SNACK
TRASH, three nerdy college
students from Japan who currently reside in SF,
playing pop-sweetened, Descendents-style
hardcore tunes about the joys and pains of food
and girls, weren't too bad. The intentionally
juvenile predisposition of their music, when
vocalist/guitarist Donkey Tat would sing in
English and I could understand him through his
accent, didn't move me one way or another. But
the rattling drive of Anal Huye's bass lines was
respectable, especially since he was suffering
from a cold that caused him to lapse into
bleary-eyed coughing fits between songs. The
most entertaining aspect of their set, however,
was Theo Logian, the bassist for The
Razorburns, heckling them from the sidelines
in what was apparently some very poor Japanese
judging from drummer Horny Shige's peals of
laughter and confused facial expressions. Tat
eventually throwing a plastic pint cup at him
before exclaiming in mock anger, "Shut up, you
retard! Your Japanese is shit!"
I've
liked ska for as long as I've liked punk, but my
opinion of it's various modern incarnations when
compared to the music's traditional Jamaican
roots and second wave British 2-Tone has always
been low. The PBR-fueled ska-core of anarcho
drunk-punks,
THE ROOF RATS,
being no exception as they stumbled back and
forth from vaguely metallic thrash to scratchy
guitar filled faux-riddims with their faces
concealed behind matching bandanas. Looking more
like down and out cowboys than molotov-tossing "black
blocers", except for vocalist Ugly in his
Bush-cum-Hitler "Same shit different asshole!"
t-shirt. Not knowing or simply not caring about
the club's strict "no moshing" policy, guitarist
Twomom incessantly groused about how few of us
there were on the dancefloor. Demanding to know,
"What's wrong with you people? Is it that you
just don't know how to mosh or skank, or what?"
In response, a few teenage crusties - this was
an all-ages show - tried to start a pit and were
promptly 86'd one by one by security. Which, as
you can imagine, didn't exactly go over well
with the rest of the punks in the crowd.
Vocalist/guitarist
Justin O., bearing more than a passing
resemblance to "Jay" from director Kevin Smith's
"Jay and Silent Bob" related films, prefaced
5 DAYS DIRTY'S
set of hackneyed, MTV/commercial radio friendly
mall-punk by announcing they had finished a week
of dates on the Vans Warped Tour and were
featured in this month's Thrasher
magazine. Neither of which meant shit to me,
losing interest in skateboarding when it's ethos
changed from
Wild Riders of Boards chanting "Skate and
Destroy" to X-Games jocks shilling for Nike and
never having much to begin with for the usual
bands showcased by the former. A smattering of
baggy-pantsed newschool skaters and blonde UC
Berkeley co-eds, on the other hand, who were
obviously there to see them and only them,
cheered enthusiastically as they congregated
around what little stage there was. Hollering
and tittering along en masse to "Jessie is a
Punk Kid", "Still I See" and "Best of the
Years". Another unnecessary confrontation
involving security occurring when some skin who
had been boisterously heckling the band refused
to hand over an open bottle of Jameson he'd
smuggled in, putting up one hell of a fight
before he was wrestled to the floor and dragged
out.
THE
RAZORBURNS, a last minute
addition to the bill featuring former members of
Fabulous Disaster and Teenage Harlets, may rely
on tongue-in-cheek catchphrases like "We're
irritating" to describe themselves but their
dulcet alt rock/pop-punk sound, and especially
vocalist/rhythm guitarist Dana Muse's cloy
onstage demeanor, were the exact opposite. Which
struck me as amusing in an ironic sort of way
considering the grim subject matter of their
songs. I mean, how do you not laugh at
up-tempo, finger-snapping ditties about abusive
relationships, wasting one's life and
alcoholism? Lead guitarist Squeaky, on the other
hand, was no joke. In opposition to her
bandmates, she jumped, kicked and spun circles
around them while pulling brisk power licks from
a leopard spotted Fender strat on "London
Bridges," "Run Girl" and "Makeup". Even
D.O.A.'s
Joey Shithead took notice, nodding in approval
while making his way from the bar to whatever
was passing for a "green room".
According
to him at least, Randy Rampage has a
longstanding warrant in SF, so this was the
first time
D.O.A. had
risked playing the Bay Area in years. And they
were easily better than I've seen them in years.
Trimmed down to a lean three-piece featuring
Shithead on vocals/guitar, The Great Baldini on
drums and the aforementioned original bassist,
older and newer material from Something
Better Change and Hardcore '81 to
'02's Win the
Battle was plugged away at with equally
matched vigor. Joey's crude, West Canadian
accented growl, Rampage's feverishly warbling
bass and Baldini's steady pummeling inciting a
fractious circle pit in spite of the entire
security staff's aggressive attempts to quell
it. A buzz-bomb version of "The Enemy" and
covers of the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop"
(dedicated to Dee Dee, Joey and Johnny) and
"Fuck You" by fellow Canucks the (Vancouver)
Subhumans providing the catalyst for a fierce
exchange of blows at the edge of the dancefloor
between said goons and a few of us oldschoolers
who had had enough of their endless browbeating.
All words ©2006 Dave Negative
Photo Credits: Snack Trash, snacktrash.com; The
Roof Rats, Jessi; 5 Days Dirty, Kyle Torres; The
Razorburns, Barb Rocks; D.O.A.,
modernguitars.com
