how can a band with such a cool name suck with such mediocrity?so lapoint and i went and saw the Angry Samoans tonight @ Bottom of the Hill. actually, to be more accurate, we actually went because lapoint’s co-worker Ed plays bass in the first opening band, Officer Down. seeing a classic punk rock band that was conceived before I was… pretty neat on paper, at least. its been awhile since id last really been into the whole punk rock show circuit, so needless to say, excitement was stirring.
the atmosphere was all too familiar, upon entering the venue. i started getting flashbacks, that bittersweet sting of nostalgia that sucks all the air right out of your soul for a second and then vomits it back in…. ah, pleasant.
so many good memories of stomping ass at Nerve Agents shows, getting mangled and shoved amongst vacant hordes of stud-belted skaters, pomp-haired tattooed betty page wannabe’s, crusty gutter mohawks, morbidly obese 15 year old girls who very obviously worship Hot Topic…. and sweating the night away, wishing to God that i hadn’t worn so many layers into a full-capacity canopy of smelly prepackaged rebellion.
Officer Down, of course, kicked ass. Ed wasn’t too pleased with his personal performance, but the band really basically gave me and lapoint our 10 bucks’ worth. there is something about them that cannot be found in most modern punk bands anymore… a raw badass-ness, punchy chord progressions and lyrical subject matter that would make Jello Biafra look like a SpongeBob episode. (i’ll give you a hint, most of the songs are about how much they hate cops).
the magic that was down ended all too quickly, but that is basically where the annoying “fun” kind of began. i say fun in quote marks, because even though the rest of the gig was really crappy, it was still pretty entertaining. next up was a fledgling screamo band that literally got booed off the stage at the end of their set. i almost felt bad for them, because i could tell they all worked really hard to sound that tight at playing music that nobody likes. it was just a severely bad case of mis-matched booking, which incidentally is not the FIRST time it has happened @ Bottom of the Hill… when Hot Challenge played at B.O.T.H., the other two opening bands were laughably incongruent. but i digress.
the angry samoans finally took the stage, and were all pretty much the oldest people in the entire room. they were entertaining at first… it is very amusing to watch a buncha dudes that could very well be old enough to be my great-grandpa try and attempt to rock out hella hard. they were everything that i’d come to expect from an early-80’s punk band…. shitty sound, not caring about how shitty the sound is, a lot of useless and unfunny banter, and songs so primitive and short that cavemen could probly buy all their records for a self-esteem boost. the singer kept changing shirts during the set, which usually consisted of old kid’s tshirts such as sponge bob or sesame street characters, but with a loud “ANGRY SAMOANS” logo screened over it. pretty hilarious in concept, but again, why change shirts every 4 songs when there is music to be played? i was getting annoyed.
long story short, lapoint and i left after hearing them plow through at least 30 songs in just as many minutes… at one point i even busted out my cell phone’s stop watch to convince myself to stay entertained. and plus i was almost curious as to how long a typical AS song was. as a core idea, for instance, “Homosexual” clocked in at a whopping 55 seconds. of the 35 songs or so that i heard, i would say most of them were barely 55 seconds long. it sounds really hilarious, but honestly it just kind of sucked after awhile.
without a doubt in my mind, i spent that 10 bucks in full support of Officer Down. i suppose it was a nice bonus that i got to see an “important” band from that era of punk that i will never be a part of, and it was even more hilarious to hear the entire crowd mercilessly picking apart the screamo band, that seriously poured their fragile little hearts into the performance, punished simply for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Bottom of the Hill, btw, seriously is such a Gen-X monument, its not even funny.
That was a fun night, dude. I love Officer Down!
Comment by Captain Krunk — February 7, 2008 @ 3:01 pm