standing outside waiting for the doors to open for the all-ages show, watching kids get dropped off by their parents, or walking into the parking lot after being dropped off by their parents a block away, and having a good laugh at how far out of my age bracket i was.
a friend, who used to do the cross-canada punk tour in a piece of shit bus thing himself years ago, asked me to go with him to watch alexisonfire and the black halos (website down) do their thing. i said yes knowing that this would be a fun opportunity to see what this kind of show would look like through the filter of age.
the show moved through whinecore punk from boys night out, shifted to the older sounds of the black halos, and rumbled to the very angry blue skies at war (blue skies have a swank website with nice use of flash). we stood back among the wallflowers, letting the kids have their moment slamdancing and fist-raising. the most shocking thing was the nice mixing decks they were using. were these in-house?
rather than a fuzzy, badly engineered mess we were treated to quality sound for the first two acts. they made these bands sound pretty sweet.
of the four bands that played, the black halos sounded the best. the volume increased with each act, rendering the lead performance of alexisonfire into a garbled mess. yes, punk should be loud. but it can be loud as hell and sound good at the same time.
alexisonfire was the band the crowd came to see. they certainly have stage presence and remarkable energy. i'm sure their musicianship was solid, though the blurry sound rendered some of the finer guitar and vocal work useless.
the other shocking thing was how much punk bands must make on merchandise. the 14-20 year old age bracket looks like it has serious spending power, and they were given plenty of opportunity to offload their dollars during the lengthy set-breaks between each of the four acts.
as for stage act, the black halos hold their own. lead vocalist billy hopeless knows how to strut around acting cocky, prissy, and sassy all at the same time. he's also mastered the punk striptease, ending the set with nothing on but unbuttoned pants. it's glam and entertaining. their sound is simpler, but had more of that old punk edge than the other acts.
alexisonfire, on the other hand, moved blindingly fast with impressive finesse. i can see why the kids are listening.
no matter what i thought of the quality of some of the music i must give respect to these insane troopers of punk. punk at its best, like the immortal dead kennedys (think bedtime for democracy or fresh fruit for rotting vegetables), has the capacity to turn heads and change public opinion. at its worst it is whiny, self-serving, and pointless (or, going further, racist, misogynistic, and homophobic).
bands like alexisonfire run the edge of selling out and becoming a watered down pop group. though their fast and hard style has garnered muchmusic airplay, i wonder how long they will avoid mainstream success and the trappings that come with it. or is being a big label puppet band the goal?
show at the croatian cultural centre, vancouver, may 6, 2004
{May 09, 2004 07:18 PM}