Author: rockfag

Didn’t there used to be a minor techno/club music dancefloor hit about 15 years ago that was very drum machine and synth heavy and then the music would go silent and a spoken authoritative male voice would say, “James Brown is dead,” and then the machines would whip into high speed fury again.  I  never liked the song much as I thought it was too realistic sounding, like a “we interrupt this broadcast to bring you this breaking story…” type announcement and I knew that James Brown wasn’t dead so I thought the song was misleading and the message was kind of  rude and senseless, saying a beloved man was dead when in truth he wasn’t, and I couldn’t understand the intention or the irony or the possible post-modern idea behind it or if it were some form of commentary on the whole sampling controversy sparked by the advent of rap and hip-hop music.  I thought it would have been far more interesting to have said something else about the hardest working man in show-business, like “James Brown is currently in prison doing time for possession of narcotics and threatening pedestrians with firearms after a dramatic high speed chase in the state of Georgia,” or “James brown’s drug of choice was PCP or angel dust,” something so powerful I thought it was only slipped to people without them knowing and often resulted in super-human strength and mammoth hallucinatory delusions, or “James Brown’s wife died mysteriously in a Mexican hospital from what the coroners cited as unexpected complications during cosmetic surgery,” because she did, and that is unbelievably tragic.  Another possible statement for the song would have been, “When James Brown plays a live concert in San Francisco, the ticket prices seemed to start at $80 and go as high as $150,” because a few years back I decided to go see the godfather of soul and was genuinely shocked to learn that all tickets were so expensive, and this was well before people were shelling out as much as $300 to see Madonna perform one of her high-tech multimedia extravaganzas.  So unfortunately I passed on catching James Brown perform live due to the high price and now it is Christmas day in 2006 and that spoken refrain from that weird song is resounding very heavily in my mind.  “James Brown is dead.”  This time he really is, and on Christmas no less, making the loss of this tremendous influential musician even more poignant and kind of shocking.  I guess I thought someone as huge and legendary and pervasive in the world of music, influencing R&B, Soul, Funk, Rock and Roll, Reggae, Disco, Rap and Hip Hop since his first hit song “Please Please Please,” in 1956, would simply never die.  But at age 73, the godfather of soul is gone.

I think it’s fair to say that his legend will live on more indelibly than any other 20^th century musical artist.  His overall influence can be heard, heard about, watched in other artists’ performances (try Prince for one, the worthiest embodiment of  Browns incredible dancing) and forever sampled, lifted, appropriated, remixed, emulated and inspired by.  He is undoubtedly the most sampled artist in all of hip hop.  Every time you hear that high pitched scream often programmed as a beat or counterbeat, you know its James Brown and no one else, and you know how many times you’ve heard it, from De La Soul to 2Live Crew.  The timing and common structures he developed and used with his stop on a dime army of prominent and respected musicians through the years have inspired musicians and served to actually create new genres like Funk in the seventies and many rock and roll artists have paid homage to his undeniable innovations from Van Morrison to Led Zeppelin.  When you hear certain things you just know it’s a james brown thing.  When you see a big band soul revue with horns and tight arrangements and counted solos and a very cohesive sense of timing and power and dynamics, its all because of James Brown.  His evolution as an artist spanned six decades and covered a broad array of styles, each new record exercising change and growth and innovation, taking established elements and trademark beats that defined his sound and adding new layers of instrumentation or different accentuation or prominence of particular instruments in the production.  His ever changing sound, wild screaming vocals, electrifying stage presence and powerhouse dancing clearly showed a man giving it his all whenever he performed live.  He was clearly driven by some force bigger than all of us, something that just needed to burst forth into the world and make its mark permanently on all types of popular music.

It’s very hard to pick a favorite James Brown song or even a favored period of time in his career but I would have to say that “The Payback” from 1974 is one of my all-time favorite songs.  Such a great piece of music with its swelling strings and horns intro that gives way to one of the greatest hip-pulling funky hooks ever, low and sexy and dramatic as the man belts out a cautionary warning that karma will indeed deliver an inevitable payback to people who do wrong.  It’s seven minutes of pure funk brilliance with a message and the same horns and strings from the intro close the song by whirring higher and higher until they disappear.  Perfect.

There’s also a live record called Funk Power from 1970: A brand New Thang that showcases a great band funking it up long and hardcore with grooves as long as 15 minutes, specifically the cut “Talking Loud but Aint Saying Nothing.”  There are tons of landmark recordings by James Brown, live and studio.  These are my favorites but I’m certain there are countless other classic discs or collections out there to pick up and reflect upon the great career of  the one and only Godfather of  Soul.  Move like a sex machine if so inclined.  Long live James Brown.

Often my interest is piqued by a band based on their national origin, especially when the band comes from a country that seldom cracks the market in the U.S. with their musical exports or bands who choose a style of music that’s not really indigenous to their native homeland, like Israeli surf or metal bands, Australian country and western, Bosnian boy bands, or even the current crop of American bands adopting gypsy, Russian or klezmer styles for a sort of neo-traditionalist punked out eastern European folk style.  I recently heard a band called Cansei de ser Sexy or CSS who have a very fresh, edgy pop feel, clever synthesizer sounds but guitars making a strong presence as well and some eyebrow raising lyrical content with plenty of dirty words, sweet vocal harmonies and a post-le tigre kind of feminism, or a distinct lack of it rather.  What is really unusual about CSS is the five girl one guy line-up hail from Sao Paulo, Brazil, a fact I would have never known from listening to their debut disc.

Named after a quote made by Beyonce, Cansei de Ser Sexy is Portuguese for “I’m tired of being sexy.”  That’s very clever and shows something this band does consistently with all their songs.  They wholeheartedly embrace and glorify multiple elements of pop culture.  Song titles such as “Lets Make Love and Listen To Death From Above” and “Meeting Paris Hilton” make this intertest clear.  Their reason for choosing to write songs in English as opposed to their native Portuguese is that their scene is the internet and not really Sao Paolo.  That makes sense to me.  The band formed in 2003 with none of the members really knowing how to play any of their instruments, just moving into it slowly and casually.  All of them had other interests, “Lovefoxxx is a very gifted designer, Ana studies cinema, Ira is a fashion designer, Carolina works with graphic design and Luiza is in art school.”  Sounds like a roundtable discussion at your average art school, web designer, hipster hangout in any major metropolitan area with wireless internet and young people permanently attached to their laptops, but the pretense stops with the music.  This is a truly fun sound, verging on light-hearted and almost too sweet pop-isms only to build into some great angular to atmospheric guitar forays, some completely unique and others sounding uncannily like some familiar song that you just cant place, with lots of cool synthesizer flourishes like that spooky movie woooo-hoooo sound and relentless rolling bubbling popping hooks.  Fronting the band, vocalist Lovefoxxx has a disarmingly natural delivery, which really makes her vocals and the lyrics stand out but not because they are shrill or screechey, she sounds far more pleasant and sublime than that, even adopting an occasional vocal phrasing or arrangement that you know you’ve heard before in some popular rap song or something by Justin Timberlake maybe.  I’ve always found this sort of mini-pastiche as fun and interesting, not a rip off at all but a clever honoring of a winning vocal hook.  On the song “Music is My Hot Hot Sex” I’m certain theres a bit of Justin Timberlake’s “Senorita” in the beginning of each verse and that song has always been a guilty pleasure of mine.  But the true pleasure of this cut is the lyrics “Music is my boyfriend/ music is my girlfriend/ music is my dead end/ music is my imaginary friend,” and on into the next chorus, “Music is my beach house/ Music is my hometown/ music is my king size bed/ music’s where I make my friends/ music is my hot hot sex/ my music is where I’d like you to touch.”  I just think its simple and sweet and very catchy, quite a bit different than the self-deprecating first cut on the record called “CSS Suxx” which doesn’t really suck at all.  Another cut is called “Fuck Off is Not The Only Thing You Have To Show” a fun long title with not only a positive message for young people but also a dirty word.  CSS really don’t go light on the dirty words, which I always like.  I’d even venture a guess that CSS say the word bitch as many times as the average rap album, and they deliver the real word, none of this bii-yaa-tch stuff.

In fact my favorite cut on the disc is called “Art Bitch” and its really nasty, painting a not so pleasant picture of what sounds like a carnivorous female art dealer over a very hard Queens of the Stoneage-ish guitar-driven chugging, menacing block of sound.  Lovefoxxx sings “I am so hardcore/ I sell my crap and people ask for more/ call me a revolutionaire/ I do what it takes and get it published on Visionaire/ and what I do is called art shit/ and don’t you dare make fun of me/ cause everything I do is featured on the pages of ID.”  Then comes the best lines of the entire disc. “Lick lick lick my art tit/suck suck suck my art hole (repeated three times).”

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that I now have a record that sings the line, “Suck suck suck my art hole,” repeatedly.  The simplest of things can make me so happy.  The Paris Hilton song is the one with the most bitches in the lyrics but it sounds kind of endearing actually.  I bet Paris Hilton loves it.  I know I do and I bet you might too.

Goddamnit, its happening again!  Deadline is upon me and I really feel like there’s nothing going on that is screaming to be written about.  I know, that’s really really bad but sometimes January is like that, the post holiday blow-out lull in activity, people tend to go out less, shop less, party less, worry more about global warming,  wonder how it could possibly make it so bitterly cold outside now as they huddle around $9.99 walgreens heaters and worry about how high the power bill will be or if the circuit breakers will overload if the tv is turned on, contemplate the statistical prevalence of suicide around this time of year and totally get it, and get totally sick of hearing about Dreamgirls, Lindsay Lohan, and the President’s unyielding fondness for feeding more troops to his war machine.  There’s lots of possible reasons for a beginning of the year slump actually, I shouldn’t let it get to me so much.

Feeling a bit glum and uninspired by the current month in music here in SF, I took a gander at the future and to be quite honest I saw very few things coming up to be excited about.  Others would definitely differ on this opinion because the annual Noisepop festival takes place February 27—March 4.  This will be the 14th year for the music festival that I’ve honestly never really understood.  It seems to be a music festival that specializes in featuring many different bands throughout all the city’s musical venues on seven consecutive nights.  The underlying thread that connects the said bands has always seemed totally vague to me.  What is a noisepop band?  What isn’t a noisepop band?  Taking a glance at featured acts from over the years and the upcoming roster for this year, I could kind of assume that if there were a characteristic or quality linking these bands together it would have to be bands that I think are self-serious, light-pop/rock sounding, pretentious, lots of solo and duo performers, a fair amount of synthesizers, an adopted ethnicity or ancient fundamental instrumentation, they must be deified by countless music bloggers as the second coming of pop-Christ, or a recently reunited band from the late 80’s or finally, wussie-ass sounding crap that couldn’t rock its way out of a wet paper bag.  Seriously, out of a hundred or so bands appearing there are maybe four that I’m interested in seeing.  The rest are mostly bands I’ve read lots about and I’ve sought them out and listened to them and thought “This is what all those reviewers and bloggers were raving about?  I cant believe it because this wanks big time.”  These were bands I eagerly downloaded only to quickly free up the space they took on my hard drive with the delete key because it was weak and didn’t move me in the least.  This was the sound of indie rock that really started to frighten me and make me wonder what rocked about it and where the guts and backbone and danger and angst had gone.  Is this the sound of Noisepop?  With the exception of appearances by The Ponys, Clinic, The Donnas, The Coup and Rocky Erikson, the rest of the Noisepop 07 lineup are typically Noisepop bands.  Some people try to catch as many of these shows as they can, and are able to get in to all of them with the purchase of a badge for the event at $150.  My biggest worry would be trying to not fall asleep through 80% of the shows.  It might be fun to watch the crowd and see all the earnest indier-than-thou young hipsters trying to impress each other with their specialized knowledge of alt-everything acts and their vinyl only collections of every Animal Collective side project ever.  Oh what fun.  Count me out.

What’s even more disheartening is just after the Noisepop thing is over we can anticipate multiple night bookings in March with Bright Eyes and TV on the Radio as well as Bloc Party and Badly Drawn Boy.  Good God what is going on here?  Luckily there will be three shows in March by The Mountain Goats on the 7,8,and 9^th, the first two at the Independent and the third at Bottom of The Hill.  The Mountain Goats are always pretty amazing live and this tour will be in support of the most recent release Get Lonely which is a somewhat more somber affair than the three previous records which I think boast some of the finest songwriting of our time.  I cant imagine a Mountain Goats show that wouldn’t be totally captivating.

Another show coming up that I want to remind you about is February 1^st at The Eagle Tavern when two great bands from canada in the electro/dance/rap vein, Stinkmitt and Procon will be returning to tear it up live in a startlingly sexy and filthy way.  I’ve written lots about Stinkmitt before so y’all just better be there to catch this act, they are unforgettable.  Procon are also quite good, dishing up sex, danger, synths and rock and locals The Judy Experience featuring former members of Veronica Lipgloss and The Evil Eyes will be opening the show.  I believe all three bands are on the fabulous local label Cochon Records who are quickly rising to prominence with some very solid and quality acts making up their roster of talented and edgy bands.  This show will be a great scene, all quality no filler…so don’t miss it.  February might as well start out with a big bang—we could all use it.

As you may have guessed, I went to see Stinkmitt play the Eagle Tavern’s live music night last Thursday. I’m often surprised to learn that after more than 8 years of presenting live bands for a low price in the infamous indoor/outdoor, smoker-friendly, smartly decorated and intimate SOMA landmark bar, there are still many people who have absolutely no idea that this live music showcase is a popular weekly tradition and quite often hosts bands from all over this nation and a few other nations as well.  The atmosphere is festive and friendly and an emphasis is definitely placed on providing a great place for bands to play, and for many bands it has understandably become their favorite venue.  You can find out who’s playing by visiting the eagle’s website at http://sfeagle.com/Tnl02.07.html.  There’s some great events coming up this month and this last Thursday was a perfect example of just how much fun a night of live music at the Eagle can be.

I missed the first band, The Judy Experience, who are locals but heard from a few people that they were really good and visually interesting so its fair to assume they’ll be playing there again in the near future.  The other bands on the bill were both Canadian acts who have performed at The Eagle before and are also distributed by the same record label, the young and fabulous Cochon records based here in San Francisco.  Those bands were Procon from Toronto and Stinkmitt from Vancouver.  These two bands are big fans of each other and have worked together on various remixes of each others songs and have undoubtedly toured together a bit so there was a sort of a one big happy family feeling running through the place.  In addition to this the two guys who run Cochon Records Manuel Gutierrez and Juan Martin del Campo Jr  were present and actually had been in L.A. the previous night with Procon and Stinkmitt for a show and they traveled all the way up to SF with the bands in true rock tour style, little sleep and lots of love.  The crowd  was peppered with members of several other Cochon bands like the exquisitely beautiful Jillian of Von Iva and Rhani of Veronica Lipgloss and the Evil Eyes, and members of Gravy Train and lots more fun folks.  It was an especially effervescent crowd of people who were more than ready to hear these two bands do what they do best.

I arrived about halfway through Procon’s set and the male/female duo were definitely engaged and energetic, connecting with the crowd in a personable friendly way as the vocalist Countess Christsmasher belted out songs of  sex, danger, drugs and rock with an athletic dexterity, setting the tone for what would turn into a night packed full of females ready to throw down and slay with their undeniably full tilt vocalizations.  Count Feedback wore a very cool peach colored jumpsuit with lots of zippers and left the keyboards for a wild turn on the guitar, complete with drops to the floor and other super-hero guitar postures, all the while sounding very capable with an axe in his hands.  It was a great set.  Incidentally my friend Allison the super-beautiful roller-derby queen got to talking with the Countess after their set and learned that she also wears the skates, rolling for a Toronto based all-girl roller-derby team.  What a coincidence, a totally awesome coincidence—we love them derby girls.

I really like it when the featured bands have relatively simple equipment set up.  It means less time to wait between bands and Stinkmitt play to recorded tracks so their set up time was nothing.  Hitting the stage in matching tracksuits that looked suspiciously like the ones favored by members of the Heaven’s Gate suicide cult, MC Betti Forde and MC Jenni Craige brought all the talent charisma and sex the stage could contain.  They clearly still had their balls intact and weren’t waiting for a ride from the mothership hiding behind a comet.  Stinkmitt were driving this joint and instantly heading for overdrive.  Just before the show MC Betti Forde confessed that it was Jenni Craige’s 30^th birthday the night before and they were extremely hung over, but you wouldn’t have known it from their performances.  They gave it a hundred percent like true professionals, the kind of professionals who can party with the best and still pull it together for the show.  I’ve heard from other bands they toured with that they are serious party girls and their song “Roadkill” pretty much maps out that scenario fearlessly, talking about having dealers in every city, and doormen who get them their shit for free, scoring and whoring through life on the road.  In fact at one point they solicited the crowd for drugs, “all kinds because we might have friends who like some of the ones we don’t like.”  I appreciate their honesty and stamina.

The one time I saw them before their set was kind of short but on this night they gave us a full long set of songs, all the best from their latest release The Red Album and many from their first, Scratch n Sniff.  I was especially thrilled when they dedicated the song “Crime Scene” to me, always a pleasure having a song about menstruation dedicated to me.  “I’m dropping rhymes while I drop an egg.”

The thing that I found most impressive about this show was the undeniable unabashed vocal skills these two performers have.  They both can rap and they both can sing and every once in awhile you could tell they were going at it freestyle, changing words here and there to apply to the moment, the city, the venue and they did so with all the rapidfire ability of any of todays top rappers, male or female. MC Jenni Craige was in fine form as she belted out some of the greatest most soulful wails I’ve ever heard from the stage of the Eagle.  She just escalated in power as the performance went on, echoing vocal greats like Alyson Moyet, Martha Wash and other force of nature female vocalists.  Towards the end of their set she said, “This one goes out to all of you who need to be getting  fucked harder.”  Such a universal dedication, everyone believed that’s what they needed and that’s beautiful.

By the time this issue hits the streets you’ll have just enough time to throw on a fun frock and head to the Eagle Tavern for another night of great live music culminating with an appearance by a local band who are currently riding high on the crest of a well-deserved wave of media attention and single-handedly carry the torch of  the avant-garde garage rock and cinematic psycho-soul music with a flair for the theatrical.  That band is Mon Cousin Belge, a perplexing and enigmatic group of talented and internationally diverse players who currently reside in San Francisco and believe me, we are all better for this.

I’ve caught this band live a couple of times and was so transfixed and astonished by their shows I found it difficult to tackle the prospect of writing about them.  They are definitely a band with a story, a group of distinctly different artists committed to their individual work yet oddly bound by a coincidental meeting one fateful day on the patio of  The Lonestar , a Soma drinking establishment.  From that day forward Mon Cousin Belge have stunned audiences with their heavily stylized, moody and mesmerizing original compositions as well as interpretations of  songs popularized by other artists as diverse as Glen Miller, John Cale, David Bowie and Shirley Bassey.  The undeniable figurehead of the band is the charismatic and very foreign Emile, an extraordinary vocalist from Belgium who speaks no English at all and has performed with many local artists, when he is allowed to enter the country.  Emile is also addicted to plastic surgery and has had 39 procedures to date.  He is nearly perfect and a genius when it comes to working a wig but when he approaches that microphone and sings, you know he’s tapped into something bigger than all of us, a gift that can hardly be contained by just one person.  His is a dangerous talent and can shake you to your very foundation.

Last year MCB recorded an original song for a Falcon Video feature The Velvet Mafia called “Going Down.”  This song and actual music video can be viewed on the Mon Cousin Belge Myspace page, along with a few of the bands earliest performances and lots of other information.  But the big news about “Going Down” is it was nominated in the best music category for a GAYVN award, the most respected and recognized honor in gay adult entertainment, and for the first time ever the award ceremony was held here in San Francisco last weekend at the Castro Theater.

Emile attended the awards surrounded by faux paparazzi to the red carpet, stealing the attention from the assembled, shaved, greased tanned and steroided-into-oblivion perfect men of porn, for a few minutes at least.  I was given the readers digest condensed version of  Emile’s night at the GAYVN awards but highlights included lots of alcohol, almost getting kicked out of the event three times, trying to control the rented spotlights outside of the event, and interrupting a lifetime g-string achievement award presentation to some gay wardrobe icon.  The following day Emile ran into a local castro merchant who had been to the event as well and asked him if by chance he had lost his wig that night.  Emile sheepishly confessed that he woke up missing his hair-piece and the merchant told him that he had figured out as much because he found it in a toilet in the castro theaters bathroom!  Their song didn’t take the prize but somehow that image really rates as a winner in a Valley of the Dolls sort of way.  I’d like to think a spiteful porn star found it and marched it straight to the can and indignantly flushed it.  At any rate it’s a crowning achievement for an unusually brilliant band and their fearless foreign frontman.  Tonight you can catch the soon to be legendary Mon Cousin Belge headlining at the eagle at about 11:30.  The opening acts are The New Thrill Parade from Santa Cruz who sound pretty theatrical and twisted and fun and White from L.A. who among other things have recorded a theme song for Butt Magazine called “Butt Theme” so they gotta be pretty cool. They also have collaborated with Kid Congo Powers, Stephin Merrit of the Magnetic Fields and Roddy Bottum of Imperial Teen.  I should point out that all three bands have completely informative and interesting Myspace pages which include a few songs to listen to and lots of pictures and stuff.  Myspace.com is like the farmers almanac of indie and underground bands—or rather every damn band in the world really.  If they’ve got a name you can almost bet they’ve got a Myspace page and it’s a tremendous wealth of  all the information you’ll ever need about up-coming shows and a bands pedigree and background and how many “friends” they have and how many of them are famous friends, I mean really famous.  Maybe you’ll have to keep your eyes peeled at the show for some of those famous friends to walk in the door.  This is all going down on Thursday March 1^st at the Eagle Tavern starting at 9:30.  Be in the presence of greatness.

Last week quite by surprise my friend Alan informed me that The Briefs, an incredible band who are heavily rotated in my DJ sets and have been for a few years now, were playing a show at Thee Parkside.   I was thrilled that this event didn’t slip by me unnoticed because I really think The Briefs are a completely under-rated gem of a band and sort of a stylistic oddity considering they hail from Seattle, climbing out from under the shadows of their monolithic fore-fathers of grunge in the year 2000 with quite a different outlook and energy to serve up.   The briefs harkened back to an era in music when punk rock was fun and funny and verging on the next permutation in musical evolution, New Wave or Punk Pop, like bust-out-your-weird-sunglasses-and-skinny-ties type of hard hitting fast paced punk with a grin and snarl, like 999, The Undertones, The Buzzcocks, the Damned and The Dickies.   They definitely had that very fast paced guitar driven sound with extra wordy lyrics and shout and respond choruses and they came with a definite look—all blonde and sporting a hodge-podge of new wave fashionisms—florescent colors, black and white checks, pork pie hats, blazers, creepers, mod gear, etc.   The Briefs are a total package, hitting the scene like an electrified breath of fresh air while obviously drawing their inspiration from sounds and styles of almost 30 years ago with an unapologetic zeal and genuine enthusiasm for the music.   But this band goes well beyond being just a retro blast of energy—they write excellent songs with topical lyrics that apply to today with such clever aplomb and political savvy, and they do all this and still sound inexplicably fun—even on some of the more nihilistic songs like “Destroy the USA” or the matter-of-fact post 9/11 warning song “Orange Alert,” they may be driving home a few important points but   I guarantee your toes will be tapping and you’ll end up dancing more to these politics and global concerns than you would have ever dreamed.  The Briefs are the band who can take you there without sounding too preachy or self-serious like I used to think The Clash  did and with a minimum of evangelical flag waving save the world Bono-isms too.    But this band isn’t here to fill you up with politics and religious platitudes—they are here to rock in a pure and simple way—fast and hard with precise song structure and guitars wielded like punk rock chainsaws.   They are beyond tight, so skilled they cover all bases with ease and are seemingly left with enough strength and energy to hit new levels of unhinged instrumental mayhem and over the top stage presence.   They took the stage and just turned it on like hitting a switch—these four skinny young sharply dressed men suddenly were a wall of visceral   blonde and charged punk rock aggression, free of irony and also free of  some of those key words from the pages of punk history like “destroy” and “anarchy” and “chaos.”   This was something far more positive clever and humorous but no less intense nor without conviction

The crowd assembled at Thee Parkside was large and boisterous and during the previous band, The Bodies, many of them had decided to make champagne geysers from several shaken bottles as did the singer of the band.   I could have done without getting my entire backside soaked with the stuff but the whole tiny club was by the time their set ended and The Briefs started moving their equipment in from the street.   They set up their stuff in what seemed like a record time on the slightly elevated tiny stage in the corner of the room.  You could tell this band meant business already, but I was very dismayed over the simple fact that this venue for some reason or another had not even attempted to illuminate the stage at all, making it very difficult to see the band once the room was full.   Perhaps they were hoping to eliminate the risk of electrocution from the champagne shower or something, but it has become increasingly clear each time I go there just how much Thee Parkside doesn’t mean business on a professional level.   Maybe I was just irritated by being soaked and sticky but I kept thinking to myself, “This place is a dump.”  Don’t want to be harsh on a music venue, I’d rather be supportive, but the place could do with some basic improvements it seems. I shouldn’t complain much as they did have the smarts to host The Briefs and many other great bands too if you check out their schedule—but a few well placed spots would really enhance the stage and clean isn’t a bad thing for a bar to be.

The band burned with energy to spare from their first note on, you could just see that these guys give it their all in live performance, just like I had heard about them, and the assembled crowd kicked up their level of boisterousness several notches, most of them knowing all the words and screaming along.   Eventually the people at the very front found themselves dutifully holding microphone stands in place for each member as they kept getting knocked around by the crowd.   It impressed me that lead vocal chores seemed to alternate between members throughout the set and that all members provided spot on backing vocals, just like their records.  The drummer was very impressive and super fast and he made it look effortless the whole time.  I was amazed at what a solid monolithic tower of sound the sum of all parts came to be so instantly and how there was nothing that could stop them.   They all seemed to be having such a good time too, whipping out hit after hit with the luxury of maybe a 3 second pause between songs.  At one point one of the band members   said, “Okay, dance retards, dance!”  How could you not?  I was afraid their set might be mostly made up of their latest record The Briefs Steal Your Heart which I haven’t really liked as much as their previous releases but I’m starting to warm up to it, but they actually played a set of songs from throughout their entire life as a band and uncannily it included everything I wanted to hear.   I could have made it up myself all the way to the last song, one of my favorites called “Looking Through Gary Glitters Eyes”  a sort of reworking of an old song by a band called The Adverts that was originally called “Looking Through Gary Gilmores Eyes” about the famous execution of a prisoner in the 70’s but the briefs changed it to be about the plight of  british glam rock star Gary Glitter who was busted for his advanced interest in little children and child pornography and had the big hit song “Do You Wanna Touch (Me)” later covered by Joan Jett and the blackhearts.   God , I just love this bands mind.  Their lyrics are a thrill to hear and some of their songs, mostly “Anti-Social” have become like my theme song.   This show was just about the most exalted and genuine punk rock moment I’ve experienced in some time.  I’ll go to great lengths to see this band whenever I see the chance in the future.   And if you all haven’t heard them start with their CD called Sex Objects.  This is a great band who deserve your attention.