Two big-ticket parties at El Rio on one big-ticket date!
First there’s the triumphant return of American Tripps to the Mission, which we mentioned yesterday. And then stick around as the sun starts to set for a thrilling night of distortion-drenched punk rock courtesy of Alaric, Crimson Scarlet, and my band La Corde! This is going to be our only show of the summer, so don’t say I didn’t warn you when you’re suffering from withdrawal sometime in September. Also, it’s going to be Alaric’s last show for a looooooong time, as they are taking a break to write and record a new record. Oh, and DJ Brown Amy from Hard French will be spinning records in between sets! Check out the details and tell your friends about it here.
Oh, and I almost forgot about the best part: We’re offering 2 FREE tickets to BOTH events for whoever can come up with the best story in the comments about the craziest punk rock show they ever attended, whether it happened at 924 Gilman, ABC No Rio, or even your mom’s basement. The contest ends at noon on Friday, and winners will be judged on merit.
See you there!
Without a doubt, the craziest punk show I ever attended was seeing Flipper (with special guest Krist Novoselic) play at Cafe Du Nord in 2006. All the band members (but Krist it seemed) were drunk off their faces — one guy actually pissed himself on stage. The audience started heckling them and one girl yelled, “I can play better than you!” The lead singer took her up on that and said, “Oh yea? Prove it!” So she climbed up on stage, grabbed a guitar, and showed them up. What a washed-up shitfaced mess.
That sounds like a brilliant show! Wish I had been there!
Go tonight. No Bone playing and Rocky on fry bread.
When I was 15, I lied to my parents and went to an Anti-Flag show at the Wilson Center in DC. The evening started with an already-almost-drunk friend of a friend (Justin) driving us from the suburbs to DC. At the show, a skinhead asked to borrow my friend’s (Mike) leather jacket to try it on. When he wouldn’t give Mike his jacket back, Justin then asked more forcefully. Long story short, the skinhead pulled out a fucking wrench, but Justin prevailed, albeit he ended up rather bloodied with a torn shirt. The band briefly stopped the show, and then gave Justin an Anti-Flag shirt to replace the torn bloodied rag that his former shirt had become.
That’s probably my craziest punk show experience, although I got the wind knocked out of me at my first show when I was 13 (Darkest Hour was playing).
The craziest show I ever attended was a Mentors show at the Berkeley Square. I was in high school at the time and had just *won tickets* for 2 via KALX to go see the show. I had absolutely no idea who the Mentors were. The opening band, Drunken Anti-Christ, took the stage before the Mentors with the lead singer egging on the audience, We’re not gonna start till we see some fucking blood!” The crowd took heed, busting heads with pool cues. My friend and I jumped onto the stage avoiding blows and roman candles hurdled into the pit. Multiple crime scene units were there before anyone knew it and, needless to say, no one got to see the Mentors play.
I went to see mayyors at el rincon a few years ago. The ohsees opened and dwyer kicked over and stomped on a bunch of pint glasses at the front of the stage for some reason, spraying the whole front area and stage with broken glass. No one moved it in between bands and as soon as the pit broke out for mayyors I saw this beautiful girl in the middle of it slip and fall, heading straight for the glass. I grabbed her before she could fall but i guess she thought I was trying to grope on her so she headbutted me really hard in the face.
This one time I was at a punk show and then I realized oh hey im not an angry 15 year old kid tired of being told to do his homework by his parents anymore and I left because punk sucks.
Cleveland Hardcore Fest 1996. Integrity headlined after a lot of mediocre music. They had a replacement drummer and sounded terrible. Midway through their set, they decide to hand the stage over to their ‘friends’….One Life Crew. OLC take the stage and yell ‘there are half hardcore kids here and half hippies….fuck the hippies…this is America baby, get the fuck out of my country!’. OLC then launches into one of their more xenophobic songs..’dirty fucking leeches, you must get out, don’t use this country for free handouts.’
Rich from NJ walks to the front of the stage and flips OLC off in a very animated fashion. All of OLC and a bunch of their friends clear the stage, surround Rich and begin beating him in a roving pile that moves around the entire venue destroying everything in its path (think cartoon bar fight: chairs, tables, fists, etc). People are screaming and crying, everyone is fighting, a few girls get punched in face, someone calls the cops. In the confusion, NJ Rich scrambles into the bathroom, climbs out of the window and escapes. The cops show up and tell a group of Canadian kids who are yelling about how much the US sucks to leave the country. We grab our merch, get into the van and get the hell out. A block away from the venue, one of the stop signs is tagged with “Clevo Clan Stay the Fuck Out of NYC”. I don’t think any of the Integrity/OLC crew came East for more than a decade after that. As a result of the fight, OLC was immediately kicked off of Victory records. I bought all remaining OLC merch from Victory’s distro and made good money selling it to French hardcore kids on ebay.
my best Gilman show: Spazz and Dystopia (’97 or ’98)
my best ABC No Rio show: Stratford Mercenaries (feat members of Crass and Buzzcocks…’97 or ’98)
Alaric rules.
you are my hero. That clevo story is amazing and painfully believable. I saw Stratford Mercenaries on that same tour at the Che Cafe in San Diego
The most insane show I went to was a benefit with Discordance Axis, Converge, Catharsis & Cave In.
Not exactly punk, punk but anyway. It was in Philly at Stalag 13 a rundown garage on Lancaster Ave.
Even though I don’t care for them much anymore Converge were crazy. There was no stage and the place was packed. Kurt would swing his guitar around his neck then throw the guitar out at people and catch it on the DUN DUNs. He was seriously battering people in their faces. I was almost strangled by finger points and Jacob took his mic threw it into the crowd, it wrapped around some guys neck. Then he began to run down the stage and the mic cord flew off the guys head… the guy had 7 ear piercings and some of them came off. When they stopped playing and people cleared away there was seriously blood all over the place. It was a mess.
Best show ever: Stalag 13 in 1997. Spazz, His Hero Is Gone, Brutal Truth, Black Army Jacket, Atom and His Package. That show was brutal too because back then it was a no no to mosh for some reason. Some crusty punk was a little drunk running into people, the lights went out and when they came back on, crusty’s face was beat in.
I think we crossed paths at some point
It was 79 I think, I skating from my house on 27th and California downtown. I was with my kung fu and skateboard master Crazy John. When we got to Fillmore where the circular overpass was he had me go backwards on my board. After that we hit the hills to Broadway Tunnel. Once there he had me go backwards again. I made most of it before wiping out. My board went into the road but didn’t get run over. He got me in the show under age and I ended up with a broken nose and a memory for life.
Dead Kennedy’s.
My older brother took me to see Black Flag at Parody Hall in Kansas City back in the late 70′s, crazy shit for a first show.
keith morris 4ever!
The craziest punk show I ever saw was a 12 year old girl and saw Avril Lavigne. (Obviously a time machine and sex change were involved.)
I was a sophomore in high school, so it must have been 1983 when I saw the Butthole Surfers for the very first time. They were playing a double bill with Black Flag, and at the time, I didn’t realize how strange this billing was.
I had a couple pieces of Butthole Surfers vinyl–some EPs that included “Live PCPPEP” which had my then-favorite song to play really loud, “BBQ Pope”.
The show was in Sacramento’s Convention Center, in a room that was normally used for trade shows. There was a stage set up in a corner of the huge hall, and about 500 slam-dancing (this was before the Age of Mosh) Sact0 punks showed up. It was all ages, and there was no alcohol, but my friends had industriously snuck in our #1 punk rock liquor of choice, Peppermint Schnapps.
I was enjoying a minty buzz by the time the Surfers took the stage. This was before they had the dual naked drummers (I got to see that spectacle 3 years later on Halloween at The Farm). Gibby was the focus, and for a good part of the show, a blinding strobe light flashed, and I started getting hypnotized–good thing I wasn’t epilectic.
During one of their last songs, Gibby grabbed a giant stuffed panda bear, ripped off the head, and started throwing handfuls of the fluffy filling out over the crowd. With the massively loud volume, general weirdness, and the strobe light going, this was a rather mind-bending effect of jerky stop-motion snow coming from a headless bear.
I’d never taken drugs before, and, ears ringing, I left the building feeling totally high. I imagined that this must be what acid or shrooms was like…and I found out 3 years later that I was pretty much correct.
I consider my taste in music to be quite broad, and thus now including punk rock and pop punk music sounds as well. Thanks to my now boyfriend who has been a die hard punk for life. A few years ago, we went to see the Star Fucking Hipsters at Thee Parkside. My first official punk show. I woke up the next morning with a note to myself at my bedside… Things I learned at a punk show, at my first fucking punk show. (clearly a few jameson and gingers had been had by the time I found a pen & paper) 1) Avoid the center. 2) keep your elbows up 3) avoid the front 4) bring kleenex for bloody nose 5) drink more whiskey.
Needless to say, It may not have been my craziest punk show but it was a nice introduction.
I don’t know about the craziest show, but this was definitely memorable.
1) Colostomy Bag, Gehenna and Fall Silent sometime around ’98/’99 at the Che Cafe in San Diego. During Fall Silent’s set some guy was getting a little crazy in the pit (this is the HxC kung-fu glory days remember) and bumps into Mike Cheese’s (lead singer of Gehenna and a seriously crazy mother fucker) girlfriend. Mike whispers something into the guys ear. Five minutes later same sort of thing happens with the same guy and Mike whispers something again, the guy just shrugs him off and Mike out of no where punches him in the face and then grabs him by the head and does the thumbs in the eyeballs move. The place goes crazy as everyone is trying to break-it up/get in on the violence. Mike will not let go of the guy and there are honestly four or five guys unsuccessfully trying to separate them. Fall Silent stops playing for a bit while the fight is going on, then in the middle of the pandemonium they bust into and epic cover of “Any Way You Want It”. HxC cover of a Journey song in the middle of a crazy fight = awesome show.
Story #1… About 15 years ago, my girlfriend at the time (who didn’t even listen to punk) and i went to see FYP at Gilman. Between bands i went outside to meet her for a smoke. She was talking to some older guy, who i recognized as Jello Biafra. I never cared for DK, so i didn’t bother with the whole, “Hey! Aren’t you…??” They were talking about real estate – he was saying he had just bought a house in Emeryville or something. About 10 minutes later, FYP was starting, so we told him we were going to head back in. “Yeah, you should get in there,” he said – then with a snarky look, “I hear JELLO BIAFRA’s in there!” She didn’t get the reference. I just rolled my eyes. What a self absorbed putz. Inside, FYP was w.a.s.t.e.d. but still playing a tight, fast set. At one point, during a guitar solo, Todd leaned over his guitar and puked all over the stage – amazingly not missing a note! Moral of the story, FYP rules, Biafra drools.
Story #2… I saw the Criminals and Against All Authority at Bottom of the Hill, and danced so hard to AAA, i pooped my pants. And kept dancing. The end.
thanks for all the great stories! a winner has been chosen and notified, but i hope that everyone else can make it too!