Death First round 2, New Year's Eve

There was a bit of confusion with the show that happened yesterday, shit it's already tomorrow, well New Year's Eve is what I'm talking about. Apparently two shows got half canceled and decided to join forces to conquer. It was at Will Sedition's house on 32nd in Oakland. The other Will who lives there and I hung out in his basement room and got down to partying while Will Sedition (or Useful Will as people have taken to calling him, related: the other guy is known as Useless Will) set up the show and soundproofed the house. I was unprepared for the amount of people who showed up, it was crowded as hell and everyone had been talking about how nobody was going to come when I showed up at the posted start time.

When the first band started playing I was trapped by the crush of people up front to witness some shit that I could have done without. The guy I see around at shows a lot and who I refer to as Raver Jesus in my mind was playing keyboards for most of what used to be Fugitive Kind. I don't know if they were playing new songs or old Fugitive Kind stuff but I've heard from several people that Fugitive Kind were pretty good and that is not what I would say about what I saw last night. The band is called The Smell and the keyboards were flowery goth style on top of punk drumming with a girl who sang and played saxophone in about equal measures and a dude who played bass and kind of held everything together.

I might have been in to this kind of thing in my late teens when I thought noise punk was the shit and was just stoked to see people doing something outside of the same stale punk formula that pervaded the small town I'm from at the time. Now I am a grown man who lives in Oakland and can see any kind of music any time. I'm over this. And the fact that I couldn't have moved from my position right next to the keyboard without disturbing the press of weirdos who were in to it without basically shoving my way through made feel doubly trapped. I decided not to be a dick with bad show etiquette and endured and they weren't that terrible, I just didn't really want to be there.

By the time that Death First started the party was packed with people. It was hard to open the front gate the yard was so packed. I ran into some Redding friends, one who I hadn't seen since he moved to New Jersey in the summer, and was talking to them for part of Death First's set and missed a few songs. I caught the last half and the band sounded way better than they had the night before at Balazo. They looked like they were way more stoked and having more fun playing a house show.

Blogspot is being a motherfucker and won't upload my pictures. Aha, fixed now! But yeah the band was way more noticeably a crust band without the bad drum mic debacle of the night before. Less boppy than I first thought still with a strong hardcore flavor. Not bad at all for a bunch of people from New York.

The last band that was up was the same pop punk band from the night before that I didn't really listen to. There were so many people inside that I quit trying to squeeze in when I couldn't make it all the way up the porch steps. I can just imagine what kind of clusterfuck it was inside.

After the show I went to a New Year's Eve party at my friend Caroline's house with some people who were all more normative than me. I weirded out most of the people who I hadn't already met before but the kids were generally all right. Here's me at midnight:

We got quite partied out and today was haggard. Spent the night there and watched movies all day today and didn't have a ride back across town till almost midnight tonight. I could use a shower.