various artists - Live From The Masque: Dicks Fight Banks Hate

I guess this'll make three L.A. posts in a row.

I remember seeing these at the top of a shelving section at Best Buy back in '96. At the time, when your resources as an 18-year-old in suburban Baltimroe were essentially what issues of MRR, Profane Existence, and HeartattaCk you could lay hands on, these sort of things stood out. But then I flipped the cover over, and only recognized that band that covered the Banana Splits theme. And weren't they on A&M? So how could this be anything good.

Ah, capricious youth.

One of four releases on the short-lived Year One Records, this comp is home to four sets of first wave Los Angeles punk rock legends. All recorded live at the legendary Masque, February 24 & 25, 1978. I cannot even imagine going to a basement and getting to see the Dickies, Eyes, Randoms, and Black Randy and the Metrosquad. What a mind fuck. What a righteous time. What a glorious time to be alive.

I'll keep my eyes peeled for the other two releases in this "Live From The Masque" series.

Discogs

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various artists - Yoyo A Go Go

It's been a few years since I last posted anything from Pat Maley's Yoyo Recordings. But it's been thirty years since the first Yoyo A Go Go, and since I'm less than 80 miles away, as opposed to the 2,800 or so that I was back then, I thought it was time to pay this one a visit, and share it with you fine peep-holes.

Let me tell you what I recollect about this time. I was listening to my cassette of International Piop Underground Convention a lot in the spring of 1994, so when I heard that something similar was going to take place that summer...well, I didn't give it a ton of thought, because how was I going to go from Boones Mill, Virginia to magical Olympia? Especially since I found out a few weeks before school ended that we were leaving the sticks for suburban Baltimore,

But it was definitely intriguing. And, in retrospect, a little bit gumption could have gotten me out there on a four-day Greyhound with more than a few of my hard-earned Taco Bell dollars in my pocket. And who would I have seen? Unwound, Heavens to Betsy, Excuse 17, and Team Dresch remain the big names for me, even this far down the line. How cool would it have been to see Codeine, or Cub, or two thirds of Yo La Tengo, or Neutral Milk Hotel? Would I have even been into it back then? Or would it have been one of those moments I would have only appreciated in retrospect?

I suppose it's better to regret something you have done, rather than somehing you haven't done. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get up in someone's face and scream "SATAN!" over and over again.

Discogs

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The Mummies / Supercharger - Live At Cafe The Pit's

Once you reach the fourth year in a row, you're kinda obliged to keep a thing going.

So Happy Halloween, you maniacs. Thanks for stopping by, downloading some jams, and occasionally leaving a comment. It's the Mummies...LIVE, along with fellow garage enthusiasts Supercharger, in a Belgian club you can still visit.

Discogs

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Elvin Jones "Special Quartet" – Tribute To John Coltrane: A Love Supreme

I may not believe in God, but I do believe that "A Love Supreme" is sacred music.

Here's drummer Elvin Jones' recreating one of my most treasured recordings with Wynton Marsalis rearranging the music for trumpet. It never got released here in the States; this is an EU release.

It ranks fourth of my list of recordings of "A Love Supreme".

Discogs

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シェラック - Live In Tokyo

Shellac of North America record no. 5. A full blown banger that was released in Japan by K.K. Null's home, Nux Organization, and one that only ever came Stateside via bootlegs. This was ripped from my own bootleg copy of the Nux release. I would argue I prefer it over "At Action Park", but I think it's because I tend to get contrarian about Shellac. Which is what I assume esteemed poker player Mr. Albini would prefer.

I learned today, in between boxing up a bunch of CDs and watching the entire first season of "Reacher", that the founder of [shiny grey monotone], Ipecac, died in 2021. To quote his running mate Grey:

I feel an obligation to carry on in his honor because as goofy as blogging about music can be, it meant a lot to him, and the power of music is real. Harnessing these seemingly magical currents out of thin air in a way that makes music really is beguiling, and even after punishing my ears with it for decades, I still find the same thrill in hearing just the right combination of sounds. It will never cease to amaze.

Whenever I feel like stopping the writing permanently, I end up coming across another goddamned record like this, and I'm drawn to a very similar emotion as that which Grey refers to above. It is a solopistic, quixotic gesture to keep blogging for free about relatively obscure recordings in 2022. Yet I must, because there's someone who hasn't experienced this magical moment, captured 29 years ago and thousands of miles away, and to keep that magic to myself would be a sin.

Discogs

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Tori Amos - Europe 1992

Rabbit, rabbit, old friends. Welcome to March 2022. Apparently, I only remember to wish you a "Rabbit, Rabbit" every March.

Here's some live Tori Amos from 1992...just here, a piano, a German audience, songs from "Little Earthquakes", and a pair of Zep and Nirvana covers. I found this a couple years back on a Goodwill shelf for $3, and who am I to turn down a Tori Amos bootleg for $3? Who are you to turn it down, for that matter? You think you're too good for 30-year-old alternative rock, back when that meant something?

OK, I'll calm down now.

Discogs

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John Coltrane - My Favorite Things (Live In Europe 1963)

I don't have much to say about this recording other than the following:

• Here's John Coltrane's classic quartet (Coltrane, Garrison, Jones, Tyner) performing live in Europe circa 1963...at least, that's what the spare information inside this quasi-legit release says
• This was a purchase from Bibelot Books & Music in Bel Air, MD, circa 1996, shortly after I got my first copy of A Love Supreme and fell deeply in lust with the rare musician worthy of their own church. I totally thought it was a budget copy of My Favorite Things...I didn't know better
• It's a pair of songs originally cut during Coltrane's excellent Atlantic run, as well as a deeper cut from his recording with the Red Garland Trio (1958, Prestige Records). I'm not Bob Thiele or Rudy van Gelder, but this shows Coltrane's quartet moving further away from bop sounds and into modal jazz mode
• This beats the hell out 99.9% of the records in my collection, even if it's a cruddy Euro live CD from the 90s with dodgy provenance

I would LOVE to hear more about this actual recording, if you're more of a scholar than I am.

Discogs

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The Geraldine Fibbers - Live At The Bottom Of The Hill

I'm not sure how some 90s A&R at Virgin heard the Geraldine Fibbers and imagined a future where they'd top the charts, or even appeal to a larger audience. But I dig it...the same way I dig the Gun Club and Flesh Eaters. And maybe (almost definitely) that "cowpunk" tag is technically incorrect, but fiddle songs for us art-damaged weirdos should fit under that nebulous subgenre.

This here was an American promo-only release, coming on the heels of the G.F.'s 1996 album, Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home. Recorded live at San Francisco's The Bottom Of The Hill, this never got a retail version, which is a shame, because while the recording feels flat at times, it was the recording that finally broke through to me on behalf of Ms. Bozulich and co.

It didn't help me avoid run-on sentences, though.

Discogs

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Tomita ‎- Live At Linz, 1984 (The Mind Of The Universe)

It's the fifth of the month, and the rent still due, but let's look to the future, shall we?

In a step away from my normal fare of "three chords and the truth" (let's be fair, it's more "two chords, a blast beat, and an haiku"), I thought I'd share a recent obsession. It's Japanese electronic artist and composer Isao Tomita, whose back catalog is mostly, sadly and unfairly out of print here in the States. Now, I'm not a streamer, so I've no clue if you can just whip up something like his recording of Holst's "The Planets" on Spotify. But I've turned up a few of his recordings on vinyl, CD, and tape recently, and I think it's worth checking into.

Brian Eno (rightfully) gets a lot of credit for originating/popularizing ambient music, but Tomita contemporaneously served as a counterpart to Eno and Wendy Carlos, bringing synthesized sounds to the music listening public in the 60s and 70s. Tomita composed music for Japanese gymnasts and anime soundtracks, adapted composers like Mussorgsky and Holst, and made a record of 60s pop and rock standards...basically as a Quadrophonic demo for Sony. Without knowing it, I heard his music first as a kid, watching "Star Gazers" and hearing him adapt Debussy for the theme song. Hell...he even did the theme for the "Zaitoichi" TV series.

ANYHOWWWWWWW...

In September 1984, Tomita performed live at the Ars Electronica festival on the bank of the River Danube in Linz, Austria. The program was nothing but bangers: Holst, Stravinsky, Wagner, Vaughan Williams. Even John Williams' theme from "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" made an appearance. It's a pretty awesome concert, the sort of thing that you could play a kid and made them fall in love with composition and the classical tradition. I wish I'd heard it in full when I was 8...or seen it live.

RCA hasn't reissued this anywhere since 1991, which I think sucks. See for yourself. I assume, as a purveyor of the finer things in life, like 20-minute long records with 30 songs, and forgotten Italian giallo movies, you'll probably dig this.

Discogs

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Stiff Little Fingers - Live In Sweden

I have a minor itch.

Turned this one up in one of my regular go-tos for the princely sum of one dollar American. It's quite a find, considering it'd run me around $40 to snag a copy from Discogs. Here's Jake and the boys, in their first bootleg appearance, dating from the days between the release of "Inflammable Material" and "Nobody's Heroes". So, you know, the good stuff.

Originally released as a white label 12" titled "Christmas Album" back in 1981, this CD pressing of 1,000 units dates from 1989, on the short-lived, well-named Limited Edition Records. It also got a vinyl pressing of 2,000 pieces on a really sweet looking opaque green.

Enjoy the boys from Belfast in one of their earliest, liveliest lineups.

Discogs

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Motörhead ‎– No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith

The old joke goes, "Who'd win in a fight: Lemmy, or God?" "Trick question: Lemmy IS God!" I heard it for the first time when I saw "Airheads", where Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, and Adam Sandler cover a Reagan Youth song while Michaels McKean and Richards chew the scenery. A fine film, if you're asking.

One of the greatest (and loudest) shows I ever attended was Iron Maiden, Dio, and Motörhead: the sixth date of the American leg of the "Give Me Ed… 'Til I'm Dead World Tour". LIVE at Merriweather Post Pavilion in scenic Columbia, Maryland. I was finishing up college, working at a bar and trying to figure out what I was going to do with the next year of my life, when it was decided that the bar's ownership would treat us to tickets to this show. Now, I never grew up a metalhead, but everyone loves (or should love) Lemmy, and Philthy Animal Taylor all but invented D-beat, so I rented a van for the lot of us, put the only straight edger in our crew in charge of driving, and off we went. Just about everyone had tied one on before the show started; we staggered in as a wobbly group of a dozen punks, skins, and metal heads. It was still daylight when Motörhead hit the stage and absolutely PUMMELED us while we stood in the eighth row. I've never seen a room fill up so quickly once they started playing. By the end of their set, we were all agape, whether it was the first time or 20th time we'd seen them. We were just brutalized, regardless of our individual level of experience with the band. It was as good as feeling as the highest high, a state of euphoria I've not often reached.

Everything after that was just gravy. Dio was amazing (totally changed my opinion on him) and Maiden...well, Maiden was MAIDEN. They were great. But it was Motörhead that left the lasting impression. I went from being familiar to being a true fan, the kind that waxed poetic as each member of the classic trio passed along over the past ten years.

I'm not even sure if "No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith" is a fair representation of what I saw. After all, it was recorded over five nights between the release of "Ace Of Spades" and "Iron Fist", in the midst of their truly heroic run of releases on Bronze. Over 20 years would pass until I'd see them in the summer of 2003. But I'll be damned if it didn't earn its #1 chart position, via one of the greatest live albums of all time. The copy shared here is the Roadracer 1991 US reissue. It includes five live tracks that didn't appear on the initial Bronze release, four of which were released on 1980's "The Golden Years" EP. Two of those would be omitted from future pressings, so it's a nice version to pick up.

If Lemmy is God, and I'm told Lemmy is dead, than the corollary should be that God is dead. I prefer to believe that Mssrs. Kilmister, Clarke, and Taylor have all ascended to a higher plane, where they are now laying waste and teaching the true meaning of white line fever.

Discogs

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R.E.M. - Animal's Attactions

Here is another Italian bootleg I found at the Goodwill; this time, it's R.E.M.'s live appearance on MTV Unplugged in 1991 (minus a few songs from that session). I'll never cease to be amazed how these guys managed to become the biggest band in the world for a few years on the back of jangle pop and mandolin leads. It's pretty cool, when it gets right down to it.

I'm pretty sure this got overlooked at the store due to the AH-MAH-ZING cover art. DOGS IN HAWAIIAN SHIRTS?!? WHERE TO BEGIN? Who wouldn't regard this a legitimate release worth $3 plus tax?

Discogs

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Unwound - live at the Breakroom, 1999-10-26

Unwound (photo by J. Winterberg)

Back before it was Chop Suey, but after it was an auto parts store, 1325 E. Madison St. in Seattle was known as the Breakroom. I never went there, seeing as how I lived on the opposite coast, but I heard many a tale of it, since I booked a lot of WA state bands who played there. And when they'd play a show at the Ottobar or Talking Head, they'd inevitably bring up this spot that held around 200 people that they loved playing.

Unwound headlined there in the fall of 1999, supported by the relatively obscure (but well worth tracking down) Yind and the less obscure Hovercraft. Unwound was a year off the release of "Challenge For A Civilized World", and just starting to debut tracks that would appear on their final studio LP, "Leaves Turn You Inside Out". "Off This Century", "October All Over", and "Summer Freeze" pop up here, not fully fleshed out, but showing the powerful songwriting that'd be developed by the time "Leaves" came out 18 months later. "Laszlo" also turns up here; it wouldn't get its wax debut until Numero Group put the "Empire" retrospective until 2015.

All in all, a pretty great Unwound set. I dunno how you feel about them, but I've always thought they were pretty underrated, truth be told. Check for yourself.

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PJ Harvey - Black Monsoon

Remember when you'd have to ask the clerk to see the "live imports" in back?

I turn up some fun bootlegs from time to time. They're always in the middle of a bunch of thrift store crap: Elton John's mid-80s MCA CDs, Time/Life "as seen on TV" comps,  the "Spider-Man 3" soundtrack, a million copies of "Time Out". It's fun when they appear; you know you've done the right amount of digging to find that live recording that never got a proper release. Was it Pearl Jam's live series in 2001, coupled with the rise of the internet, that killed the physical bootleg release? I know I wouldn't pay a premium for a Nirvana live set any more when I could just download it for free from a blog. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

I turned up this copy of PJ Harvey's "Black Monsoon" a few month ago at a Goodwill where I regularly turn up quality. It'd been sitting there for a bit; I'm fairly certain I snagged it at 30% off the $2.99 sticker price, so it'd have had to be on the shelf for at least a month. It's a great slab; 5" and 75 minutes worth of Ms. Polly Jean at her greatest, on tour behind "To Bring You My Love", live in an old Art Deco theatre in Los Angeles late in 1995. "Love" was the last PJ Harvey record I bought new, on sale the week it came out for $14.99 at Camelot on CD. I'm sure it's because I got really into Sleater-Kinney at the same time that I lost track, but it's been nice to rediscover 25 years worth of her records in the interim.

Let the record show that I turned the $2.00 (or so) I spent on this into a $20 sale on Discogs, and subsequent Bandcamp purchase. Money well spent.

Discogs

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"Mississippi" Fred McDowell - Live At The Mayfair Hotel

I'm not sure why exactly it started, but I got it in my head recently that I was going to start collecting all the Infinite Zero Archive releases. For the uninitiated, Infinite Zero was an imprint that operated under American Recordings from 1994 to 1997, serving as a reissue label. The releases were chosen by Henry Rollins and Rick Rubin, a duo who, regardless of how you feel about their own music, have pretty fucking impeccable taste. I mean, if in 1994 you're going to launch with Devo, the Contortions, and Gang Of Four, you're WAY ahead of the curve.

So I've been slowly accumulating what I didn't already own. There are a couple of Alan Vega reissues, adrift in Postal Service limbo. I've had my eye on a copy of "Black Monk Time", not really wanting to drop $12 before Christmas on something for myself. And I snagged this lil 5" slab of aluminum last week, having appeared in a local record store for less than half what I would have paid online.

Fred McDowell was 55 (so the liner notes say) and had been playing the blues for nearly four decades when he was "discovered" and exposed to a greater audience by Alan Lomax in 1959. He was a master of slide guitar, an influence on the Rolling Stones, and a mentor to Bonnie Raitt. It was on his second trip to the UK that "Live At The Mayfair Hotel" was recorded. It's a nasty-ass record, with McDowell playing a biting electric guitar, so much heavier than his earlier Lomax field recordings or his sides for Arhoolie. "Live" had originally been released across two records on the eastern British blues/R&B label Red Lightnin' in the mid-80s, but was remixed and compiled together for the first time here.

I can't speak with any level of scholarship about the blues; I definitely don't have any authority on the subject. But I do know what I like, and I like this. I can hear the roots of Fat Possum on this record, of the Gun Club and the White Stripes. If you come across a copy in the wild, definitely snag it.

And, yeah, as I grab more of the Infinite Zero releases that are out of print. I'll post them up. It's only fair.

Discogs

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Hüsker Dü - live at First Avenue, 28 August 1985

This is another that I share courtesy of the always-outstanding [shiny grey monotone], whose link has expired, so hopefully they won't be too salty about me reposting. Their original post came two days after Grant Hart died. It's something I've wanted to bootleg ever since. Too bad I've been beat to the punch, like, a million times.

This is Hüsker Dü, playing on their own home turf of First Avenue in Minneapolis, August 1985, right before the release of "Flip Your Wig". The track list reflects this: leading off with the first three tracks from "Flip", then a mix of new cuts and tracks from "Zen Arcade" and "New Day Rising". Not bad at all. It was originally recorded/broadcast for Spin Radio. Volcano Suns and Bad Trip opened.

While I still prefer to listen to "New Day Rising", "Flip Your Wig" was my first ever Dü record, purchased on cassette from the back of a video store in Harford County circa 1994. So I have some very strong feels whenever I hear anything off the LP, remembering bombing around in my mom's Merkur after school, singing along with "Makes No Sense At All", smoking Jacks cigarettes I bought from the Wawa down the road from the house (99 cents a pack!), hating so much of my life even though I probably should have known it was all going to be ok.

Original post here.

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Thorns of Life - live at 924 Gilman St., 31 January 2009

Thorns of Life, live at 924 Gilman, 2009 (photo by Chris Shary)

I'm happy that Jawbreaker is a band again, although I really doubt I'll ever go see them. They were the Bucky Barnes of punk rock; they had died, and were never coming back...until they did. Which, you know, mazel tov. But I cannot separate my expectations with ready availability. Call it a moral failing. Who knows?

Instead, I revel in the static nature of old Jawbreaker records, and following the bands that each member went on to play in. Whether it was Chris in Horace Pinker, or Adam playing with the Baluyut brothers in Whysall Lane, it was fun seeing what happened as people moved on, but still made art. The first Jets to Brazil record, made with Chris from Texas is the Reason a few years after the breakup of Jawbreaker, remains one of my favorites from that era. But then Blake quit making music publicly. Was he still teaching English at Hunter College? Was he writing video game reviews? Did he publish poetry under a pen name? Was he on a lobster boat out in the Grand Banks? This fella, who'd soundtracked so many years of my life and carried so many expectations, was now a cipher, a riddle.

And then I read on the .org that Blake, Aaron Cometbus, and Daniela from the Gr'ups are playing music together. The hope is that they'll make it south (at least to Philly); instead, they play a couple times in Brooklyn, then head out west to California for a short tour. They play a week's worth of shows, reviews are suitably hyped, they return home, they break up by summertime. They left behind a song on a Silver Sprocket comp and this, the only live recording I've ever heard of them. Pretty good looking show, too; I'd pay $8 just for Thorns of Life. Off With Their Heads and Comadre are a great bonus.

Look: if you're a Jawbreaker or Crimpshrine fan, you're probably going to be 100% down with this. It's not a hard sell, as we say in the biz. It bums me out that most of these songs never got their day in the studio; "O Deadly Death" and "Ribbonhead" ended up on the Forgetters' full-length in 2012, and sound outstanding with J. Robbins' in the engineer's seat.

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Shudder To Think - Your Choice Live 021

What do you think the high muckity mucks at Epic Records heard in Shudder To Think when they signed them in 1993/1994? What about this arty post-hardcore band said, "It's the next Nirvana!"?

None of this is to denigrate the beloved DC quartet. I really love StT, especially "Pony Express Record". I just like putting myself into the shoes of an early 90s A&R and trying to figure how a band like this, so distinctive in their mix of mid-80s proto emo, glam, 60s psychedelica, and bubblegum pop, would work on a larger stage. It hurt my head hearing "Hit Liquor" and "X-French Tee Shirt" on HFS in 1994; both singles really stood out in a landscape of Live, Veruca Salt, Oasis, and Weezer. Of course I loved it; I was a 16-year-old virgin who stayed home on Fridays taping songs off the radio. But their signing, even with the continued work that Craig Wedren does on soundtracks 26 years later, still strikes me as a wild, wonderful swing.

It's interesting to me, listening to Shudder to Think on YouTube while writing, that the next band to appear was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Has the algorithm gotten so strong as to be able to make the sonic comparison between Nathan Larson's and Nick Zinner's guitar work? Is there a thru line that I've just missed until today?

"Your Choice Live 021" was the only recorded output from the StT lineup of Wedren, Nathan Larson, Stuart Hill, and Mike Russell. Larson had joined a few months prior to this recording from Swiz,  and following this tour and their departure from Dischord, Adam Wade would replace Russell and join on drums from Jawbox. This is a great sounding document of Shudder to Think's catalog from the Dischord days, mixing tracks from 1991's "Funeral at the Movies" and 1992's "Get Your Goat". And it's inexpensive! You can probably snag one for less than $10 on a good day.

Discogs

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The Hissing Choir, live at the Talking Head, 2003

Violent Noise Party #1 (flier by Eric T. Neal)

I remember this being a stressful, yet ultimately fun show.

I started booking shows at the Talking Head for a few different reasons. I wanted to be able to have a drink if I was going to be stressed during a show, and I'd gotten roofied at Gallery One at least twice during CCAS shows. I was also booking bands that would have been tons of fun at CCAS, but needed a little more room to move. When Blake asked if I'd do a show for Triac with a new Pageninetynine band, I jumped at the opportunity. It was New Year's Day 2004, it'd be an occasion to have some hair of the dog, it'd be loud as fuk. So I went about putting together a super-solid lineup to start the year off right.

Now, it all went pied shaped when, about 20 minutes before the show actually started, Rebecca from Flowers in the Attic came to me, a bunch of long-hairs in tow, and asked if her friends from Savannah could jump on the show. I said, "sure, do three songs after Shitdogs of War," figuring, "how bad could it be?" and away we went. Shitdogs ripped it, the changeover went quickly, and then...nothing. Bupkus. Zilch. I think 30 seconds into their first song, someone's guitar or amp shit the bed, and everyone stood around for almost 20 minutes trying to get the issue fixed. Once it finally got settled, I'd had two more whiskeys, and Baroness played two songs, both of which destroyed everyone.

The bands afterward weren't anti-climatic, but it set a really high bar for the rest of the night. The Hissing Choir were J.R. was Pig Destroyer, as well as Jake from Triac on drums and Mike from Pageninetynine on guitar. They were doing their best Swans impersonation, which fit wonderfully in with the rest of the night and had me thinking, wow, this is a really great show.

I had no clue anyone was recording any of it, but Andy Low of Robotic Empire apparently did, and a few years later posted it up on the R.E. page with some background. It sounds exactly like you'd expect a bootleg recorded to minidisc would sound; just ugly and cheap and dirty. It's a great encapsulation of what that night was. If memory serves, the Hissing Choir only played another few shows, none of which happened in Baltimore.

Click here to download.

Pageninetynine - live at Best Friends Day, RVA, 11 August 2011

Pageninetynine, circa 2002 (from the Pageninetynine Facebook page)

There are two great things that have come from Sterling, Virginia. One is the comedian, writer, actor, and reason to be on Twitter Patton Oswalt. I'm a fan; I celebrate his entire catalog.

The other is the subject of today's post. Their name is Pageninetynine (or Pg. 99, or Page 99), and even if they hadn't blown up among a certain type of punk rock listener in the years after their initial break-up, they'd still be one of my favorite bands I've ever seen. As time passes, I can only recall fragments, like a montage of amazing moments. There was the last show at the old Ottobar, where Blake or Chris got passed amongst the crowd and kicked a hole in the the ceiling that remained even after the Talking Head moved into the location. There was the last Wilson Center show, and the stage flexing under the weight of a hundred kids pulsing to "By the Fireplace In White". There was the night that they and Majority Rule played with Cro-Mags and Most Precious Blood at the "new" Ottobar; every security guy was onsite to ward off a skinhead vs. hipster brawl that never took place. I also seem to recall them opening for Earth Crisis at St. Andrews in College Park, and a bunch of barbeque jokes being made. So many Reptilian shows, and shows where they were the second of six bands on the campus of Johns Hopkins, and sticky basements in the DC suburbs because there was NO WAY the 9:30 Club was going to let these freaky kids play that stage.

Were they really only a band for six years? There's no chance that was the case; it simply cannot be true, no matter what the historical records say. They were just a ubiquitous part of the scene; the guys from NoVA that fit in so well with what was happening in Baltimore at the time. And they played with such heart, such passion, that one couldn't help but become not just a fan, but rabidly so. Then, one day, it was done, splintering into Mannequin and the Malady and Haram and Pygmy Lush.

Do you remember that time, when you were young and before Green Day was on MTV, when you'd see another kid in a Misfits t-shirt or wearing a painted leather jacket and you'd immediately talk to them? Because you had found a kindred spirit, and there weren't a lot of them out there. It's still like that when I wear the old Reptilian "Document #5" t-shirt I got the week the records showed up in the store. I can't really wear it comfortably anymore because I'm probably 100 lbs. heavier than I was then, but when I DO squeeze into it, I occasionally get that native nod, and every once in a great while, I'll make a new friend. There are far too few shibboleths left in the world, riddles that, upon solving, open up something memorable and previously unseen. Pageninetynine was like that for me.

They've reunited now twice, mostly recently in 2018 and 2019 as a series of benefits for local charities in each town they played. Their first reunion, which I regrettably bailed on, saw them play the Black Cat in DC and at Best Friends Day, the annual Richmond outdoor show every year. It occurred to me that the 2020 BFD would be coming up in a few weeks. Here's that Best Friends Day set from 2011. I honestly cannot remember where I got this initially.

Love your friends. Die laughing. Fucking A right.

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