A rabid pack of weasels and some music
Last night I ventured to Slim’s once again. On the bill for last night were
(in performance order) The Vacancy,
title="part of the remains of Kid Dynamite">None More Black,
Me!, Rise Against, and
title="more Pitt, PA rockers with a message">Anti-Flag. I knew this was
going to be a good show when I first stepped into Slim’s. All the bar stools
had been removed and the house music was the Beatles all night.
Having been to a few shows in the last few months I was starting to hate (a)
large numbers of opening bands and (b) the quality of said opening bands.
Mostly I was just wanting them to not play. Last night, however, that was not
the case. I will now give mad apologies to my friend CB for taunting him
about my attendance to this show that he could not be at. While I was there I
wanted for CB and my other friend Matt to be there so bad it hurt. This was
the best show I’ve seen in a long time and to not be able to share it with them
was a real downer (ignoring the fact that I was at the show by myself). So now
I will recap the bands in greater detail.
The Vacancy was surprisingly good. They rocked really hard and I wish they had
a CD for sale with them. The only criticism I have is that the singers could
have been a bit more direct into the mics to come across a bit better, but it
was still good. None More Black was up next. I was already familiar with
their material and I think live they were nothing short of excellent. Tight
and very much in sync with one another. The only drawback was that the entire
time I kept thinking that I should be seeing Kid Dynamite up on stage. How
I wish they had never broken up. Such is life I guess.
Against Me! then took the stage. I had only heard one or so song from them
before. I was blown away. These guys know how to rock and do it well. They
have a good silly style and good lyrics. They were so good I bought the CD
right there. After Against Me! played the band I really came to see was up,
Rise Against. I just have one word to describe them: whoa! They were
everything I hoped to see and more. The amount of energy coming out of the
band was just incredible. Every song they played was a great one (which isn’t
that hard when all their songs are great), and even the new song they played
rocked. They had so much energy going and imparted it to the crowd that
during a couple of songs the pit looked like a giant pack of rabbit weasels
on some sort of accelerant. It was nutty to see.
After that Anti-Flag was up, but during the set change they played a
documentary about the San Francisco war protests and some Iraqi war stuff. I
couldn’t see it too well and the audio was a bit drowned out by the people so
I could only make out some of it. Anti-Flag was another energetic group, but
not quite to the level of Rise Against. It was also kind of funny that the
drummer looked like he was in pain the whole time.
Well, I don’t have any more shows planned for a while, and that’s fine by me
after this last stint (
title="the past">Hepcat and
title="more past stuff">Rancid included).
