Never change...

..whatever you do. I like noisy, fucked up punk rock music. I have for a very long time. Last night I was a participant in providing such entertainment and I had a blast doing so. The show in question was The Points (wailing above), The Hydeouts, and my band jack leg (page coming soon upon us doing some long overdue recording). The venue Tanner's Creek is a little seafood restaurant just around the corner from my house that seems pretty popular with the Norfolk police. It is an extremely informal place to have a show which adds to its DIY punk aesthetic. Tables and chairs are piled up out of the way and bands set up in front of a non-functioning fireplace surrounded by assorted nautical art on the walls. A primitive PA takes care of vocals only (barely) and its otherwise its a "run what you brung" affair. The only reason we even played was cause Bob loves The Points and made the calls to the show promoter and The Hydeouts to get us on the bill only a week ago. Pretty dang punk to start out and reminded me of throwing together house parties years ago where bands would just kinda show up with their crap and play to a bunch of partying fools. Same deal last night, as Tanners feels like you are in someones dinning room doing something you are not supposed to. No hoopla, backstage, or attitudes; everybody helps set up/breakdown and does their thing without any real schedule or rules. The sound is pretty lousy, but no one really cares; the small crowds are predominately people from the bands and their close friends.

jack leg kicked off on our 10 PM start time promptly at 10:40 and tore through our set of reckless originals and covers. We added a cool kooky cat named John on bass since our last outtings and he has filled out our sound tremendously. Everybody seemed to dig it despite some technical difficulties and random squirrel tossing. The Hydeouts were up next and blasted a huge wall-o-guitar sound that for me was reminiscent of The Dead Boys and "Kick Out the Jams" era MC5

We all really liked them and look forward to doing some more shows with those guys.

The Points who came down from DC started their show with some silly tape loops of the Ghostbusters theme and Darth Vader's score from Star Wars. They then tore into their nitro-fueled sound that has a cool mix of screeching guitar, no wave keyboard droning and machine-gun drumming. They barely stopped for even a second between songs which made many of them tend to blur together, but their signature number "Rock N Roll, No Rules" was recognizable and ripped. The Points shear intensity made up for any lack of dynamics; they were mesmerizing not unlike watching a car crash. They were all very cool to boot.

Overall it was a great show. It was not crowded, but everyone there seemed to be into it. Every band sounded very different too. I am not going get nostalgic for my days of youth; fuck that. This is the new deal now; yeah Rock N Roll No Rules!