Archive for August, 2007

Hilly Kristal, founder/owner of CBGB has passed away. Many recognize CB’s as the birthplace of punk rock in the United States. Hilly was 75 years old. For more information check out the article on yahoo news.

Last Wednesday I went to see a show at Subterranean here in Chicago. The full lineup was Dropdead, Artimus Pyle, Punch in the Face, Bloodyminded and Rager. After sitting in traffic for almost 90 minutes to get there from work, I found a sweet parking spot right down the street and went to the club. When I got there, a line was formed down around the corner from the club. Since the doors had opened about 15 minutes before I got there, I feared it was going to be packed and that club is very uncomfortable when it’s crowded. When I got inside, it wasn’t very crowded yet and I set up camp on the side of the stage.

Rager

Rager

Rager

Rager

Rager were first. They were a three piece band with alternating female/male vocals. They played pretty fast and furious hardcore with a bit of a metal edge on occasion. Their songs were short, fast and tight and I really enjoyed them.

Bloodyminded

Bloodyminded

Bloody Minded

Bloodyminded

Bloodyminded

Bloodyminded quickly took the now very empty stage next. The reason for it’s emptiness? They don’t play any traditional instruments! They were a noise band of the most noisy proportions. They had a couple of guys on either side of the stage with various effects gadgetry and their leather clad singer looked an awful lot like Rob Halford of Judas Priest, a fact someone in the audience pointed out which got a fairly smart ass reply from the singer who said he’s heard that before. That doesn’t make it any less true! Their “songs” really for the most part were 1 minute blasts of noise. I like that in small doses but the thing about these guys was the noise for each song really sounded almost exactly the same from song to song. The only real difference to me in a lot of the tracks were the noises the singer was making. I didn’t mind it, but I’d have liked a little more variety in the chaotic noise they were making.

Punch in the Face

Punch in the Face

Punch in the Face

Punch in the Face were next. It was also at this point the batteries in my flash decided to die and like a moron, I forgot to pack the second set and instead they were sitting home in the charger on my floor! I was cursing myself out the rest of the night in my mind for being so stupid. I switched to my 50mm prime lens because it was faster, however the band also had them lower the lights! It was a losing battle for me! I only managed a few usable shots the rest of the night which bummed me out even more. From the opening note, the stage was swarmed with stage divers. The kids went absolutely apeshit for Punch in the Face. The band played a short intense set. They seem to get tighter and more powerful each time I see them. There were kids flying everywhere, and there was one goofy dude who would hop on stage, do a roll across the front of the stage like he was in a video game, and then jump off the other end. It was pretty amusing watching all this from the safety of the side of the stage against the wall.

Artimus Pyle

Artimus Pyle

Artimus Pyle followed fairly quickly. I am not too familiar with them, I only have one of their records but after seeing them, I really need to remedy that! They were a slower hardcore band than the others on the bill but they were equally powerful. I enjoyed them the best of all the bands this evening and had I brought any extra money with me, I’d have purchased some more of their stuff that evening from them. They played about a half hour and the time flew by in what felt like an instant. When they were finished, many in the crowd were asking for more but sadly there was none.

Dropdead

Dropdead

This just left Dropdead. I own exactly zero of their records but I know they’ve been around for a very long time now and have amassed quite a following. They played hyperfast hardcore with the singer basically shrieking most of his vocals with a power and fury usually reserved for angst ridden teenagers. In between songs, he would talk to the crowd about politics, and how fucked up things in our world are currently. He’d try and inspire thought and lead change, hopefully sending a message home with the people to try and make our world a better place. Then the band would start playing and the kids would go crazy. They played about 45 minutes and no one held still for very long. Much like the PITF set, the stage was a non stop sea of stage divers. And just like that, they were done, thanked the crowd and the show was over.

It was a very entertaining show with a solid lineup of bands. I wasn’t the least bit bored by any of them and since the sets were fairly short, having a five band bill for once didn’t feel like an endurance test! Thank you Dave Song for the invite and guest list action.

The Alley Cats - 1979-1982 CD/DVD
Time Coast Music

Any old time punk rocker and/or punk record collector will tell you they heard of The Alley Cats. They put out a 7″ on the legendary Dangerhouse Records label, a label that went down in history as releasing nothing but great punk records while the genre was still in its infancy. Every band on that label was unique, The Alley Cats being no exception. After their debut single, they sought greener pastures and released another 7″ on the Time Coast label, as well as a couple of LPs. Aside from the aforementioned singles, I never bothered to pick up anything else they released, thus I missed out on that stuff and never really knew what those records sounded like.  Now I know some of what I missed out on, and I’m sorry it took me so long to find out!

The CD portion of this package contains ten songs, most of which I believe came from their Nightmare City LP. While the music on here was a bit more accessible than their first two singles, it really isn’t that big of a leap in sound, thus the music still has packs a pretty good punch and really sounds like a natural evolution from those early singles, while still retaining enough of that sound to appeal to fans of those singles. I was really surprised by how enjoyable I found the songs on here, I was half expecting this stuff to be really tame and instead I feel like I just unearthed a buried treasure. Why this stuff never became a lot more popular back when it was released is a mystery to me, it is just different enough to be “cool” and just accessible enough that it would have fit in alongside the more popular “new wave” acts of the time.

What you won’t find on here is the Dangerhouse records single (”Nothing Means Nothing Anymore/Gimme a Little Pain”, nor the Time Coast follow up (”Too Much Junk”), why the latter single was omitted is a mystery to me, it was on the same label as this stuff. Perhaps there will be a follow up collection someday that contains the rest of The Alley Cats material.

The bonus DVD contains five promotional type videos of “It Only Hurts the First Time”, “Today”, Night of the Living Dead” (two versions), and “Escape from the Planet Earth”. The footage for all of these videos came from the same source so they tend to look pretty much the same but the quality is excellent and it was really cool to see some early footage of this band to go along with the already great CD.

As a big proponent of old punk rock music getting reissued so the current generation can hear what they missed and old timers can revisit it without shelling out the big bucks, I heartily endorse this nice package and the CD portion of this release is going to be getting repeated listens for quite some time in the immediate future.

Related links:

Time Coast Music

The Alley Cats myspace page 

The old man (Doug Moody) sent over a copy of the limited blue vinyl edition of the RKL - Best of RKL album on Mystic Records. As mentioned in a post last week, this is a limited edition of 300 housed in the original sleeve. Judging by how vinyl collecting seems to be at an all time high these days, I’m sure these are going to sell out quickly. Mystic Records are distributed by Sound of California, and the usual suspects such as Revelation and Interpunk should have these for sale any day now. Thanks Doug!

I guess since it has been a few weeks, someone up above (or down below depending on who you ask) decided it was time to take another wrestler from the world.

Brian Adams was found dead today. So far there has been no information as to the cause of death or any details.

Brian was probably best known as “Crush” who was the third member of Demolition, which was the WWF’s (now WWE) hugely successful Road Warriors knockoff. He also was known at one time as Kona Crush which I can’t recall happened before or after his stint in demolition.

At some point he left (or was let go, I don’t know) WWF and found himself a job in WCW where he was wrestling under his own name of Brian Adams. He was a fairly successful mid-carder and they teamed him up with Brian Clark (aka: Wrath) where they had a pretty good run in the tag team division before I think they eventually both were let go as WCW took its nose dive down the crapper.

Since WCW’s demise, I never heard what became of Brian Adams, perhaps he was working the indie circuits or maybe did some time in Japan where a big guy like him always seemed to be a bigger star even after their time in the limelight in the States faded away.

R.I.P. Crush, condolences go out to his family and friends for their loss.