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:

Awesome show THIS TUESDAY!

tuesday night at the lunchbox recordz.



GRIDS
HAWKS
REVERSER


just a reminder, I know everyone will be there....

Insurgence Fest

I'm going to try to stay away from using this as a personal blog, but this is almost bordering on it...
So Grids and Obstruction headed up to Conover to play Insurgence Fest. Luke from Gut Fux decided to do an all day thing with all of the bands Robby liked in memorial of his death a few weeks ago.
The show was kind of a bust, but we showed up super late when everyone was already passed out or off in the woods fucking. Planet Piss had an outrageous set, but other than that I didn't really see any bands, we were busy exploring.

Really the only reason I'm making this post is because after the show everyone ate at waffle house and got way sick. It started when Joe said "if you throw up, I'm going to throw up" to josh, which instigated him to throw up. Then Joe threw up all over the side of the van going 70:

which caused Rick to throw up all over the side of the van going 70:


Then we pulled over and everyone just threw up everywhere. puke fest '09



It was a stupid night.

Also, Hawks is playing here next week and they put out, hands down, the most impressive record I've heard this year.