HEY DUDES
Some questions:
What's up with the Stag beer man? It's weird. ((i lived in the south... we drank PBR... don't crucify me dudes)
Where do you guys hang out when you're not punkin around?
How do you know when it's okay to start thrashing around at shows? When is that socially appropriate?
Can I push people back into the mosh pit or do I have to just act as a wall and stand there while they ram into me?
What is the best venue for punk shows in St. Louis? (everyone's opinion is different obviously but I'd like some opinions)
Do I have to know people to go to house shows or can I just randomly show up?
That's all I can think of for questions right now...
Here's some statements:
You guys all kick ass.
Friendship kicks ass, HOLY FUCKING FRIENDSHIP FOREVER.
Whiskey is a dangerous and beautiful thing. Remember, you are the master of the whiskey. The whiskey isn't master of you. It's okay to let the liquor do the talking sometimes, let it think it have some power... let the liquor flow through you.
Go and listen to The Gits. "It all dies anyway." Please do this now. This is for your soul... do it for your poor soul...
LET ME INTERVIEW YOU BEAUTIFUL ASSHOLES ABOUT LIFE AND THE UNIVERSE. I WILL KEEP IT ANONYMOUS. BE ON MY BLOG!
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Captain Chaos and the Ambassadors of Punk
Black Tar Heroines
Powerline Sneakers
The Jukebox romantics.
Hello my friends. It is I captain chaos, here to share with you the details of my latest Punkventure. (This was a show that happened a few weeks ago and I apologize for the delay)
Earlier in the day, I had posted the introduction to this blog to a page in a St. Louis punk forum on facebook. I hadn’t really expected to get anything out of this action. I simply thought it might be a nice start to putting my ideas out into the local scene. Surprisingly, a fellow enthusiast commented immediately. The universe had fucking put something in front of me! She sent me a long message asking me to meet her at a show that night and said that she’d like to possibly collaborate on a zine. SUCCESS! If even one person wants to hang out and talk about punk rock it makes me immensely happy.
Later on, I make way to the show. My GPS is yelling directions at me in Siri’s shrieking shitty voice. The fact that I haven’t ever owned a car until recently becomes glaringly apparent to me. My aural landscape was a never ending blast of car horns and Against Me!. I’m beginning to wonder what the hell I’m doing here, a meek wanderer in a wild city landscape, struggling through through oddball alleyways and failed attempts at parallel parking.
As I enter the venue space, a man greets me at the door to take my money. Apparently there’s two shows tonight, they’ve segregated the stage spaces, and you have to pay separately for each. I have no idea which show I was supposed to go to. I tell him: “I’m just here to see the punk show!” He looks at me quizzically, “yeah but WHICH band are you here to see??” I stare at his little desk looking frantically for a band name that I might recognize from the message before. Pointing like a cavewoman, I show him what I vaguely remember. He takes my money, gives me another weird look, and proceeds to band my arm and allow me to enter.
As I walk in, it looks like a total dive. I approve of this as I make my way to the bar. I order a cheap shitty beer and suck it down, trying to forget the torment of the journey I have just made. I look around me and immediately notice that I’m outnumbered immensely by minors. What have I done??? The band that is about to play is a bunch of kids. They play some really garage-quality pop-punk. One of them is sporting a blink182 t-shirt. I can’t tell if I’m imagining that people are trying to avoid eye contact with me or not. I look wildly out of place. Feeling downtrodden, I text an old roommate and former St. Louis punk rocker. I tell him I’m at a show at Fubar and that I haven’t a clue what is going on. I also ask him if he has any good contacts for my punk blog. He’s got NOTHING… completely useless. Now I’m ready for another beer.
As I walk up to the bar again, the bartender looks at me like the goddamn FACE-MOLE that I feel like I am right now and says: “So…. if you don’t mind me asking… which band are you here to see?” I look up sheepishly as I grab a fistful of pisswater. “This is gonna sound so fucking stupid dude. I don’t even fucking know… I just moved here and I’m trying to start a blog about the punk scene in st. louis… I’m feeling kinda lost and confused right now” He looks back and says: “No that actually is awesome… but maybe tonight wasn’t the best show to go to…” (I found out later that he was actually DEAD-wrong) He looks around at the room in disappointment. I am then introduced to his wife, who is sitting at the bar. She asks me if I wanna go stand by the stage with her. This moment marks the first of many where a punk ambassador has entered my life.
As we go stand by the stage, I'm filled with a new found hope and excitement for tonights punkventure. Maybe Captain Chaos can withstand her fears and dive deeply into this exotic culture. The next band The Black Tar Heroines appears. They begin to smash some heavy mid-tempo tunes with dangerous energy. The crowd doesn't seem to be reacting but I've fallen in love. The lead woman ROARS and POURS her heart out. She begs us to get wild but we don't oblige. I don't know why no one started thrashing, but I allowed my head to bob and my foot to tap, and I lost myself in the beauty of it all. I felt this crazy lame warm ass fuzzy shit inside of my soul. Tonight is a good night to punk.
After
the set I go outside and smoke a cigarette with the lovely
ambassador. She guides me through the bar, introducing me to people
along the way. She asks me where I used to live before I left St.
Louis area. I tell her I grew up in O'Fallon. “Okay, Lesson number
one:,” she retorts, “Never admit that to anyone ever again.” I
laugh heartily in agreement. She makes suggestions about movies,
bands, venues, (and most people I talk to do so throughout the night)
I scribble in my star wars notepad like a fucking madwoman. These
people are all fucking mad crazy geniuses and I'm being guided down
the righteous path to punkdom
Powerline
Sneakers are fucking crazy masked-adventurer buttered popcorn
gutterpunk. Their songs are short, loud, and to the fucking point.
One of the guys is wearing this weird ski mask looking thing with
panda bear ears on top, and sporting no shirt. The drummer loses his
shirt shortly thereafter. As he does so the singer comments about
having naked boys on stage and at this point Captain Chaos the
Chanting Lunatic Beast comes out.
“NAKED
BOYS NAKED BOYS NAKED BOYS!!!!” I shout with a giddy sense of
immaturity.
A
dude across the room steps over and fist bumps me. The
sense of camaraderie that I have already begun to feel from being
here this night increases ten fold in this moment. The band continues
playing fast and loud.
“FUCK
YEAH FASTER FASTER!” I scream, completely caught up in the insanity
of it all.
I
can't remember whether it was the guitar player or the bass player,
but they kept making shitty jokes between sets. Something about
leaving popcorn in your seat at the movies instead of going and
throwing it away.
After the set I go up to the lead singer and try to express that in spite of my heckling, I enjoyed their show. Somehow in my weird insane PBR buzzed stupor “heckling” comes out as “haggling.” He corrects me and continues to seem disinterested in our conversation so I step outside for another round of smokes with DT and CM. DT asks if I'd like to walk down the street and see one of the venues that died a while back. We make our pilgrimage a couple blocks down the street. She shows me the window that she sat and stuck her feet out of and was told very politely but sternly to go back inside. I touched my hand to the brick and mourned the loss of dear Plush. “Oh Plush, I'm sorry I never knew you... rest in piss.”
“Are
we already getting a divorce!?!?”
I
yell some more. (yelling helps me remember names.)
“Calm
down I'll be inside in a minute”
CM
pokes her head out the door and beckons me to come inside.
“DUDE
YOU GOT TO SEE THIS BAND!”
I
oblige and follow her in.
As
I enter, the music I hear is making love to my ears. It's got a
pop-punk vibe but with a sense of revealing cold hard truths about
life and expressing a love of music and artistic expression for its
own sake. Smiling like an idiot I bang my head around laughing.
Before one of their next tunes, the front man asks the audience to
crouch down. He requests that we start jumping with him and continue
jumping until we run out of energy. As he kicks off the tune, the
whole floor is bouncing around in conjunction with the moving feet.
In a very short amount of time this turns into a full on mosh. Before
I know it I'm bouncing around running into mass entanglement of
bodies, being tossed around like carrots in your garden salad. Most
of the crowd starts dying down and they return to their places. I'm
still jumping and so are a couple other dudes. Fist-bump guy rams
straight into me, and I ram back. We go back and forth like this for
a while until we're both out of breath. He gives me a pat on the
back. The band kicks off an alkaline trio cover. I begin to
completely lose my shit. Shouting the words to the song from the
audience I let the wildness take over. This moment is fucking
perfect. I am in shock and disbelief at the fact that I had never
heard this band.
In all of my time going to smaller live shows I have never met so many people who share with me their experiences and conversation. No one judges me when I admit that I haven't heard of certain bands, read up on certain philosophies, or seen certain films. They simply express an excitement at the opportunity to introduce me to something. Everybody was welcoming and warm, and they took me under their wings allowing me to immerse myself. An alien on a foreign planet. Captain Chaos was no super hero, nor villain tonight. She allowed the heroes of the scene to emerge and show her the way. She was the one who called out for help and she was rescued. It became clear in an instant. Punk is not dead. Punk is never dead.
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