An Awkward Thought after Drunken Beligerrent Confrontational Rock, Go

Today, Show day. Afternoon gig, early. 3:30 early. Practice at 1 to get the jets warmed up—that's the R. Mike wasn't there; he was doing his pregame warm-up—that's the DBC. Although, only three bloody Mary's by show time was hardly a dent. He did smell kinda funky though.

When I got to the practice space, there was a guy sitting outside the building on the dirty sidewalk. It was a bit chilly out, and furthermore he was in the shade, but I quickly noticed that he had just picked up something wicked shit cool: a brand new Canon Rebel. Turned out to be his first DSLR. Now, I don't own a DSLR, but I have wanted one for at least a year now—holding out for an affordable one with auto-focus HD video. (realistic? I want to think so...) It's more-or-less a good practice at my job, and why not—I have so much reference material and professional advice just an excuse to get out of my desk away. So I basically shared the enthusiasm. Then I went to the practice space, the "ps", grooved some beats, ran through the set sans vocals, came up with a cool space groove, worked on a new song (tigerrrs!), called a cab and headed to the LES. Before we left, we met the guy with the camera from before, heard they had a show today as well, and then realized who they were: Go!, the headlining act, that's been around since perhaps the late 80's or very early 90's (saw a 1990 vinyl of theirs today).

ABC no Rio: the thing I didn't know about until tonight was that it's getting torn down. No surprise there, as the place is an absolute wreck on the inside, and today was the second time we've had the duty of throwing down there. You can see the basement through the floorboards in the main "gallery", and every room is coming apart at the seems. (By art "gallery", I mean that there was a shitty collage piece hanging on the ceiling, but really, nothing but old velcro on the wall and a boxed-chart on the wall showing volunteer's hours. yes, it's like a cooperative that runs this thing. to quote vocalist Mike Braverman, "if you have any objections to the cooperative, you must speak to the counsel of elders in Swahili. None of the counsel of elders, speaks Swahili.") The whole place reeked of Kerosene or diesel fuel; if someone tried to light a fart, they could blow the sucker down. But as they announced, it's getting torn down, and apparently the cooperative owns the building now and can do as such, and they're building something better on top. So the end of an era there.

DBCR's set: Fire Drill set check in front of everyone; someone said it sounded like Sonic Youth. Haven't figured out if that's bad or good yet, but I'm gonna say that's good, but he was probably being sarcastic and we weren't doing anything crazy with it. Then: didn't see this coming, but they had to check the mic (first show, so they had just turned on the PA. no mixer, just one of those dedicated crappy PA's with built in mixer!) and out comes Jeeves*, who launches into this totally brown, urban-flavored diatribe rhyme poem, and then ends with saying DBCR! At this point, I forgot to ask the question until now: who the fuck was he? Then we played our set: Drop Down, Flamejob, Ken's Trunk, Donk, Reverse Broken Window Theory Part 1, and Let Them Eat Bikes. Played great, strong show. Also, had at least three decent photographers going nuts. Jason broke a string and did the fastest restringing live I've ever seen. And in the back of the gallery, there was a 71 year-young maverick, complete with hat and visors, fingers in his ears, but it was all good because today was...

Special parent / family recognition day!

Ken's dad came down for the show, which was awesome. And I had never seen Ken's dad before so I was a little bit surprised. Also in from out-of-town: Brianna's mom from Cali, and the guitarist from Go!'s mom was purportedly there.

After our set, Rob the adventurer, R and I headed down the street to The Johnson's, right next to Neighburrito, and got a round of PBRs for $1.75, a good price for this city. And it's dog friendly too, so a Mos Eisley of people and dogs. Charlie came up in discussion. Long live Charlie.

Got back to ABC no RIO for the #4 slot, Awkward Thought, Ken's old band. I had borrowed their drummer Brian's kit. He's a total bad ass heavy hitter, and even wears a shirt that reads "JUDGE" really big on both sides and has these mean looking mallet-hammers. So fuck yeah. They hung this awesome banner behind them with a cop, but I forgot what it said. Vocalist dressed up with a road-crew body suit and a black ski mask. I had never heard them before, but they had a good entourage that knew the lyrics to their songs, fighting for the mic midsong to sing along. Like live karaoke, but the genre is live New York Hard Core at a total shit box. It's practically gay if think about how close sweaty men are getting just to get their lips on the same mic. Scream me a river! Also, some serious moshing broke out during the set, which hits just about everyone in the room since its so small. I enjoyed my role as "pusher".

Between sets, I noticed two of the photographers talking to each other, so I went over to get their names and contact info. The first guy had taken several shots of me, so I wanted to make sure he was cool and not just stalking me. Legit. The other guy spoke very poor English and was having a hard time communicating. Fortunately, he had just come in a few hours prior from Tokyo, and there you have it—communication.

Naoki Rakuman, aka Luckman Photo. He pulled out his iPhone and thumbed some galleries. Solid fucking A list of famous actors, musical performers, talents, new anchors. Mostly Japanese but an honorable amount of Westerners as well: Nicholas Cage, Halle Berry, John Legend. Another section: nude. j-glamour and j-nude. Very, very hot. And Naoki also got some DBCR in there.

Bought two 7" from the vocalist for Go: Death or Glory, which has 4 songs on each side, and Backdraft, which has a handwritten white label on the outside of the sleeve that reads "Intense". Both recs from the vocalist. Too bad my turntable here has needle.

A note about Go! and 7" vinyl: that is their thing. Seems like much of their catalog has been released on 7". Thing is, their songs are typically in the range of 45 seconds to 1:30 tops. So they can get by with a 10-track release that's like 14 minutes long, ie two 5 track sides that are 7 minutes a side. And maybe I'm completely wrong about all this, but they certainly had a lot of vinyl there today, as well as all the other bands.

Now, let's Go! Special note at the start about ABC no RIO's 20 year anniversary of NY hard core. They opened up with their seven second opus, "ABC no RIO", their tribute that dates way back. Then they launched into their set, which were a series of quick blast riffs that typically consist of two riffs, one of them being the "lightening round". Vocalist, despite his age, looked in good shape and gave his all. More crowds of men were happy to help funnel lyrics when they knew the song, which happened at a much lesser frequency than the previous act.

The vocalist gave me the notion that this is probably what the guys from Corrosion of Conformity and DRI probably looked something like. Jean shorts and a chipped front tooth, well spoken. PA should have been up more but it was squealin' bad so it had to come down.

Also liked the drummer's cymbals: Zildjian 19" medium crash for a nice big ripper, and 22" medium ride to balance. Paiste's version of Fast Hats / Quick Beat as the HH, but I saw the bottom on top. Don't know what was underneath.

Go's setlist ended up being two full columns on page of around 20 songs each. Made it through in about 1:15. Another jolly good show!