First and foremost: screw you “curfew”. While I loved Southern Pine Company‘s huge, unique, outdoor venue that hosted the Fucked Up, DOOMSQUAD, and Crazy Bag Lady show last Wednesday evening, and totally understand respecting neighbors and noise ordinances in order to (hopefully) be able to do more events like this, the reality is that another 20 minutes of music would have been great. That minor bitch aside, the all ages show ran without a hitch, as tends to be the case with MusicFile Productions events.
It was a bit unsettling to see Crazy Bag Lady in the daylight, but once I got over that strangeness, it was a typical CBL show, which is to say pretty great. The band was tight, as always, we got to hear 3 new songs, and frontman Josh Sterno found something to climb, in this case a building. The Retro Futurist outfit impresses every time.
The three members of DOOMSQUAD did double duty over the course of the night, playing a set of dense, electronic, experimental dance and then joining Fucked Up to fill out the parts on the Chinese Zodiac based song “Year of the Rat” and several other tunes from the band’s extensive discography. The band reminded me of a moodier, psychedelic tinged Battles minus live percussion at times.
It was interesting seeing Fucked Up with hundreds of people, as opposed to the thousands I’ve seen them with before. Singer Damian Abraham stayed on the stage for the majority of their set instead of wading into a crowd of fans eager to scream his lyrics back at him, a rarity to be sure. The band was musically taut, even with as many as five guitars fighting for space at times. It’s amazing that nine people fit on stage, much less all contribute to an experimental punk song without it coming unraveled. From memory we heard “Year of the Rat”, “Queen of Hearts”, “The Other Shoe”, “I Hate Summer”, and “David Comes to Life” and several others, drawn mostly from the most recent 3 or 4 albums (I can’t believe I didn’t grab a setlist!!). Abraham joked about the challenges of having children and being in a band named Fucked Up while playing up the fact that they were playing an all ages show. The frontman also graciously stuck around to talk to fans long after the set ended. Did I mention I was bummed the set ended so abruptly? I was.
I got a few pics, click through for more, and we’ll have another gallery or two up in the near future.
Crazy Bag Lady
DOOMSQUAD
Fucked Up
