I don't know what's happened to Danbury, since it's still my favorite town in Connecticut, but when you get maybe one paying customer at a punk show featuring two decent bands from out of town, you kinda start to wonder. Not that there isn't anything else to do in Danbury; there's three decent indie clubs all within easy walking distance of each other, plus a lot of other stuff going on, so Danbury has a long way to go before it backslides into becoming a little pisshole of a scene like Waterbury used to be or whatever. Still, you gotta figure that an above-average punk show on a Saturday night should earn a decent walk-up crowd, just out of habit.
One of the bands that everyone missed last Saturday was The Dispensed, who are sorta new as far as I know, besides having recently added Chris Grivet from The Steinways on guitar (my list of fave '00s pop-punk bands has The Steinways right up there with Chinese Telephones and The Ergs)-- not like that's a selling point or anything, I'm just throwing it out there to make it look like I know what I'm talking about. No kiddin', though, I thought The Dispensed were really really good. The sound during their set wasn't so great; I could pick out who was playing what as long as I had my earplugs in, but when I took my earplugs out (which is usually what I do when I want to hear the band better), all I got was an indescernable mush. All that aside, though, what I heard was some good 70's glam-influenced pop-punk, like The Stiffs, D-Generation, and Dimestore Halos. The singer, Brian, kept jumping all the time which would've made a cool photo but I had my flash set too slow, which had me mumbling "fuck, stupid asshole" at myself every time I missed another one. I'd definitely go to see these guys if they ever played around here again, just to get a better idea of what they're up to.
The Challenged played next, and they were also good, as they reminded me of The Thumbs quite a bit, or even that one Face to Face song ("Disconnected") that I used to really like a lot. I had some catching up to do with them (Jim Testa's been telling me how great they are) so I bought a couple of their CDs, but even better are the three songs that they've got lined up for an upcoming split ("Consolation Prize", down below, is one of them) which I think beat the hell out of everything else they've done. I''l be ready to buy the shit out of it once it comes out.
"Consolation Prize"
"Cost of Higher Education"
The Dispensed -
"The Future is Unwritten"
(these files are now listen-only)
