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Photo of the high-flyin' Invertebrates by the legend Chris Boarts-Larson.
It’s been a super busy week for me with virtually no time sitting by the turntable, so I don’t have a proper staff pick for you, but I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to anyway. Of course it all revolves around music anyway. I am who I am, as Popeye wisely said.
I went to see the Briefs play in Raleigh a few days before I wrote my last staff pick, but I didn’t mention it last week. I love the Briefs! I’ve mentioned them in the newsletter a few times and Jeff wrote a whole staff pick about them a few years ago, but this was only the second time I’d seen them live. The first time was well over 20 years ago, when I drove down to Charlotte to watch them play an all-too-brief (LOL!) set opening for the Real McKenzies. I had no idea who the Real McKenzies were going in, and that was… something. Anyway, the Briefs were visibly older than the last time I saw them and had swapped out a few members, but they still sounded great. My favorite Briefs record is Off the Charts, so I was pleased that we got several songs off that, including my favorite, “Ain’t It the Truth.” I hadn’t revisited the Briefs’ catalog in a while so it wasn’t fresh in my mind, and throughout their set I kept thinking, “oh yeah, THIS song!” A great way to spend a Monday night.
On Friday afternoon I drove up to Richmond to catch a screening of Jawbreaker, the documentary film about Anti-Cimex. I have several friends who had seen the movie and they all told me they enjoyed it, but that it wasn’t what you might expect from an Anti-Cimex documentary. So I went into the screening with tempered expectations and left very pleasantly surprised. It seems like there isn’t much killer footage of the band that survives, so you don’t get anything like a visual equivalent of the sensory assault of listening to Anti-Cimex’s records. However, I thought the movie did a good job of exploring what made the band tick. You get well-developed portraits of each member (they were an interesting conglomeration of personalities, something I knew nothing about before the film) and they talked a lot about the philosophy and intent behind Anti-Cimex’s music. I’m very happy to have seen the movie, and even happier the money I paid for admission to the screening went directly to the filmmakers rather than some shitty streaming service.
Despite the fact that I was sick (I’m pretty sure I was running a fever during the Cimex movie… apologies to anyone I had close contact with!), I stayed in Richmond another day to catch the homecoming show of the big Public Acid / Invertebrates tour. I’m not sure if I mentioned it in the newsletter, but a crew of Raleigh folks drove down to Charlotte a few weeks ago to catch the first date of the tour, so I got to see both the first and last shows. I was curious if there would be any change or development over the weeks, but both Invertebrates and Public Acid were exactly the same amount of killer on the last date as they were on the first. They have achieved maximum rippage and there’s just nowhere to go from there. Alongside the returning heroes we also got sets from Ultimate Disaster (who played several new songs, I believe), Destruct, and K.O.S., making for an insanely stacked lineup on which everyone thoroughly delivered. The show sold out, and all the bodies packed into the venue on a hot August night made the place a real sauna. I bought over $40 worth of Liquid Death beverages at the bar and my clothes were soaked through with sweat by the end of the night. Still, there’s no way I’d rather spend my time than going to a gig this great.
I got a short, one-day break before K.O.S. landed in Raleigh for their gig here. There was a low-energy, Monday-night vibe hanging in the air, but I thought the bands were really good and KOS pummeled. While I was scared to get too close to them in Richmond for fear of being moshed into oblivion, I got to stand right against the stage and get blasted with sound at the Raleigh gig. K.O.S. are master craftspeople of d-beat, and they do it so well they make it look easy. But when you listen closely you realize how much they mix up tempos, song structures, and arrangements to keep the energy level so high and how precise their playing is, like the way they use volume pedals to switch instantly from silence to full-frontal noise assault in perfect unison. Much like Destruct, K.O.S. sweats the details in order to make their chaotic, noisy hardcore hit with maximum impact, and their care shows. They’re one of the most crushing hardcore bands you can see live in our day and age.
So yeah, that’s my week. I still haven’t completely shaken off the sickness that was bugging me at the Cimex movie, so after I get the newsletter out tonight I’m looking forward to finally getting a decent night’s sleep. So, until next week…