Monday, August 9, 2010

Show Review: Voetsek: 7/13/10

I couldn't find a flyer image for this show, so here's Ben! Getting hairier each day.

Battlemaster, Voetsek, Crooked Teeth, Street Pizza: Strange Matter: Richmond, VA

Well, I'm going to continue trying to write a review, no matter how shitty, some kind of review, of every show I go to. This is of course one of the cornerstones of the content of Boca de Fuma magazine, and also of my forthcoming biography. This does not include shows that any of the bands I am in play, which includes a considerable amount of the shows that I am AT. Every once in a while in the midst of a tour, I will have day off and have chance to see another show that I'm not involved in. This was the case with July 13th.

Genesis Climber was getting rather tired of stagnating at a giant, humid artist warehouse in North Philly, so we decided to hightail it down to RVA for a change of scenery, even though our show wasn't until the next day. We made it unscathed, but shaken after hitting one of the most brutal summer rainstorms I have ever seen (on the DC beltway). We're talking pelting bitch slaps of water from the sky, almost zero visibility and semi trucks pulled over on the side of the road with their hazard lights blinking blinking doomish Sauron eyes.

When we got into Richmond, I wanted to go to the Voetsek show, everyone else wanted to go chill out at the Strike Anywhere house, so they dropped me unceremoniously on a street corner and left me to my own devices. Inside the venue I immediately ran into Joe "Van Man" Shuergar, Voetsek's Driver, and we got into debating the relative merits of the classic arcade games that filled the back room of the venue. He saved me (and my precious few quarters) from a potentially disastrous run on a Galaga machine with sticky controls.

Street Pizza was the first band I saw, they were generic grind, and a few enthusiastic fans formed a sparse but expansive circle pit that pushed the rest of the audience off to margins. I quickly grew bored, went outside and ran into Frank Bucalo, beer shotgunner extraordinaire. I exist off camera in this video that we went and shot in alley near the club:



Went back inside to catch Crooked Teeth, a band that some of the locals were pretty stoked about. A good band made more interesting by the fact that some of the kids were really young. Always a relief to see actual teenagers playing this teenage style of music we all love.

I enjoyed the weird displaced feeling of seeing a local (bay area) band in an unusual place for a bit, but come on, I've seen Voetsek a million times and this one wasn't significantly different, except that Ben had an ear infection and was emergency room bound after the show. I wandered back outside, and my friends Knifey Spoony had arrived, also on tour, also a day early for their Richmond show the next day. I pretty much spent the rest of the show hanging out with them and their crew, talking about tour, and trying to stay dry in the sudden downpour. Battlemaster sounded pretty cool from outside.

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