Old Man and the Fest
Finally, at long last, I was back in Florida. Sweating bullets and worrying over configurations of various manners of problems that might waylay my efforts to get from Orlando to Gainesville for the first time... Read More...
What’s Up Punks? – October, 2019: The Fest 18 Preview
What do you get when you combine one weekend (November 1-3, 2019) in a sweaty college town in Florida with comedians, wrestlers, cheap beer, upwards of a dozen venues, and more than 300 even sweatier punk rock... Read More...
The Trials of Conjurer, or the Ceaseless Fun of Touring in a Van
I walked into Moe’s Original BBQ just before 6. The show
didn’t start until 8, but bands were scattered throughout the restaurant and
music venue, checking the soundboard during mic checks and setting up merch... Read More...
What’s Up Punks // September 2017
Welcome back, everyone, for this month’s edition of What’s Up Punks. We’ve decided to slim down the lists to 5 albums and 10 tracks, with a rare exception here or there (there is one this month), and have expan... Read More...
Comeback Kid – Outsider
The thing about old hardcore bands is that they kind of never really die. There is inevitably some festival or other, especially these days, that will invite X or Y legendary hardcore band to get the kids to circle pit and stage-dive one more time all while pointing to the sky and shouting along unintelligibly to, usually, lyrics about how important it is to stand on your own two feet, rise above some aspect or another of society, and be true to yourself. There is a reason for this, though, and it’s because of a certain timelessness to the cliches that present themselves in what we think of when we call something “hardcore”.
Against Me! – Shape Shift With Me
It strikes me as somehow appropriate in a year that’s killed off Prince and David Bowie, given us marriage equality, bathroom laws in North Carolina, and ultimately a Trump Presidency that we have someone to look to in the musical world as a relatively unfiltered voice of rage. Not at the machine. At everything. That voice belongs to Laura Jane Grace.