Last night (May 23) was
a jarring night for me, a night of being an outsider amongst
outsiders. Making my way to The Alley last night, I parked my car in
the parking garage at John Ascuaga's Nugget, then crossed the street
to pass through the casino before walking down Victorian Avenue to
the tiny club. It's Memorial Day weekend, and at the Nugget this is a
weekend reserved for country artists and bands. And if you know me, I
pretty much despise everything about modern country music. Vapid,
shallow artists playing music (that more often than not isn't theirs)
that I've often described as a bastard hybrid of the southern rock of
Lynyrd Skynyrd and the twangy pop of The Eagles, without the talent
of either. And ironically enough, next door to The Alley is an Irish
pub that was hosting live music as well, an 'acoustic' jam that in my
humble opinion could've been bottled up and sold as a cure for
insomnia. Or for rat poison.
The first band up at
eight was, as Reno shows are wont to be, a local band. Priscilla
Ford was a pleasant surprise to
me, more rock than punk – imagine a young AC/DC. To be honest, they
were the best band of the night. Out For War
was a blur of hyperactive blasts, every song played at pretty much
the same tempo – 'let's see how fast the drummer can play' speed –
with metallic guitars and bellowed vocals that were completely
unintelligible. Then came the primary support band, LA's Total
Chaos. This band were punk-rock
holdouts in the highest sense of the word, 24-year veterans of the
scene trying their best keep alive the nihilism of the late Seventies
and early Eighties. Not to mention the look. Of all four bands that
took the stage, these guys were the only ones who actually 'looked'
punk. That said, four guys my age dressed up to look like a cross
between GBH and Avenged Sevenfold looked kind of pathetic to me, and
their music while their music was better than that of Out
For War, it still sounded tired
and outdated to me.
Subhumans
bring back some interesting, if
mixed memories to me. I used to be in a band that played their music
along with that of other bands of that genre and era back when I was
high school, leavening Tony Reed's originals with covers of songs
from the Misfits, Hüsker
Dü,
and early Suicidal Tendencies. But my favorite song we played was a
Subhumans track,
“Zyklon B-Movie”.
Even in their heyday of the mid-Eighties, Subhumans
were always odd ducks, mixing their punk with bits of actual
musicianship, not to mention leavening their leftist sociopolitical
views with an infectious sense of humor. I told their merch guy that
I was completely surprised to find that the band was still playing,
only for him to tell me that they'd actually gotten back together in
1998, and had been playing steadily ever since, and that this was
their third show in Reno in the last few years. I don't know what
that shows more, how my tastes have changed since I was a kid, or how
little attention I pay to punk these days.
When
they came to the stage, Subhumans seemed
a little out of sorts at first. Their singer admitted as much almost
immediately when he explained that they were all jet-lagged. This was
their first show of a quick six-show run, four shows in California
after tonight before closing their run in Las Vegas at a 'punk rock
bowling' show. But they recovered quickly enough and played a good
set to an appreciative audience, the highlight of the night for me
being “Internal Riot”.
Too
bad the night was pretty much lost on me. I already felt like an
outsider among outsiders, and my mood didn't improve when I got a
phone call from my bandleader, informing me that a show planned for
Saturday had fallen through, and things got worse when I called Joy
to tell her, and she began wondering aloud if we'd somehow screwed
up, and she got pissed off at me when I stopped her in her in her
tracks and told her that I simply didn't know what happened, and that
this was no time to go assigning blame to anyone just yet. She
doesn't like me interrupting her, even when I know exactly what she's
going to say – I think she hates that most of all. And the final
insult for me was in the men's room of all places, when I was
bum-rushed out of the loo by a pair of SuicideGirls wannabes who
walked in on me while I was trying to take a piss. Ever have your
dick in your hand when total strangers of the opposite sex walk in?
Trust me, it's not an enjoyable thing. I know I turned eight
different shades of red as I rushed to put my junk away and did my
best to keep myself from going nuclear at these ignorant little
twats. Fortunately, the show was almost over at that point, and I was
pretty much the first person out of the venue when the last note was
struck. I was still so mad at what had happened, I found myself
nearly unable to use the men's room at the Nugget as I made my way
back to my car, still halfway expecting to have someone try to get
into my stall as I was trying to do my business.
I
think the thing I took away from this show was that I was still an
über
outsider,
and I didn't really fit in there, even among the other outsiders
that Punk claims to embrace. But I think that I'll fit in a little
better tonight, as my friends Pain
Clinic and
Blasphemous
Creation
will being playing there as part of The Alley's “Heavy Metal BBQ”.
Best of all, the show is free. And now that I don't have to get up at
the ass-crack of dawn to get ready for a show on Saturday, I can go
to this show and still get a decent night's sleep.
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