Riot Fizzle

Geez life is a roller coaster sometimes. Either that, or my brain just makes it into one. I’m feeling an unbelievable amount better, which is nice. It was really weird yesterday. For those that don’t know. OG dumped me a second time. On Friday. Before Riot Fest. Sorta dampened the mood at Riot fest and for the rest of the weekend. I started coming out of the funk yesterday. After work, on my walk to the train I felt pretty energized and amped. Then on the train I had a feeling of euphoria that maybe I’ve never experienced. It was really, really, weird. I wasn’t going to hassle it. I think my body was just saying, you’re all out of the negative stuff, we gotta burn some positive. I felt like a trillion suns. I don’t know how to describe it. I had also just submitted a giant project at work that has been sorta meandering along for 10 months. That probably helped a bit. I didn’t feel like going out like a punk bitch, so I asked OG if I could talk to her. We scheduled it for last night. A lot of people told me that I didn’t have anything to gain by talking to her, but like I said, I ain’t going out like that. I called her and eventually we got to talking. She had to go for work, but said she’d call me back. She did call me back and I just basically wanted to say my piece and move on. I said what I had to say. Then we both just started blabbing and 2 hours later I dunno what is going on. So that’s that.

This morning I was still feeling pretty good. I got off the train and was geeked for my walk into work. I like the cooler weather and the decrease in foot traffic. As I exited the train station, I saw my man that gives out the red eye newspaper. He’s a funny dude. He jaws at everybody and sometimes I say hey or something extra which he seems to dig. So when he gave me my red eye I said, “Good Morning, thanks.” And he shouts out, “Morning Hometeam, are you still playin?!” I said, “Yep!” Pretty sweet. The girl walking next to me looked at me like I was nuts tho.

Well this year’s Riot Fest and Last Year’s are really a study in contrasts. The big problem with this year is that there weren’t as many great bands. Much to my good fortune, all the bands I wanted to see were playing Congress on Friday. Bad Religion being the big one. I hope you guys read the Bad Sandwich Chronicles yesterday about Greg Graffin from BR, a punk diva, that’s hilarious. “No Boots, No show.” I love that stuff. Who would’ve known. I don’t want to go into the whole sordid story of what happened before the show, but I got dumped, that’s all you need to know. I turned to my stalwart, someone I knew would come through. Someone affectionately known as Nomis. I called nomer and asked if he could come to the show, that I had an extra tick. Well his wife was out, he had the kids, etc., but he pulled it off. So Nomer was in, I wouldn’t be alone, but Off with their heads was coming on at 630, so I had to get there. I cruised straight to the Congress. Parked on the street and went in. The place was only like .3 full when I got there, a sparse crowd. I wasn’t sure if it was gonna be an off year or what. I did not see anyone that I recognized from the previous year. There were a lot of sweet punks though, liberty spikes, Mohawks, mullets, the whole nine yards. Lotta kids too. Lotta parents with kids. The typical mishmash of people. I go over and check out the merch and there is only one thing that I want to buy. I don’t have any money, but there was an off with their heads hoodie that was beyond words. Try as I might, I can’t find a pic of it. I go in and check out this band the X is for Eyes. They weren’t bad. Typical Chicago type punk.

I have to mention that during X is, my buddy called me up and that was way cool. I sent out word that I got dumped and he rang me up. I’m at a punk show, alone, post dumpage, that really lifted me up. I grabbed a piece of pizza for dinner. It was nasty. Then I went back in for OWTH. At this point I’m like screw it, I’m getting a beer. Which I did. Then I went right up front for OWTH. They are awesome, not quite as amazing as when my buddy and I heard them at Liar’s club last year, but I’ll def check them anytime they are in town. The bouncing souls were next. I figured might as well hang in the balcony for that one. They played, they were good. Typical Socal type of stuff. You can tell when they play their classics, and they were good. I’ll def check them out on emusic and maybe DL some of their stuff. After TBS, I noticed that they were selling high life cans upstairs. Score (they weren’t selling them downstairs and I had to drink a stella). HL cans were 5 bucks I think a 16 oz stella was 8, by my math the Stella is a hosejob. Next was The Circle Jerks. Keith Morris, the lead singer of the Circle Jerks, was the original singer of Black Flag. I’m guessing he wrote wasted cuz TCJ played it and put it on an album. They played all their favorites: Wild in the streets, Wasted, World up my ass, Deny Everything, some other stuff. I have to say, for like a 50 year old dude KM could still bring it. He could sing the songs just as snarly, just as fast, it was awesome. I’d def catch TCJ if they come back to town.

Two bands left. Local Heroes The Lawrence Arms were up next. It seemed like there were a lot of people really amped to catch TLA. The kids were up. TLA came out and Brendan (author of BSC) really has an everyman approach which I think fans find accessible, it’s endearing and it really makes you root for them. It’s really hard for me to be up on their whole catalog, but most of the kids around me knew the words to every song. They didn’t play abracadaver, which is one of my faves, but they played Turnstiles, 100 Resolutions (awesome song), and Ramblin boys of Pleasure where the whole crowd was shouting along “Things have changed, things have changed forever…we’re the rambling boys of pleasure.” Sometime in there nomis showed up. I got him his tick, he came in, we embraced, grabbed beers. He brought earplugs, which were a welcome addition, then we cruised down and caught the end of TLA.

I forget what we talked about between TLA and Bad Religion, but the sets turned over quick and I guess they found Greg Graffin’s boots cuz Bad Religion came right out. GG looked awesome, just like it was described in BSC, he had some kind of Fred Perry golf shirt on, black pants, a beer gut, bald head, he looked like he would be at home in a dingy old golf clubhouse as much as in front of the world’s best punk rock band. I guess BR are celebrating their 30th anniversary. Pretty huge. They played for probably an hour and brought it with such hits as: I want to conquer the world, no control, 20th century digital boy, infected, We’re only gonna die, Atomic Garden, Generator, and many more. It kicked ass. Nomis seemed to enjoy himself. After the dust settled I noted that Off With Their Heads were going to be playing at Exit at midnight. He said, “Didn’t you just see them?” To which I replied, “yes.” He had to go to a dentist appointment at 8am, and as a little gift to the hygienist, we decided to grab some burritos right by the Congress. Surprisingly, there were only like 10 people in the place, everyone else probably went to the next spot. We grabbed some grub, talked about the old times, it was way cool. Then we parted ways.