Wednesday, May 2, 2012

What You Missed, 5/1/12: Raising a Glass for the Working Class, HABITS, TSEPESCH, BOORS

Yesterday, while you were busy watching other people protest for their economic rights on CNN, Slabtown was celebrating May Day in its own not-so-quiet way with  a thrash-doom-hardcore show here with net sales going to staff. (I've written about the whole net-to-staff thing before, here, so I'll just give you the spoiler and say that, although it wasn't a banner day financially, staff still walked away with over $500 in bonuses. Thank you to everyone who came in.) If you did make it in, you didn't get to see me scrubbing the floors in a Mr Pennybags costume, but you did get to see me in one of my less-than-stellar moments...

THE BOORS were up first. Absolute thrash, spastic, as anarchic as a band should be on May Day. Their singer was throwing his body around stage, biting through cans, tying the mic cable around his neck. All good fun. But about four songs in, he broke one of our mic stands and immediately followed the move by completing a flip onstage that landed him on top of the mic stand for the kick drum, snapping the top off. I got pissed. All I could think about was that these guys weren't going to pay for that shit, and I was gonna get screwed and have to cough up cash to the guy we rent our sound system from.

Let me point out my own stupidity. God, where do I start...

Number one, money is a stupid reason to get angry. Period.

Number two, anyone who ever saw me perform with LEGACY OF BRUTALITY knows I have lost any right to bitch about someone breaking a mic stand or two. I'm not sure we ever played a show that didn't include tearing clothing, setting things on fire, knocking over equipment, breaking mics, snapping stands, kicking monitors into the crowd, or at the very least making someone bleed. Hypocrisy.

Number two-point-five, I love a band that gets so into their music that they lose their shit. What? Then I'm going to whine at them for "going too far?"

Number three, the most important one. I totally came at THE BOORS as if they were trying to get off without paying for it. From the moment I approached them after their set, they were willing to do what they could to make it right, but in my anger, nothing was good enough.

Anyway, I finally grabbed a friend of mine and asked him to talk to the band about getting the stands fixed. I realized that I was worked up over stupid shit and figured I'd just keep coming across like an asshole if I kept talking. Like I said, they were totally willing to take care of it. Let me make this apology public. Sorry for being an uptight, angry jerk last night. Thank you for putting yr all into yr set, even though you were playing to a crowd of about forty instead of a packed house.

I was still coming down from my tantrum when TSEPESCH took the stage. I'm not sure most people would call their doom sludge relaxing, per se, but it did the trick for me. If you haven't seen TSEPESCH yet, go check them out, if just for their stage show--a giant of a man on bass dressed as Jesus risen from the tomb, the rest of the band dressed in under-stated black, bottles of Sutter's Home red poured into what appeared to be a bull's horn and passed among the band and then the audience. I have know idea what the word tsepesch means, but I have the feeling I took part in some dark ritual with them last night, even though I didn't touch the wine.

As almost always happens for me with headlining bands at Slabtown, I missed the opening segment of THE HABITS' set because I was closing out the door till, but what I was able to catch was pretty effin' bad ass. I'd never seen them before and was expecting something slower and heavier than the driving, crushing hardcore they put out. Their singer, Joe, is another amazing front man, a guy who seems to truly be putting every ounce of energy he has into his performance. Effin' loved them.

Overall, it was a pretty bad ass night. Again, a huge thanks to all of you who showed up at Slabtown to support my staff for May Day, and a huge thanks to the bands for playing and bringing people in the door.

We'll have to do this shit again for Labor Day...

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