A pretty popular "punx" band playing at a bar. I'm always wary of shows like this, but I used to listen to Leftover Crack back in 9th grade, so I thought it would be at least fun to relive all of their naivete and silliness.
The show was at a place called the Record Bar. It usually doesn't host all-ages shows, but this particular one was moved from the El Torreon, a club that closed kind of recently and used to book bigger punk/metal/hardcore bands. As soon as the doorman made me throw my water away and told my friend there would be no re-entry, I knew this place would blow. Typical "venue" bullshit.
The first band that played was Mischief Brew, who played a terribly over-done, yet awkward style of "sing-along" drinking punk. The guitarist / lead singer was wearing this newsboy cap and had this single, perfectly proportioned strand of hair poking out the front of it that I wanted to cut off. I don't remember any of their songs, but their shirts were like this:
- Guitarist: Black Flag
- Bassist: Crucifix
- Drummer: Iron Maiden
I love it when bands replace letters with numbers, and even though Intro5pect were less blatantly embarrassing than Mischief Brew, they were still too "whoa"-ey. Easy on the "whoa"s, guys. They sounded like Anti-Flag with a keyboard, so you can guess how little I enjoyed it. They played for too long, too.
This didn't matter, though. The barely recognizable crowd, the crappiness of the opening bands -- all to be expected given the headliners' popularity. OH YEAH, ONE BIG THING! World/Inferno Friendship Society were supposed to be one of the openers, but were mysteriously absent. Oh well.
After maybe ten minutes of setting up, Leftover Crack blasted into a series of songs I didn't recognize before playing "Atheist Anthem," "Nazi White Trash," and "Crack City Rockers" pretty close together. For some reason, though, I wasn't feeling the energy. Was it the fact that most of the crowd were mall punk kids I'd never seen before, who were dancing like dickweeds? Was it the fact that the Record Bar was smelly and had crappy policies? Was it Stza's idiotic rambling between every song about how "police are fucked up," "war is fucked up," etc.? They had played for a little over a half an hour before I went to the back where one of my friends was cooling off (not from dancing, just from the musty smelliness of the Record Bar). Their playing, while spot-on, was very methodical. The newer songs were not nearly as energetic or heartfelt as their early stuff and half the band seemed strung out or something.
Stza stopped singing and went back to Intro5pect's keyboard to play some meandering instrumental that I assume was from their Alternative Tentacles album I never bought. It was boring. All through the show, I couldn't help but just think of how cool the Capitalist Casualties were going to be at the end of July, or xBraniax in August. In the middle of the instrumental (or was it just the build-up?), I left with my friend.