Everybody Loves Us Except You

The Firehouse in Worcester is practically the coolest-looking place I've ever been to see a show; it's an old converted firehouse, obviously, and the garage floor where they used to park the fire trucks (which I'm guessing was a really long time ago because the garage doors don't look wide enough for a really big-ass firetruck to get through) is where you stand to watch the bands. The upper level and back room area are all apartments/living spaces, which look pretty neat from the outside with all the plants in the windows and stuff, plus there's a huge awesome patio out in back, which is where all the leaves and pollen from the trees stick when it rains and you could fall on your ass, since it happened to be pouring when I went there a couple of weeks ago. The street that the firehouse is on reminds me a lot of Poplar Street in Waterbury, where I grew up, in that it's hilly and narrow and really shitty to drive on, which is fucking great when it's YOUR neighborhood because nobody else likes it so they stay the fuck away.

California X's LP is going to end up on a lot of year-end Best Of lists, as it should because it's a friggin' beast, although I've seen them like 5 or 6 times already and it seems like their shows have become curiously inconsistent. They'll usually come out kicking ass for the first two or three songs, which is great, and then Lemmy loses his concentration or whatever, almost like Rube Waddell walking off the mound in the middle of a game to go chase some fire trucks or something. This time they pulled it back in in-time to finish the set off in good shape, plus I like how they've got the balls to play all of their slower songs (like "Pond Rot" and "Mummy") while everyone is standing in front of them hoping for the rockers. I don't see the Dinosaur Jr comparison much at all, especially since their songs have hardly any guitar solos, although now that they've added a second guitar player maybe they'll start working on that, who knows. Now that I've been listening to the record in the car constantly I've been able to figure out that it's the songs like "Curse" and "Hot Hed" and "Spider X" that remind me of Tenement when they play them live, although nobody else seems to think so, they just Google "California X and Amherst and Dinosaur Jr" and that's all they write about. It seems like this year Calfornia X and Metz are the only two bands that own guitars, the rest of the country all sounds like The National, that's something else I learned from reading reviews also. "Scales and fins growing in my skin/I need a pond to rot in" is a great fucking lyric, just figured I'd throw that in there, since I'm not making much sense right now anyway.

I was totally psyched to see Black Wine for the first time -- they're the type of band that you'd think I'd totally dig, and in fact a friend of mine sent me the files for their first record before it came out thinking that I'd dig it, but I didn't. Sometimes my brain's my enemy, I guess. I haven't been all-the-way into all the other records they've put out since then, either, but damn when they hit on a riff and come up with a great song (which seems to be at least once or twice on every record), they're freakin' golden. Watching them for the first time followed pretty much the same pattern: the first two songs (don't ask me which ones they were) were completely untouchable and had me standing there with my feet barely in my shoes, like "THIS IS THE GREATEST INDIE ROCK BAND ON THE PLANET", and then they started playing their other stuff and I was like, okay, maybe it's time for me to leave already. Except that I couldn't, some guy who was taping the show had put his tripod directly on top of the camera strap where I had left my camera, and I couldn't tug on it to get it out. So I stuck around a little while longer, and there were people there who were really into Black Wine and somehow knew every word to all of their songs, not just the choruses but also the verses, I don't even know how that happens. There's maybe two bands that I could try that with, the Replacements and maybe AC/DC, and even then I'd be shaky with the words to anything after "For Those About To Rock", although "Black Ice" wasn't too bad plus there was "Thunderstruck" and "Who Made Who", those ones were pretty good also. Eventually I tugged on the camera strap enough to get it out of there, so to the guy who was taping the show and has a wobbly part for a couple of seconds during one of the songs, that was me, sorry.


California X -

"Curse of The Nightmare"

Black Wine -

"Pick At Pieces"

"Spit to See The Shame"

I Live Down In The Mud With All The Other Tumblrs

I've started a Tumblr as sort of an offshoot to this blog, mostly because I got sick and tired of all the pay-to-post crap that's been going on with Facebook, although you've never read the One Base on an Overthrow Facebook so you wouldn't know that, would you. Of semi-interest to one or two of you, I'll be using the Tumblr to occasionally re-post older tracks from the blog archives, i.e. the stuff that stopped working or isn't playable anymore.

If you've got yr own Tumblr then drop a note in the comments section and maybe I'll follow it, although probably not, it doesn't seem like you and me have much in common anyway.

rockscissorsgun.tumblr.com

If I Was Your Face I'd Kick Your Ass

Since I started a new job I've been nodding at people a lot lately, which is what you do when you don't really want to bother getting to know someone that you just met, so you just nod at them when you walk by, like "Hey, what's up, motherfucker, okay, cool", instead of actually getting into a conversation. So now I'm doing it everywhere, even when I'm not at work, I can't get rid of it. Like last night I'm at The Whitney House, and in the road there was a big rat the size of a shoe that had just gotten run over right in front of Whitney House, and as I'm looking down at the rat a neighborhood kid walks by with his hood up, and I look up at him while I'm looking at the rat and then I nod at both of them like "hey, what's up, okay, cool, motherfucker." Then when I bought the new Gowl 7" from Seth he said "Cool, Dave, thanks for listening", and it almost seemed like he meant it.

Gowl -

"Escalate This..."

Misanthropic Noise -

"Who Cares"

Pizza HiFive -

"Bathsalt Bloodbath"

I'm Really Past Caring What You Think

"Sucker" is catchy as hell, sounds like The Fall, and is only a minute-and-a-half long, which makes it total genius. "Waiting for The Guns" is a Butterglory cover and is twice as long as "Sucker", which obviously makes Butterglory only half as good as The Wedding Present. You'd think I'd own more Wedding P's records, but nah, I only got this one, I'm stupid like that sometimes. Got two Coffinberry CD's, though, if that helps.




The Wedding Present -

"Sucker"

"Waiting on The Guns"

I'm Worth A Million In Prizes

I stopped at The Wh tn y House on my way up to Mass. last Sunday, to check out a couple of the bands that were playing and, you know, make a general warm nuisance of myself. Gowl went on first and played what was probably the best set I've ever seen them play, though in my head as I write that I'm not even sure what would make any Gowl set their 'best' -- nothing too drastically broke? None of the guys in the band tried to kill each other? Gowl has a new 11-song 7" due out right about now, and it's total quality, I'm sure. I mean, I really like at least 4 Gowl songs ("Highlife", "Bastard Song", and I forget what the other two are), so what's that, a .363 batting average (4-for-11)? That's as good as Rogers Hornsby, at least.

Stone Titan played without their bass player, who had skipped town or something, and as much as I thought the new bass player was the one thing that was really holding their sound together, Stone Titan's set on Sunday was a total rager. Playing as a two-piece (dig the Fang shirt), it seems like Scott just went 'fuckit' and played everything as aggressively as possible, without all the slow demonic psych stuff, not that I mind the slow demonic psych stuff, it's just that... well, you know. This was like a ZZ Top version of Stone Titan rather than an Iron Butterfly version of Stone Titan, so guess which one I'm gonna like more? Doesn't matter, I'm not even supposed to be listening to this kind of stuff anyway, I don't like any songs that are over a minute-and-a-half long. Mr. Internet says the test pressings are in for the Stone Titan LP, it's a good thing I hang out on Facebook all day (fuck blogs, ya know?) or I'd miss this kind of stuff.


Stone Titan -

"Alaskan Thunderfuck (live)"

Gowl -

"Macanzie//Grimes"

Chew A Little Quieter, Please

I finally got around to listening to the "Ct Indie Summer Mix Tape", which was handed to me at a show last year sometime (and they're not tapes, they're CD-R's, what's wrong with you people?). Most of the good songs I kinda knew already, but out of the rest of 'em, the Spectral Fangs track was one that had me hittin' the repeat button a few times. It takes its time building up, but finishes off with a crackling Sic Alps/Box Elders/Woodsist vibe. Oh, wait, is that sound "over" already? The fuck would I care about that? Too bad none of the other songs on their Bandcamp interested me all that much, but they've got this one song, at least.


Spectral Fangs -

"All Night Headache Part 2"

The Truth Will Set You Free But First It Will Piss You Off

This was the first time I'd ever been to O'Brien's, which, if you were knocked out cold and dumped on the floor there, as soon as you woke up you'd know right away that you were in Mass. because there's Keno on the walls. The rest of us would know because it cost $6.05 in tolls just to get there. I had no idea who Yi (pronouced yee) were when I first walked through the door, besides that they were from Oakland (pronounced True O. Finley), but I was paying attention once they started playing cuz they immediately blew my ears fucken open. This was PRF rock at its finest, sounding about half like Thee Hydrogen Terrors crossed with some Albini(-recorded) band. (As it was, O'Brien's played almost all of "1000 Hurts" over the PA after Blessed State's set: "this is a saaaad fucking song") Yi stormed thru maybe about 5 or 6 songs and then stopped, so they're no doubt gifted with great timing on that end, plus there's every reason to like a band that announces during their set, "We flew out all the way from Oakland just for the Vile Bodies reunion," and then has a song called "Total Shit System" that doesn't sound like Discharge.

As for Blessed State, their set was hampered by O'Brien's muddy sound-- I can already tell that their thick "In a Free Land"-era Hüsker Dü-type approach isn't ever gonna sound clean in that place, maybe there's too many windows or something-- but they're already writing songs that are better than just about anything on their demo, and after seeing them only about seven times now I'm starting to figure out that their drummer's pretty good. I think this was also the first time I noticed Kiana's Negative Approach back patch, which is a neat-o thing, hoss, just figured I'd mention it.

Estrogen Highs headlined, and with a week's worth of hindsight I can say that this definitely ranks among the top five sets that I've ever seen them play, even though they suffered from a funny mix to start out with-- both Mark and Wes were louder than Stefan, with Wes booming over everybody-- until the sound guy fixed it about a third of the way through. They brought out a bunch of new songs, with most of them coming across as being a lot harder than the last record, although there was one slower song that sorta chugged along like "Irresponsibility" a bit. The best new song was "This Harsh Country" (I didn't know that was the name of it at the time, I had to ask later), which is built around a knock-out speedy Wipers riff and could turn out to be their most ruthless stab at overt rockness since most of the tracks on the Telephone Explosion tape. Their set ended with a ferocious version of "This Mild Delusion" and then Stefan standing on top of his guitar, making huge feedback noises while all the hippy-dippy types in front were yelling at him to stop it.


Estrogen Highs -

"Grass of Leaves"

Yi -

"Brain Party"

Blessed State -

"Yr Language"