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.