NEXT GIG! A.N.S. 20 YEAR ANNIVERSARY SHOW!

ANS GIG IN DALLAS ON FRIDAY!

Kind words from a bass player-

"It’s been a tough year. Rome is burning, and it feels like we’re on the brink of destruction. But as society collapses around you, there’s still a little time to drain your rich neighbor’s pool and carve the shit out of it for one final session.

And who better to prepare you for your first post-apocalyptic stalefish than the troubadours of Texas skate rock: ANS. Playing for the first time in what feels like a millennia, ANS has reemerged when the world needs them most, coming full force with the genre bending, riff-heavy cross over you know and love. For nearly, 15 years, ANS has waved the thrash flag proudly, and for one night only, they’re planting that flag back in their home state of Texas.

So grab your board, hit the circle pit, and destroy your local goon because ANS is back and they’re ready to make America skate again." - T.B. Player

ANS-Ya boys from around the way are getting back at it for a rock gig in the place that spawned it all, North Texas. Dallas proper is the town. Club Dada is the spot.

One time Billy showed up to tour with a giant bag of candy that contained a pb&j sandwich in the middle of it. True story-that sandwich was never seen again.

Dust off your board and play this shit loud!

Acts Of Sedition/A.N.S. Benefit

Featuring the sexy sounds of:

LECHEROUS GAZE (straight outta yer dad's bar)
PIGS (heavy Oakland shit)
HIGHTOWER (SF Skate Thrashers 'n' Bashers)
OWL (Clint and his little brothers rock out like 1971)
THEA (new Oakland rock and roll)

This is a benefit show to generate money for the equipment that A.N.S. was borrowing from Acts of Sedition to play the Tankcrimes Brainsqueeze. For those who don't know, an unknown (and still uncaught) individual(s) broke into the van, which was parked right around the corner from the venue and left unattended for only 15-20 minutes, stole two guitar heads, a box full of pedals and cables, and a cymbal case. None of it has been recovered.

Neither A.N.S. or Acts Of Sedition has been in any financial position to re-buy the gear, so we've been scraping along with borrowing stuff for the past few months (btw thanks Dave Witte/Municipal Waste/Paiste for loaning the cymbals to use on the A.N.S. tour).

Please hang out with us!

DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND: Here is a Paypal donation button for those who wish to contribute to the equipment recovery, but cannot make it to any of the shows. Even if it's a couple of bucks, we know you guys are broke too!

Municipal Waste: 10/9/10

Tankcrimes Brainsqueeze: Day Two

A.N.S. played day one of the fantastic Tancrimes Brainsqueeze, and I expected day two to be an enjoyable continuation of the weekend. This was not to be the case however. I caught a few of the earlier bands on the show, don't remember exactly which ones, but missed Municipal Waste, Toxic Holocaust and Vitamin X because I was dealing with the (and still am to this very day) fallout of an equipment theft that occurred right outside the venue.

Long story short, my cymbals and some guitar amplification that I was borrowing from Acts Of Sedition, for A.N.S. to use, was stolen by means of someone breaking a window in a van that I was borrowing from Genesis Climber. Ouch. World of shit. It was parked right around the corner from the venue, and I was only gone for fifteen minutes, but let that be a lesson to me, a lesson that I have sadly learned REPEATEDLY in the past, and apparently forgotten:

NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON OAKLAND!!!

Therefore, since I cannot really give any kind of reee-vue to this barn dance, allow me to take this opportunity to invite everyone to the upcoming benefit shows for the stolen equipment which will be happening in January and February 2011. Stay tuned.

Due to popular demand, there is now a Paypal button to donate money to this cause, for those who cannot make it to any of the shows or anything. It shall be located HERE.

Stymie: 9/9/10

Don't be misled by this flier, or course. The show ended up happening at Yellow Room and had a lot of different bands on it, as you will see when you read the review.

Ah, and then all of the sudden another one of my band mates from A.N.S. was in town, this time it was Bill The Bear and his melodic punk outfit Stymie.

When I got to the Yellow room, Street Justice was playing. Do they have a too many cooks in the kitchen thing going on, or is it just that they always cook in really small kitchens?

Homewreckers is artist Christie C. Road’s band, apparently. The rockabilly-esque nymphette fronts a dirty looking crew of tom boys and trainhopping weirdos. They were just so cute that I want to take a sterilizing antiseptic pad to their filthy skin, but I couldn’t stop being distracted by how much they didn’t know about playing musical instruments.

Stymie, hailing from the bucolic college town of Denton, Texas was in the midst of a grueling U.S. and Canadian tour, and it showed. Money and cleanliness were in short supply, but spirits were good, and band musical tightness seemed to be at it’s peak. As far as I could tell, Stymie plays a style of pop punk has to be performed well for me to enjoy it. I don’t know how good the songs actually are, because I haven’t actually been able to find any of my Stymie records beneath the giant piles of junk in my room, but live they came across as a cheerful juggernaut, with a hard hitting drummer as the anchor. Chris Reeves, the drummer used to be a metal head in an Anthrax shirt, but Stymie found him in a 7-11 parking lot and made him cut his hair and play catchy punk, but with metaly intense drum bashing. True story. It was swell to see these dudes, but a bummer that they were only staying in town for one day. We all went to a really fun party after the show. I got wasted. Thus ends another "show review" in which I say a bunch of cool shit about my friends bands, and use the other bands on the show as fodder for a bunch of really bad jokes and juvenile insults. Good night!

UV Race: 8/28/10

I don't know if a flyer was made for this show, but here is a cute little artwork from UV Race's blog page. Because nobody reads this shit unless there's pictures too.

Wild Thing, UV Race, Total Control, Kicking Spit: Donnie's House AKA Sugar Mountain

Went back down to kick it with Kickin' Spit dudes as they set up for their show that night at Donnie's house. They've gone from headlining an Oakland house show one night to opening an Oakland warehouse show the next night! This industry is a fucking meat grinder! Scotty Karate was out and about and in full promo mode, pushing the fuck out his Tankcrimes released Kicking Spit tapes, striking forth as the new paradigm of advanced conglomerate punkness. Anyway, Kicking Spit went first, they were kinda of last minute addition to this shindig, but they didn't let that get to them, tearing it up like last night. Plus the sound was better, and there were one or two more people bobbing their heads to the Discharge cover. Ace.

Next came two touring Australian bands, Total Control and UV Race. I think both groups have members of Eddy Current Suppression Ring, a group that people talk about a lot that I have not managed to hear. Perhaps I should make the effort? Or should I just go listen to Cannibal Corpse "The Bleeding" for the 100,000th time? Total Control started playing, and the warehouse began flooding with garage rock weirdos and even some h_______! I was getting drunker. I remember the first Aussie band as having some good qualities in the vein of Gang Of Four/Mission Of Burma/Wire. Smart people punk. I will not complain; they were tight and had a good drummer. I was getting drunker. The next band I remember less, but I was not really impressed. Their singer was some chubby guy who was dressed weird and they had some funny non-punk instruments in the band (Triangles? Cellos? Vibraphones? Whatever, some shit that should not have left the primary school orchestra room.) Maybe they were just trying to get by on how strange and fucked up they were, hoping that Americans would be impressed by their alien charms (some of the morons in the crowd were, I'm sure), but I just yawned and kept going back to the beer vending machine. Australia is just a piece of shit wanna be California anyway, so why should I care about anything that comes from there? There's plenty of lame art rock to avoid right here in my own town.

Last came Wild Thing. I stopped caring about this band when I got over the novelty of seeing Brace Belden playing bass in a non hardKore band. But lets face it, I continued going to their shows of course for the enjoyment of getting drunk and meeting nineteen year old girls. And while Wild Thing is usually somewhat competent musically, they were BAD tonight, so wasted that they had to stop in the middle of a song. Isn't the point of garage rock that it's easy enough to play even if you're blacked out? Geez.

Kicking Spit: 8/27/10

Full disclosure: I made this flyer

I showed up on time for this show to say HI to people, but then went home to drop off my tools from work and change into more "rock and roll" clothes. When I got back, White Knight had already played, but they were the least of my concerns, considering they are from LA and I could probably see them again soon, if I want to. I heard The Sundowners rather well from the back yard where I was hanging out, catching up with my bandmate in ANS, Mark, who is also in Kicking Spit. The Sundowners sounded pretty poppy, but in a more competent way, they could actually play their instruments and had starts and stops and changes, not trains wrecks of varaying frequency and heroin breaks like most touring poppy punk bands in this country right now.

I had first seen Kicking Spit at Bronzefest in New Jersey last April, and they were decidedly better this time around, being in the midst of a full US/Canada tour and gettin' tight. The default comparison is Dinosaur Jr., with a strong trio in effect and lots of wild wah wah wankery and drum fills going on. Definitely more punk than Dino J, and they play a Discharge song in the set to prove it.

Next was my first time seeing Knifey Spoony in the Bay Area. The first being when Genesis Climber crossed paths with them in Richmond Virginia while we were both in the midst of summer US tours. Knifey is some sort of twisted catchy rock with a dark side, played by a bunch of way shaggy weirdos.

After the show me and members of K.S. and K.S. hung out and ate a lot of MUSHROOMS.

New A.N.S. Shirt

Here is the shirt I designed at the very last minute for the A.N.S. California shows that we played in October. Not the biggest Pushead rip off I've ever done, but close. There are still a few left if anyone's interested. All proceeds will go to paying for Acts of Sedition's equipment that was stolen while A.N.S. was borrowing it.