Last week I happily went to Reggie’s yet again, this time to see The Germs (or what’s left of The Germs anyway). They played an all ages show that got off to a nice early start which was fine with me considering it was on a “school night”. We got to the club a little early and treated ourselves to some of the fine food the club serves and then it was time for the show.

Rule 22

Rule 22

Rule 22

Rule 22 were the first band up and are a local band. I’m pretty sure I have seen them before as they looked and sounded familiar to me once they got going. The reason they sounded familiar though could be their resemblance to early Green Day however, so I can’t say for certain if I’ve actually seen them before or not. Their songs were pretty melodic and punchy and they sounded pretty good. There was a small group of kids there who seemed like they came to the show just to see them and were dancing about. The band played about a half hour which was just the right amount of time for me to sit through them without losing interest.

Krum Bums

Krum Bums

Krum Bums

Austin, TX’s Krum Bums quickly followed. They played hardcore with a hint of metal seasoning. All their songs were fast and many sounded similar. They really packed a punch and got the crowd going quickly. The singer would often appeal to the kids in the crowd to dance and they alwasy oblidged and he actually got them going in a proper cricle pit as opposed to the usual human bumper cars of chaos that usually happens at shows. It fit nicely with their somewhat retro sound which made me felt like i was back at a show in the mid 1980s. The band really seemed to win over a good amount of the crowd that night, my only two complaints is their ridiculous name and the fact they soiled a 7 Seconds song by doing a cover of it (during which they invited someone from the crowd to come up and sing it which probably made that kid’s day for sure judging by the smile on his face). If they change their name and ditch the cover song I’d happily see them again.

The Germs

The Germs

After a lengthy setup and sound check process, The Germs took the stage. For those who may not be aware, the surviving members of The Germs decided to take their show on the road with Shane West (who played Darby Crash in the movie, What We Do is Secret) playing the part of Darby Crash. So while they are billing themselves as The Germs, and feature all the surviving members, without Darby Crash they really are nothing more than a Germs tribute band.

The Germs

The Germs

I’ve seen this show a few times before and it never was as bad as I imagined it would be. There is something neat about seeing the surviving members all up on the same stage playing those amazing old punk rock songs. Shane West is about as good of a Darby stand-in as you could hope for except he remembers the lyrics and to sing into the mic a whole lot more.

The Germs

The Germs

They played everything you’d want to hear and the crowd, which was about 95 percent young kids, were jumping all over the place, singing along and just going nuts. Shane passed the mic out into the crowd more often than not and allowed them to sing along. While Shane kept the crowd going, Lorna, Don and Pat played those songs with a smile on their faces the entire time. Just like the last time I saw them it really looked like they were having fun up there.

The Germs

The Germs

The Germs

After about an hour of playing which included one encore, the show was over and the sweaty kids in the crowd gathered themselves up and left the club, seemingly satisfied with the show they witnessed that night. Overall I thought it was a pretty entertaining show from top to bottom and added it to the list of fun nights I’ve had over at Reggies.

While the death of Michael Jackson earlier today totally overshadowed the death of Farah Fawcett, the world of music suffered another loss today that you won’t hear about on the nightly news this evening.
Sky Saxon, singer of the somewhat obscure but excellent 1960’s band The Seeds passed away today. He was in his 60’s. I was turned onto the Seeds quite a few years ago by John Stabb of Government Issue who was a big fan of the band. Their first two albums are mandatory owning for any music fan and they were sort of a pre-punk band in a way. Here’s the story from the Associated Press.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Sky Saxon, lead singer and founder of the 1960s band the “Seeds,” who had a Top 40 hit in 1967 with “Pushin’ Too Hard,” has died after a brief illness.

Publicist Jen Marchand said Saxon died Thursday but did not have other details. He was in his 60s.

The Seeds sprang up in California, and their garage-band sound with Saxon’s distinctive vocals became a favorite of the flower power generation. Another hit single of 1967 was “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine” and their song “Mr. Farmer” was included in the soundtrack for the movie “Almost Famous.”

The Mick Jagger-influenced vocals by Saxon (born Richard Marsh) dominated the sound and in turn influenced later punk rockers.

“All the bikers around San Diego thought the Seeds were apocalypse, then,” famed rock critic Lester Bangs wrote in “The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll.” “I recall one hog-ridin’ couple … who didn’t take the Seeds’ first album off their turntable for three solid months.”

Saxon had recently moved to Austin, where he played with his new band, Shapes Have Fangs.

He had been planning to perform this summer with the California ‘66 Revue, a tour featuring a lineup of California bands from the 1960s.

R.I.P. Sky, you will be missed. I’ll leave you all with a clip of The Seeds from an old TV appearance.

The fine folks at Frontier Records have a brand new release under their belts. This one comes in the form of a reissue of a long out of print 7″ that totally deserved to be brought back to life.

Flyboys – Crayon World 7″

The Flyboys had the distinction of being the very first release on Frontier Records with their 12″ EP that came out close to 30 years ago now! It seems only fitting that Frontier reissues this single which came out before the aforementioned 12″.  Since I never owned a copy of the original and always wanted one, I was pretty stoked when this arrived in my mailbox. Two great punk/powerpop songs fill this little piece of joy and it comes on limited edition pink vinyl.

This is available now via Fronter Records website. Tell Lisa and Betty that MXV sent you if you stop on over.

Reggie’s has played host to a lot of good punk shows as of late and one that I was very excited to see happened last week. The legendary UK band, Amebix, reunited and came to Chicago for the first time ever only two plus decades after they broke up!

Tierra De Nadie

Tierra De Nadie

Tierra De Nadie

Tierra De Nadie started the evening off right with some pretty speedy hardcore. They sang all their songs in Spanish (at least that was how it sounded to me).  They had a lot of energy and a lot of aggression. Their songs were mostly pretty short and most stuck to the band’s formula. Many people in the crowd seemed to be digging them and I found them to be pretty enjoyable as well.

Nema

Nema

Nema

A pretty quick set change later, Nema took the stage. Apparently these guys hadn’t played a show in a very long time. I heard they were from the MI area in the 1990s. If I hadn’t been told all this information I would have thought they were a pretty new band that has been active for awhile because they showed no signs of rust. They had two singers who would scream and howl like banshees over their spastic punk/metal hybrid. I thought they had some pretty good songs but many started to sound the same until near the end of their set when some of the songs had some cool tempo changes. I could see they had the building blocks to be something pretty damn cool, it’s a shame they didn’t really stick to it and they stopped playing ago. I guess for the time period they were active the band was ahead of the curve.

Victims

Victims

Victims

Next up was a band from Sweden named Victims. I was a bit confused to their choice of band names since there has been at least two other punk bands with that same name over the years. I was all set to just dismiss them for their lack of google ability when the band took the stage and started playing. They had such power and intensity that I completley forgot my disdain for their name recycling and I was pretty captivated by how great they were. Their songs were kind of on the short side and were just these perfect pieces of intensity. The crowd were way into them and people started bumping into me like crazy which made shooting start to get difficult. If I had cash on me I would have bought everything this band was selling because they were that good and I vow to go see them play again the next time they come through town. What a pleasant surprise!

Amebix

Amebix

After some setup and sound checking, Amebix took the stage to a club that had filled up quite full by this point. I saw people of all ages in the crowd but it was definitely skewed much more toward the younger side of things which I found to be quite interesting considering how long ago it had been since the band called it quits. They were very eager to have the band start playing as was I and we soon got our wishes.

Amebix

Amebix

The band opened with “Winter” and the crowd went apeshit. There were kids bouncing all over the place, raising fists and singing along to the chorus. The band sounded amazing and the sound in the club sounded far better than it’s usual already high standards. I stood there in awe of this mystical band on stage playing and sounding like they not only quit but also have not aged one bit. Their choice of songs seemed to be real crowd pleasers too as it seemed they knew every song and got more excited as each one started.

Amebix

Amebix

They did a good job grouping together the more thrashier sounding numbers with the longer, slower and heavier songs and when they started playing “I.C.B.M” I nearly shit myself because that is my aboslute favorite Amebix song and seeing them play it live was one of those magical musical moments that you can only experience and never accurately describe.

Amebix

Amebix

Hearing these songs live brought out something in them that the band was never quite able to capture on their records. I could hear just how and why the band is so revered and considered so influential. In fact I really hope they recorded some of the shows from this tour and will release a live album because it would really further cement the band’s legacy in musical history. This show far exceeded my expectations and I wish they would come back and do it one more time!

I became a fan of The Prodigy when I first heard a song of theirs in the video game Wipeout XL but I never had a chance to see them live until last week when they rolled through town to play at the Congress.

The doors were supposed to open at 7pm but I was tipped off that The Prodigy wouldn’t be going on until 11:30pm so I opted not to have to hang around the club for four hours which meant I also missed the opening act, Tiga, so I can’t tell you anything about  it. When I did arrive there was a steady stream of people entering the club so I think the word got out pretty quick about the late start time. When I got into the theater I noticed that the place was pretty full of fans eager for the band to start playing.

About 20 minutes after I unpacked my camera gear the DJ stopped playing, the lights dimmed and The Prodigy started filing out on stage. Their setup consisted of the main muscial guy behind a rig of laptops and various equipment, a live drummer, a live guitar player and the two singers. There was also tons of strobes and flashing colored lights that never let up, which made the task of photographing the band rather challenging but certainly was fitting ambiance for the style of music the band plays.

They opened with a song from the new album, Invaders Must Die and the crowd instantly started dancing. Both singers were running and dancing all over the stage and barely stood still. In fact those two guys must burn about 5000 calories each per show considering they never stopped moving, jumping up and down, and dancing the entire time while the band played. From there they went straight into “Their Law” which is one of my favorite songs of theirs. The crowd were dancing even more than during the first song and from there it was a mix of newer songs plus some of the crowd favorites like “Breathe”, “Poison (my personal favorite)”, “Firestarter” and near the end of their set they played “Smack my Bitch Up” which resulted in nearly everyone in the crowd dancing to.

The band came out for an encore which consisted of a few songs including “Diesel Power” which has such powerful bass I thought plaster was going to start falling from the ceiling. Everywhere I looked people were dancing in place, or with each other. Looking around it was a pretty diverse audience too, not your typical show crowd which I found pretty fascinating. After close to 90 minutes the show was over, people were drenched in sweat and The Prodigy put on one hell of a show.

It was an old school punk weekend last week as I went to two shows in two nights. Saturday night I went over to Reggie’s to see two more old(er) Chicago punk rock bands: The Effigies and Life Sentence. Originally The Freeze were supposed to headline this show but sadly they canceled their tour which means I have no idea if I’ll ever get to see them play. It also made the sting of choosing this show over seeing Wolves in the Throne Room play the same night hurt a little more. Ah well, the curiosity of seeing Eric B’s new version of Life Sentence was enough to warrant the choice in shows this evening.

M.O.T.O.

M.O.T.O.

M.O.T.O.

This show started really early and due to being sidetracked by skating, I completely missed the first band and arrived in the middle of the M.O.T.O.’s set.  I’ve seen them play quite a few times so I knew exactly what to expect which is short and catchy garagey punk songs. They really have a knack for writing catchy songs and are always enjoyable to see play live. I felt bad for them since when I arrived they were playing to a pretty empty club. I’m guessing the nice weather and early start time kept the people away.

Life Sentence

Life Sentence

Life Sentence

Next up was Life Sentence. I caught a glimpse of Eric B as he said hello to me as I was walking in the club and I have to say that he looks like he lived every story you heard about him. Had it not been for seeing a fairly recent photo of him on myspace I wouldn’t have recognized him at all.  He looks like he had a lot of hard years on the street and he was even sporting a black eye.  On stage with him was a collection of musicians who as far as I know hadn’t done time in Life Sentence at all in the old days pre or post lawsuit.

Life Sentence

Life Sentence

Life Sentence

The crowd had only increased in size a little bit since I arrived which I found odd. I thought for sure the curiosity factor of seeing Life Sentence would have brought a whole bunch of people out to the club.  The band tried to stall as much as possible before starting their set but then they had no choice but to go on. Eric immediately demanded that everyone come up in front and made some other small talk and then the band finally started playing. I didn’t recognize the song they opened with but it sounded a lot better than I feared. A couple songs later and I recognized my favorite Life Sentence song, “Problems”. In between songs Eric was constantly telling the crowd to dance, move, have fun and that it really didn’t matter because they already had their money. He also was constantly using the term, “nigga please” which I wasn’t much of a fan of.

Life Sentence

Life Sentence

Life Sentence

Musically the band were pretty good and it was obvious they practiced a bit before this show as they did a good job performing the songs. I couldn’t help but feel while watching Eric that I was watching the punk rock version of “The Wrestler” and it made me a little sad. Eric was very much like the punk rock Randy “The Ram” who was up on that stage playing these old songs after living a hard life because that’s all he has. I was looking at him trying to picture the guy I saw in that same position 22 years ago when I last saw them play and every once in awhile I caught a glimpse of him but overall the experience left me with a strange uneasy feeling.

The Effigies set up their equipment and then some strange young fellow got up on stage and sat down and attempted to entertain the crowd with some really bad “comedy” and equally bad songs. At least I think he was trying to be funny but it failed miserably and I was surprised no one in the crowd actually left during this aural assault. During his second attempt at a “song” Paul from The Effigies tapped him on the shoulder and had him stop and leave the stage as the band picked up their equipment to finally start playing.

The Effigies

The Effigies

The Effigies

The Effigies

The Effigies finally started playing and I forget what song they started with, but whichever one it was sounded as good as always and made for a strong start. The band played their usual set of older material and stuff from their last album, but this time they mixed in a couple of new songs too! The new songs sounded excellent and leaves me hopeful that they’ll record another record sometime before the end of the decade. The crowd in attendance seemed to be enjoying themselves, especially Eric from Life Sentence who was front and center the entire time singing along to the old songs and enjoying the new ones too. The band played a strong set that ended with “Body Bag” and then came out for a couple song encore as well.