5-4 Pains of Being Pure at Heart

I really hate The Local 506 for no real reason. I like that they don't allow smoking where the bands play, but hate the lighting, think the sound is only mediocre, and the membership thing has always been a bust for me. That being said, I was really excited about seeing The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.
It's been 2 months since the show, so I don't remember the opener, but I do remember that I got the first Voxtrot 7" at CD Alley across from the venue before they played. Score on a $100 7" for three bucks.





lot's and LOT'S of fender->holy grail->twin reverb, and it was cute as FUCK.

More Here

LONG HAUL without an update:

It's been FOR-FUCKING-EVER without an update in here because I moved, had a bunch of funerals to go to, went to a graduation, went to vegas, helped lila move to Boston, and kept it punk...

Pictures that will be up soon:
-Pains of Being Pure at Heart
-Loser Life
-Grids/Meth Mountain Greensboro trip
-Noise shit at Bay Street house
-Polvo/Des_ark

4/25 Hawks/Thank God/Grids

This show was in Atlanta, and was meant to be a three day jaunt with the three bands playing in each of their hometowns. A mini-tour if you will.
Columbia fell through because Thank God didn't want to play shows too close together, which worked out well for everyone. Thank God got to record in Columbia on Sunday, while Grids recorded in Charlotte, and Hawks hung out in town.

I only really have pictures from Hawks' set, because during the other bands I was either playing, partying, or trying to not have my camera destroyed. Pictures from their set:

Dan Smith got so belligerently drunk throughout the weekend that I can honestly say, I will never drink.




I wish I could take pictures well enough to document exactly what Hawks shows look like. This is as close as I can get. There needs to be people on top of the camera, and everything has to smell like beer for it to be closer.


put your trust in men
Thank God was great. I haven't listened to their new split lp, but this band is just unrelenting. Maybe the loudest band I've ever seen, definitely some of the coolest people I've met.
Also, there is this band called Yardwork, and, by some crazy fate of god, we ended up playing at a house whose back lawn was right next to the venue they were playing that night. With Yardwork and Grids out of town, who the fuck was left in Charlotte? (please understand this is a joke)


so, the trip was eventful as fuck, and I'm not really sure if I want to, but I'm going to put some pictures from the trip because it's hard to really put the show into context without a little help.

Grids+dansmith+stew left for Atlanta from Charlotte at midnight. what the fuck were we thinking.

everyone had sword fights with some swords. swords swords

sword fighting in the street led to this

portraits




look at how happy it makes Helen to hit Bobby and Stew. What a sick fuck


Link to the rest of the photos in this set

Vivian Girls-April 5th

Everyone at Penalty Box decided to head up to Chapel Hill and Local 506 to see Vivian Girls and Ariel Pink, but none of us really cared about seeing the latter. I really enjoyed the Vivian Girls lp and all the 7"s, but saw them right before the record came out and they sucked. The trip ended up being really fun, we ate cheap burritos, saw some bands, and listened to John Joseph's book again.
The pictures turned out really poorly, but I wasn't really hoping for anything and was excited just to see Vivian Girls play a good show.





Going to see Brian Jonestown Massacre tomorrow in Asheville. Probably no pictures from there. I should spend more time at punk shows and less at nonpunk shows

Thorns of Life "Live at Gilman"

I'm really excited this exists, and meant to put it online earlier but forgot.
Aaron Cometbus, Black Schwarzenbach, and the girl from The L Word start a band called Thorns of Life, and it turns out, the songs are actually really good.


This is really great and if they don't tour, I very well may fly west for a weekend or something.

Mediafire Link

Masshysteri In Raleigh 3/21/09

I'm fucking moving to Sweden. Fuck American punk, those guys got it right.
Masshysteri is better than The Vicious, I said it. This is really late, but that's because I'm busy and time is money.






Rest of the Pictures are Here

Big house show saturday at sandbar.

All The Saints at The Milestone

I didn't take pictures of Grids or These Arms are Snakes and I'm sure everyone knows how great the latter was. Grids played well I guess, opening at the milestone is kind of rough, especially on a show when everything starts on time.
The Coathangers though, well they fucking sucked. If those girls weren't mildly attractive no one would give a shit. The first song they played sounded like the theme to Alvin and the Chipmunks. Complete garbage. I've heard the records and always just kind of thought they were another garagey band that I didn't care about, but fuck were they bad live. And they're on Suicide Squeeze now!?

So, I really like All The Saints. I'm glad I got a copy of their record, I'm glad I got to see them, and I'm glad it fucking ruled. I wish the pictures turned out better, but I'm not going to waste time photoshoping anything, so this is what they looked like to me through a viewfinder.



Dude destroyed a perfectly good Univox. Triple humbuckers and everything...


The Milestone is my favorite venue in the world. I will never get tired of Andy, Jonathan, Neal, Philip and everyone else there.

Link to the rest of the pictures

Chronic Youth at Yau Haus March 20th

On April 12th last year Grids was supposed to play Yau Haus with Church of the Snake and Calabi Yau but Rick went on tour with this giant tour and we had to cancel our first show. It sucked, but it meant that the first Grids show was at a huge party for bobby graduating college and was one of the best nights of my life. So, after almost a year of procrastination, we finally played at Yau Haus.
The place has been a staple in Charlotte's music scene for a few years and honestly, between Bo, Neal, Scott, Chris (both of them) and Josh, Charlotte wouldn't be as fun as it is right now. Those 6 people have done more for Charlotte than I'll ever be able to thank them for.
So this show was kind of a big deal to me. I've seen a bunch of rad bands at the haus. I've been to more than one "last yau haus" shows. I saw vivian girls play the shittiest set ever. I missed a lot of cool stuff too. Whatever, the haus rules and I was excited to play this show.
Reverser played first, but I don't have any pictures. They were much better than the first time I saw them. I think they're finally settling into playing live and starting to loosen up. Scott is relentless on the drums and the guitar player is tight as fuck.
Chronic Youth were a band that I had built up to people without properly hearing. I just knew that they brought a wall of complete and utter noise, and since people had been really into The New Flesh and Drunkdriver that they would go over pretty well. It was 8 minutes of fucking unrelenting, ear-blasting noise. Someone described it as powerviolence without the bullshit and with more noise. Lila said she couldn't tell what was going on. It was awesome.


For some reason this really shows what the set was like in my mind. A fucking blur of sound and sight.


Link to the rest of the pictures

New Grids Practice Space

Drunkdriver 7"

So, I promise I won't do this too often, and I'll stick to pictures, but this record is great.
for fans of rock'n'roll that is noisy, and people that are into lo-fi recordings but understand that there has to be good music under all the bullshit.


you can buy it here:
Fan Death Records

or read a better review, and download it here:
Icoulddietomorrow

listen to it, buy it, it's great.

Rosemont Apartment Show

This was the first show for Meth Mountain and the first punk show for the rosemont apartments. The place holds insane parties every year for 4th of July and New Years. They're pretty infamous for their slip'n'slides, volcanoes, and colorful alcoholic beverages, so I was pumped to see what a show would be like at the place.
It ended up being really fun, after Meth Mountain and Grids played, Logic Problem "set up", which really consisted of changing out cymbals and cables. The place was so fucking packed and tiny that changing out stuff just wasn't practical, and Grids' somewhat big cabinets ended up looking like a wall of amps.

Logic Problem played really fast, and WAY better than they have the last two times in charlotte. I didn't know that bands from Raleigh ever took their time to come down to our struggling little city, but they've put on a fantastic show every time, and every time people have partied out for them.





Lowbrow just keeps getting better. The intro was a little too long for me, but that was probably because I found 2 sunkist in my bag right before they played, and was way wired on orange soda caffeine.




Show ruled, new place rules, Brandon rules for setting this up, Zach, Steven, and everyone else that live there rule for not caring about their crazy apartment parties, and everyone there ruled for coming out.
Charlotte has shows...

Hawks, Grids, Reverser

I was super excited about this show, then was a little bummed that there weren't infinity people there, but the turnout was decent and Hawks got paid.
Reverser played first, and given it was only their second show I was really impressed, but then remembered they'd been practicing for like, a year, and was still mildly impressed. I would say there was too much 90's worship, except that they are all over 30 so it's less worship and more rekindling.


Hawks is fucking phenomenal. I don't think I'll ever get enough of this band. Band rules, record rules, live rules, dudes rule(s). Grids is playing three dates with them and Thank God in April and I"m getting excited about it already.
It was hard to get good pictures of them because we turned out all the store lights, but whatever. you get the point.

levi has a glow stick mustache




as for the Grids set, we played probably the sloppiest set we've ever played, my amp was sounding like farts and shorting out, the new bass cabinet sounded awesome, and because bobby likes Hawks as much as I do, he was completely obliterated, as is obvious here:


more pictures from this show can be found here:
Penalty Box Flickr

also, the house now has this: