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