H.G.T.

Long post. Fuck you and your ADD, read it all, or be condemed.

The Show:

Oh, god, the show was bad ass. It was just bad ass, there aren’t really other words…

Unfortuneatly, any worthwhile show starts with a 4-hour road trip to Denver.

LOOOOONG trip, tho. But I got some writing done, which is good, and we listened to a promo of the new Tiger Army record, and it was good. 

We got to town and started early in a bar called Barracuda’s . . . our “hotel,” a friend who lives downtown, was there, and she got us started with beer and pool galore. We checked out Wax Trax, which is a handy effing place for the hard to find junkies amoung us . . .basically, a larger analouge of Casper’s own Sonic Rainbow (Odd . . . we have the better website) …we then wandered in an out of a couple diffent places down town. I need a camera so I can take pictures of stuff…really. I wish I was a cam-whore with a wishlist and everyone could give me a dollar a piece towards it for a good bra-shot, but it’s not gonna happen…Time killed, we headed toward the venue, and began getting faced inside.

First band, the Horrorpops: The Horrorpops are a new-ish Pyschobilly band with a female lead singer…

For the uninitiated, Pyschobilly is basically really fast rockabilly with lyrics about sex and death…it could not, in other words, be cooler. So check it or rot and die.

They dished out a good set…this was a new band, basically, and is also sort of a “It’s my girlfriend’s band, give a shot” kind of outfit via the larger PB band the Necromantix (who were supposed to play but had a member in the hospital . . . saaaaad), one of whom is involved with their lead singer. The Horrorpops only have one big album to their name…so I didn’t have much by way of expectations…and they were really freaking good. I’m an AV geek, and I know something about sound, and I have to say, I thought a lot of what I liked about this band they wouldn’t be able to do live, and they did…They get a thumbs up. They also found out it was a girl in the front row’s birthday, and pulled her out of the audience during the show and had her dance with the band for most of the set…Big kudos for audience participation. One thing I saw that blew me away was a couple swing-dancing at high velocity in the mosh-pit, happly smacking and being smacked even as they gazed into each other’s eyes whilst tapping out a very, very high velocity waltz … Pictures of them(band, not couple)

This is a shot of the lead singer with her bass that neatly illustrates the look of Pyschobilly. There’s more pictures of them here . ..I couldn’t find a pic of them as a group that wasn’t either very tiny or a full size hi-res h-scroll smasher. Also, if you follow ink, there’s been a couple articles about their tattoos and their tattooist in what I guess you would call the industry literature.

Next was the Disasters, a biggish punk band whose major claim to fame is that their frontman was in Agnostic Front . . .they played, supprise supprise, several Ag Front covers and were basically an Ag Front cover band for the night, which would piss me of, but I liked Ag Front and I’m pretty lukewarm about the Disasters.

Then came the Huns (AKA DIES HUNNS – Same band. German for “the huns”). Duane Peters and the Hunns have been around since the dawn of time despite being a kind of filler, medium famous punk band . . . .and now I know why. They put on a live show that, frankly, breaks backs and eats babies. One thing I didn’t know about the Hunns was that thier female guitarist, Corey Parks (Whom you might remember from such bands as Nashville Pussy . . . and, well, Nashville Pussy) . . . well, she’s a giantess. Now, being tall, and enjoying acts that can break body and soul, I like tall women, and this girl is six four or so . . .much larger then the rest of her band . . . and she has large, jutting …eyes (body part subsitution to prevent outright castration by the same subsect of my audience who objected to my supposed “Jokes” about the “size” of my “wang”) . . .while her eyes are large but still proportionate on the relative scale of her frame, on an absoulte scale of eyes, well, any other woman with eyes this size would like some kind of freak. I’m really glad I didn’t run into her after the show, because I was sublimly drunk and no doubt would have said something stupid like, “Hi. I’m a 300 pound man-groupie. I feel we, as large people, could have very, very large sex of a mind- and spine-breaking nature, and as you are in a band and I am not, I will do whatever you say until you let me stop.”

Anyway, varigated exagerated anatomy aside, these guys really rocked. They didn’t stop for their entire set for any longer then it took to take a sip of water and spit it onto the crowd, and they played lound and hard, were frantic and evil as far as stage presence goes, and just really fucking cleaned up the house. Pictures of them:

Note the eyes.

Another shot where the “eyes” are prominent.

Here’s the whole band, for scale: . . . keep in mind the two men standing are normal five foot something dudes and not midgets.

After that the band I was actually there to see, Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards, played. Lars had done some weird shit to his hair and beard so he looked like Lemmy, which was good for a laugh.

Now, OK, other then wanting to hump any amazon bass player a band might have like a llama on viagra, or a compulsive need to loop, say, cartoon heroes, by aqua, when wrongfully placed in charge of the stereo on a roadtrip, I don’t have a real tendancy to get into specific bands real deep, read their bios, kiss there asses, worship them, that kind of thing. For me, groupiedom . . . it’s like . . . music is something i consume right? I don’t go up to a chef and scream and ask for his autograph and be like, “SHIT man . . .that was a great pie! YOU FUCKING ROCK THE BAKE-OUT MAN! I FUCKING LOVE YOUR WORK!:

I’m not into getting wrapped up in the people that make the things I like…but, frankly, I like this little rancid spin-off so much, I made an exception for them and just let myself be a fan instead of mister too-cool-to-rock.

And they were great. They played a LONG set that was most of their old album (actually, I think it was all of it . . . it was a good eight or ten songs off of it at least…) interspersed with new stuff of their soon to come out album, Viking, which is very, very promising.

It’s hard for words to express how I feel about this band .. . they speak about some things in a way that suits me quite a bit…like being an older punk, for example, and having to figure out what to do now that you are in your twenties… or having to figure out where your next meal is coming from . . . not in a “We’re so punk, we live in the gutter” kind of ennui way, but in a “There are no jobs and I have kids” kind of way . . . Some of the newer punk bands, that’s what’s missing from them . . . a connection with the fact that their movement was born of blue collar vacuum and destroying something because you had nothing, and being loud in the hopes someone would actually maybe hear you . . .

Their music makes me feel like I’m not such a shit, there’s still plenty of time to live and see and do what I want to do, and the world’s not ending and I’m not alone…and their album has helped me through some evil-ass days.

What I’m trying to say, is that hearing them live was actually one of the more meaningful live music events that’s ever happened to me…and I highly recommend it.

Lyric for the day:
In ’82 I was the young one in the bunch
Initation started and ended with a punch
As I got older I got scars to prove my worth
More times than others I fell face first in the dirt
Woa-oh-oh can’t you see, you’ll never take the gang out of me.
Runt in a pack of wolves
I was nosed up to the front
I preyed on the weekend soldiers who couldn’t take the hunt
Like Julius Caesar waited for the knife stuck in his back
I stood so proud and tall and I won’t go out like that.
Wo ho ho can’t you see — you’ll never take the gang out of me.
Well all the kings before I cut down with my axe
I stoop atop this world alone without a scratch
With another victory I basked right under the sun
My war was over but a new one has begun
Woa oh-oh, can’t you see — you’ll never take the gang out of me

–Skunx, Lars and the Bastards