Bands I saw:

Thursday
Angry Agenda
The Fiend
Girlfixer
Shortbus Window Lickers
Geoffey Oicott
Pete Bentham and the Dinner Ladies
Menace
The Old Firm Casuals
Off (sorta, I didn’t like them so I left after a couple of songs)
Menace
The Meteors

Friday
The Creepshow
The Restarts
HDQ
The Stupids
Bouncing Souls
Peter and the Test Tube Babies (sorta, the room was packed and my feet were killing me so I sat in the bar area)
English Dogs
The Business
GBH
The Exploited

Saturday
Marching Orders
Tower Blocks
999
Control
The Boys
Reazione
Have Nots
Newtown Nuerotics
Pennywise
Deadline
Vice Squad
Subhumans

Sunday
Barnyard Masturbators
Mangled
Dragster
Crashed Out
Goldblade
Glen Matlock and the Philistines
Citizen Fish
UK Subs
Sick on the Bus
Slaughter and the Dogs
The Adicts
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine

The Queers: Everything’s OK
by Keith Powell

Joe Queer is feeling pretty good these days. His band, The Queers, has a new line-up, a new CD (“Punk Rock Confidential” – that hit the streets on Oct. 6), and they’re on a new label. So before things get too crazy, Queer is taking off to spend a week working on his brother’s fishing boat.

“We’re leaving at 2 a.m. tomorrow morning,” said Queer from his New Hampshire home. “We’re going 200 miles out into the Atlantic ocean.”

A fishing boat job, huh? So I guess the Queers isn’t the money-making machine the kids think it is.

“Nah,” he replied, “We’re not like NOFX or anything. We don’t charge as much at the door. I mean, I don’t really have to work, but it’s good money and it’s something to do besides music.”

Indeed, with all that has been going on with the Queers in the past year, a break before it all starts up again might be worthwhile.

Things began to get eventful when Queer fired long-time bandmates B-Face and Hugh. “We weren’t getting along,” he said. “And it got to the point where I couldn’t stand being there – and it was my fuckin’ band! Kids have given me shit because of it but they only know the Queers from [1993's] ‘Love Songs For the Retarded’ on and they don’t realize how many people have been in the band. It’s always been that way.”

In fact, the history of the Queers reads almost like a who’s who of the ’90s punk rock scene. Members of Screeching Weasel, Squirtgun, and more recently, Jon Cougar Concentration Camp have filled various slots in the band. “There’s always someone who can’t do it, they can’t tour or whatever, so I have to get someone else,” he said.
“If kids have a problem with that then they can go watch B-Face play in the Groovie Ghoulies – but then they weren’t into the Queers to begin with.”

Beyond lineup changes, the Queers left their influential label, Lookout!, for the much smaller Hopeless Records. “I called Lookout! and they didn’t seem all that excited about keeping us,” Queer said. “So I called their bluff and phoned them two days later and left the label. We’re still going to put out a compilation of stuff that we have lying around to fulfill our contract, but Hopeless seem real excited to have us.”

What people don’t realize, said Queer, is that he writes and arranges all the songs himself. Others have contributed in the past 16 years, but the Queers are very much a one-man show. And the band has been nothing if not prolific, releasing an album (or two) every year, putting out countless singles, and making “Rocket To Russia”, a song-by-song re-creation of the classic Ramones album. And throw in countless road trips and tours and you have one of the more popular punk bands playing today.

Despite all that hard work, no one is more surprised about how far the Queers have come than Joe Queer himself.

“I told the other guys that we should be bagging groceries somewhere, not playing in a band getting to see the world,” Queer said.

The song, “Machine Gun Blues” is a revelation in that it’s not showing what Social Distortion are doing, but what they are not. For years, they cultivated their street tough image, which was authentic sure, but it is main member Mike Ness seems to hold on like a crutch and writing about “junkies, pimps and whores”  – again – seems lazy and beneath what they have shown they’re capable of .

What I liked most about their previous release, Sex, Love and Rock n Roll, is that it looked like they were maturing, both musically and thematically, but this seems like a step back. Anyway, I know this is a bold statement given that this is only one song, but it is the one they chose to introduce people to the new record. But I’ll reserve further judgment until I hear the entire thing.

Check it out here:

Social Distortion – Machine Gun Blues by KROQ

Pennywise live at Metropolis in Montreal on September 4, 2010

I’m not the hugest Pennywise fan, and admittedly I’m not incredibly familiar with much of their catalogue. I had a copy of 1995′s About Time until I had to sell it during the Great CD Purge of 1998 where I had to unload a bunch of my music to pay my rent. It wasn’t until 2008′s Reason to Believe came out that I paid attention to them again. But having seen them live a couple of times I did remember that they did put on a great show.

But the real reason I went was that I am a big fan of  Zoltán Téglás, their new singer. His vocal work with Ignite is nothing short of electric. While previous singer Jim Lindberg’s voice was okay, I found it a little dry and not always up to the task. I was hoping Téglás would add a whole new dimension to the traditional Pennywise sound.

I missed Fifty Stars Anger and only saw a little of Authority Zero, but the Riverboat Gamblers I was interested in seeing only because I have friends who rave about them but I have found their records unexciting. One thing you can say about them is that they took the stage like headliners, just totally owned the room for their entire 45-minute set. While impressed by their energy it took me a while to get into them. Their last few songs were the definite highlight of their set for me. I will need to give them a closer listen.

Pennywise started up with “Every Single Day” from the aforementioned About Time and while Téglás’ singing is perfectly suited to Pennywise’s quick thrashy HC, what I noticed is that his vocal range is much higher than Lindberg’s was and the band hasn’t re-keyed their music to accommodate their new singer. The result is that they have a singer with a powerful upper range that they weren’t exploiting to its potential. Hopefully, they will develop their new material with this in mind.

After hearing some energetic versions of “Peaceful Day”, “Society”, and “Living for Today”, and watching them enagage in meaningful interaction with the crowd during “Fuck Authority” I realized that the reason I’ve always been so ambivalent about their records and why I love their live show is that they have never come close to capturing the spirit and energy of their music on their records. To truly experience Pennywise you must see them live.

Having said that, I know it was made with the best of intentions, but we must also hold them accountable for the “Bro Hymn“, a tune that was once about friendship and has become the soundtrack for every loud drunken fratboy who ever started a fight on the subway at 2 a.m.

But I guess no one is perfect.

An issue of Flipside from 1989

Flipside’s back!

Read it here!

Hudley from the original Flipside has resurrected the seminal punk rock zine that published from 1977 until 2001 or so.  She has certainly captured the spirit of the old zine and engaged many of the old writers. (I suspect thought that this is likely a bunch of friends having a few beers and deciding to get something going again. You know, like a zine.)

It does seem a bit weird to see a Flipside without Al Flipside but it’s also nice to see that it’s still a zine that shows its writers getting hammered before gigs, although wow some staffers have aged, um, interestingly.

If they manage to keep this going I would love to see some of the old columns come back, and try and get Shane of the infamous Shaneshit column he wrote from jail after multiple convictions of armed robbery.

It might seem quaint now but in the days before Suicide Girls and emo-porn, Flipside was the place for pictures of naked punk chicks. There was another zine that did as well, but it was all it focused on and wasn’t as fun.

Anyway, welcome back!

Don’t be a witness.