book. Then again I’m just shallow like that. BXF was next and rocked it. They get better and better with each show and it’s kind of cool to see the progression. Being a totally cool group of people doesn’t hurt either. We were last and had a blast. Played some new songs, played some old songs, saw some people that travelled from places far and wide. Thanks to Chris Miner and lcpunk.com for the show!
Show Journal 2004-05-11
I had been warned that the Black Forest was “a freedom rock kind of bar”. I had visions of wood paneling, neon beer signs, dartboards, and those video poker machines with the naked girl pictures on them. I was surprised to find that it was clean, had a stage with lights and was populated by reasonably cool looking people. The Wobblies were first and pretty entertaining to watch. We were second and got a pretty lukewarm reaction. No one really left and they clapped and cheered, but then again no one really moved either. Of course when was the last time we played a bar in Eugene? Exactly. The Independents were third and Dave absolutely loves this band. After our set Justin and I wandered down to the Circle K to get some drinks. After the clerk tried to sell us a copy of Legally Blonde 2 we slowly wandered back to the club. Real slowly. In fact we missed the Independents. Dave and Jim both said they were real good so we’ll have to take their word for it. I still can’t believe I totally missed them. PB Army was last and was pretty rocking. Under normal circumstances they might have been more rocking but it was 1:30 in the morning and for me no one sounds really good that late. Thanks to Evin for the show, Jessica for the roadie skills, Conor for his quick yet terribly inefficient microphone repair, and to Darin and Tim for driving from Newburg.
Show Journal 2004-04-22
When we pulled up to the club tonight Dave backed the van up perilously close to a dumpster. As I reached for the door handle and mentally prepared myself to squeeze out between the van door and dumpster a bum’s head peered up, slowly swiveled left and right to survey his surroundings, locked eyes with me and then slowly ducked back down to the safety of the dumpster. It’s sounds awful, but I absolutely could not stop laughing. We still had Dave’s dirty Santa Claus hat in the van (from the bum show last year) and contemplating getting in the dumpster with him to see if he’d say anything. Yes, my name is Eric and I’ll see some you in hell. Anyway, it was early and it was a weeknight but it seems that our crew was out in force tonight. As people started filing in the door I’d find myself saying “oh, I know them” at about every other person that entered. Kinda cool to get so much support for a local show. Spare Lead was up first and was the first time I’ve seen them with their new and totally rocking drummer. Musically they are in a totally different place than they were even a year ago and they were pretty impressive. We were up second and had a blast playing. No matter how many times I see it I can’t get enough of people’s fists in the air and the singing along. It makes me tingle in places that shouldn’t tingle. Aside from the carpeting on my side of the stage that kept coming up in pieces and causing me to nearly do the splits on several occasions it was great. Nuclear Saturday was third and totally owned it. I’ve been obsessed with their last album since it came out, so I had impossibly high expectations. I was definitely not disappointed. Damn, homeboy can sing. Totally cool guys too. Not Long After was the headliner and in an effort to plug their new CD they even raffled off a signed guitar. How cool is that? I hadn’t seen NLA play in about a year and they sounded tight and better than ever. I realize that the 4 NSR bands that played tonight aren’t the biggest bands in town, nor is NSR the biggest label around, but it was damn cool being part of this show and this group of people. I wish all our shows were this fun but if they were then I might not appreciate them.
Show Journal 2004-04-14
I witnessed the coolest and most flattering thing I’ve ever seen in this band … an actual 800 Octane tattoo. Yep, Joel (aka – the guitar player from BXF) likes our band enough to mark his body with our skull logo. Man, after 10 years that was one of the best feelings ever. Of course now whenever Joel sees us I feel like we have a lot to live up to! Anyway, I can’t believe it had been 6 months since we had been to Longview. Despite the long wait the show was good. Real good. The Hordel rocked with super heavy metal/hardcore riffs. We played second and I thought it went well. We played 6 or 7 new songs that seemed to get a good response. The Code was third and I thought they rocked. Sadly, about half the crowd was outside and missed out on their super fast political punk anthems. AAA was last and seemed much more lively than they were when we saw them on Monday. Thanks to all who arrived early and hung out on a weeknight. Also, props to TJ for hooking us up with the show and all those who braved the ferry.
Show Journal 2004-04-09
Damn fine show tonight. A lot of people hung out late despite the lengthy show (which is always appreciated), we talked to lots of people, played lots of new stuff, busted out ‘Next Exit’ for someone, had a fun sound guy and pretty much just had a good time. Sadly we missed the first two opening bands so our apologies to them. No real comedy or drama to report so I guess that’s really about it for this one. Thanks to Crystal, Kaylin, PJ, and the folks in the other bands we met!
Show Journal 2004-03-20
We’ve had a real hit or miss relationship with Spokane over the years. A few hits way back in the day and a series of misses for the past few, oh, 3 or 4 years. For the first time in many moons we actually a) had more than 8 people in attendance and b) saw a glimmer of interest for at least part of our set. This was very encouraging since after completing the math we realized for each minute of playing we spent 22 minutes in the van. The first two bands were pretty entertaining. The first band played ‘Sex And Violence’ by The Exploited which oddly enough we covered a few times back in the NC days. The second band was a little tighter and was also pretty entertaining to watch. We were up third and I think the general reaction was “ok, what the hell is this?”. When we started there were only a handful of people up front (several of which had driven from Richland) and by the end of 4 songs, there were still only a handful of people up front. We decided to unearth our cover of ‘Halloween’ which thankfully seemed to wake everyone up (even starting a pit) and also seemed to grant us a temporary approval rating from the initially uninterested crowd. The second half of the set was much better for everyone involved and made the drive worthwhile. It should also be noted that to the left of me was a guy with a mohawk shoving his hands down the pants of a younger girl. At first I thought “ewww” but later the lecherous and seedy side of me hoped for a second look. Ahhh, teenage romance. The Creeps played last and holy crap they rocked it. Despite the small crowd of 50-60 there was seriously painful looking circle pit which just added to the chaos of The Creeps already energetic set. Afterwards we stopped at Dick’s where Dave consumed 3 whammy burgers in less than 5 minutes. The drive home sucked ass but what else is new. Major props to the Richland crew who made the drive to see the show, Josie for bailing on her play to see us, and the Creeps for helping us out with our first decent Spokane show in a long time.
Show Journal 2004-02-21
My love of the band Zeke has been rekindled and I’d like to thank Dustin and Atomic Productions for making it possible. Zeke has always been one of my favorite bands (I’ve got 5 of their CD’s) and since they went on a hiatus a while back I hadn’t seen them play in about 3 years. Needless to say when we got the offer for this show I was pretty excited. The show was huge. Easily the biggest I had seen at Ray’s and the crowd went nuts for all the bands. Since we just got out of the studio we decided to try out some of the new material. Jim was doped up on Vicodin, Justin had worked all day I was running on just a few hours of sleep. I think it’s safe to say that we were a little sloppy. The good news is that since it was mostly new songs I’m not sure if anyone really noticed. Either way I was stoked to be playing the newly finished songs and it felt great to play to such an appreciative crowd. Also, it felt good to play live again since it had been over three months since our last show! Jet City Fix was second and pretty much rocked. Looking at them I was expecting a generic emo-type band but they were a real poppy version of the Dwarves or Supersuckers. Zeke was last and they killed it. My other Zeke experiences were all limited to about 15-20 minute sets but this set was huge. They must had played about 25 songs. Granted they are all 1-2 minutes long but holy hell it was insane to watch. Zeke’s singer has to be one of the most bad ass guitar players ever. I can’t even explain it. All you can do is throw the horns, do the finger rolling thing or just stop and say holy shit. It’s insane to see in person. Anyway, thanks to the Richland crew for showing up early, the Atomic City folks for having us on this show and those who traveled from far and wide to check out this show.
Show Journal 2003-12-04
This show can best be summed up with a quote by Bill Lumberg from the movie Office Space … “mmmmm yeahhh”. The evening started innocently enough with us sitting on the couch and Dave spreading his legs and offering Rick an opportunity to “toss his salad”. Later there was the discovery that the roof of the Meow Meow was leaking under the heavy rains onto the main floor. First up was Clarity Process and they rocked. Very energetic, very technical and very heavy at times. (Also, a pretty darn good CD too.) Anatomy Of A Ghost was second and they really caught me off guard. I had been told about tales of wild, crazy out of control shows but they seemed very subdued and almost kind of mellow. Here comes the “mmmmm yeahhh” part. We were third and within minutes half the crowd cleared out. Dave even made some comment mocking the people that left and upon saying that even more people made an exodus for the door. This was discouraging because the alternative was to stand outside in the 40 degree rainy windstorm. I thought about it for a bit and here’s the possibilities … a) we totally sucked b) we didn’t look cool enough or c) everyone who left was just “over punk rock”. I think the correct answer was d) all of the above. When we got offered this show I thought that musically we were at least in the same ballpark as these bands but apparently not. Gotta love that Portland music scene. Amazing. The ones that stayed are definitely in our ever loving graces for all of eternity and remind us why we do this in the first place. If you watched our set then take a second to pat yourself on the back and say “good job” for leaving us with some small sense of pride to take from this evening. Vaux was last and they totally fucking rocked. Cool lights, incredibly thick sound, amazing stage presence, just an awesome performance that got better with each song. Thanks to Thrasher and crew, the street team peeps, Ang and Ashley, Darin, Camaro Eric, Steve and family and of course Mocephus. Apologies to Michelle. Please don’t cut me.
Show Journal 2003-11-22
I apologize in advance for the length of this review. Unless you have a real vested interest in this show you might consider skipping it. So, finally a full CD and release show for Thirty 3. Seems like every time they put out a recording it’s a 7″ or some limited EP that I can never get a hold of because they made like five of them. I go to the shows and I ask but they never have one available. I see them outside of shows and ask for one and still would never get one. Despite being friends with them for nearly 3 years, practicing down the hall from them and seeing them play probably 20 or 30 times I had no recordings to show for it. Needless to say I was pretty stoked to actually have a CD in hand for once and I must confess it sounds amazing. The lyrics are great, the guitars sound huge and the album is deceptively catchy. Since this was a CD release show and Thirty 3 likes to do things differently the original plan was that some of the bands were going to dress up in costumes. There were promises of bands dressed as ninjas, pirates and even cowboys. In an effort to be completely offensive we chose to dress up as bums. We jokingly said we were supposed to be “failed musicians” but yeah ultimately we were just bums. We’ll get back to that in a bit. Huge turnout tonight which was great to see since the tre tre boys had been busting their ass to promote it. First up was Blue Turns White. Disgustingly good musicians. No costumes though. The Dead Unknown was second and played a damn burly set of metal/hardcore. Totally impressive. However, no costumes. Our homies in Countdown To Life were third. Before their set they were ushered outside for a moment and the crowd was secretly given life size masks that featured each of the bands faces. When they started to play everyone put on or held up their masks. It was hilarious. They were a little bewildered for a minute and then amused. Thirty 3 thought had the best of them until Danny offered to save people money by burning a copy of their new album. Again, no costumes. So we went and got ready by putting on our bum attire. I can’t describe each costume individually but between the four of us we had 6 coats, 4 sets of high tops and/or boots (at least 2 of those were missing toes), 3 sets fingerless gloves, 2 flannel shirts, 1 beanie, 2 hats, 1 skanky looking santa claus hat, 1 sweater, 2 long haired wigs, 1 tie dye t-shirt, 9 blacked out teeth, 2 sunday edition newspapers spread across the stage and 4 faces smeared in dirt and black makeup. Looking back it’s probably a good thing we didn’t have time to carry out our plan to put Justin in a wheelchair. I kept asking Dave and Justin “do I look like a bum?” Dave said “I know how to tell” and proceeded to curl up in a ball on the floor by the wall and only uttered the phrase “god bless you” for the next 10 minutes. We loaded on stage and were met by mostly blank stares. Only a few people seemed genuinely amused and most of them were standing on the stage. Best line of the night was Dave who during the soundcheck asked for “more change in the monitors” while Justin just muttered and groaned in the background. There were several things I’d like to mention mostly for myself so that I can remember this evening. 1) It was damn hot wearing two coats. I mentioned it to Jon later and he responded “dude, I could have told you that”. 2) Despite being cleaned those clothes smelled bad when warmed to body temperature. 3) About three songs into the set my mullet wig/beanie flew right off my head during a vicious fit of head banging. Oops. 4) At some point while jumping I cracked the stage in front of my amp. I’m guessing it was probably the extra 10 pounds of clothes. 5) I think only the people in the front saw this but early in the set Rick came out from the crowd and curled up to take a nap in front of the drum rise under some newspapers … while we were playing. Also, while doing this Justin attempted to pick his pockets. 6) Dave stayed in character most of the set and proclaimed “god bless you” at least 8 more times. 7) Someone repeatedly sang “who let the bums out” whenever it got quiet. Geez, I can only imagine what the people who had never seen our band before were thinking. We got a kind of lukewarm reaction at first but I think if I saw 4 people dressed as bums on stage I would just stare too. We played some new songs and as a gift to the message board regulars (for their big 1 year anniversary) we played what will probably be the retirement of Safety Dance. Last up were the stars of the night Thirty 3 and thankfully they actually stuck to the theme and dressed up … as cowboys!!! They sounded amazing. Hands down the best I’ve ever seen them. Now that I actually have a CD to listen to and know the songs they are twice as much fun to see. I am genuinely happy for them and am in some strange way proud of them for finally getting such a good a CD out and hitting the road more often. They are one of our favorite band musically and personally so we were flattered they asked us to play. Man this review is long. Big thanks to everyone in attendance including the people who have seen us lots of times as well as the people who stuck around even though they might not normally listen to a band like ourselves. Special mention to ‘Hobocephus’ (the ‘b’ can also be changed to ‘m’), Hopper and Eric for driving up from Eugene only to have their car towed and miss the whole show, and thanks to Ang for showing up dressed in full on bum attire even through we hadn’t changed yet! Huge thanks to Thirty 3 and all the other bands for making Portland proud of itself again. (Footnote: For the record we do acknowledge that homelessness and poverty is a legitimate problem in this country. Over the years we have played many food drives, benefit concerts and charity shows. Having said that I do think being able to have a sense of humor about these things does have it’s place too.)
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