[from Orange Country, CA] We were so close
to staying on the couch instead of going to this show but Rockboy got fired up
and waged a campaign to convince me to go – it wouldn’t have worked, because
I’m old and tired, except for the fact that this band, amidst all of the
various punk bands I’m only moderately familiar with, has always stood out as
unique and gorgeous – so we went and was it ever worth it golly gee whiz –
there was a bunch of speed metal bands who opened for them – one of them told
the crowd between a song “We’re going to go ahead and speed things back up”
which was amusing because the music had never stopped being ferocious as far as
I could tell – then there was a young punker rocking out by the stage by
himself with only the bare cement of a future mosh pit surrounding him – in one
last glorious move, he picked up a beer can from the ground and raised it to
his lips with his X-ed hand (X for ‘under 21’) – he was promptly gathered up by
bouncers and dropped outside before he ever even got to see TSOL – it was very
entertaining – in other mosh pit exploits, there was a girl who ran into the
mosh pit which is always inspiring to me – and then she went one step further
and took a guy out with her elbow – she stepped back out of the mosh pit and
retrieved her eyeglasses from her back pocket to replace them on her face –
even Aretha would have shown some respect – finally TSOL came on and it’s
pretty much a blur of gloriousness from that point on – the lead singer is OLD
now of course, and even kind of portly, but he was a raging maniac – bounding
around the stage and commanding every person in the audience – I think this
band’s sound is amazing – it’s some blend of speed metal, punk, goth,… - all of
those genres can get boring and repetitive but TSOL’s songs are brilliantly
written with unexpected turns and starts and pauses – dramatic and catchy too –
they manage to be hard and beautiful at the same time, and to create an
atmosphere in an instant – I can hear their CA roots too even if it’s just my
own nostalgic fantasy – my euphoria was dampened when I went to the back and
couldn’t pay my tab because a fight broke out behind me, and then came face to
face when some sad hippie boy who was all bloody and was led out - I recommend
“Thoughts of Yesterday” and “Sounds of Laughter” (Photo courtesy of
Comments
Post a Comment