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Radkey at Mercury Lounge, NYC 2/20/14

(all photos Jason House)

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Hey, y’all! While I’m in the midst of trying to think of a new photo project to work on, I figured I’d pop in and make a post on the good ol’ photo blog. I recently saw the Legendary Shack Shakers for what I’m thinking is probably the 11th time. It made sense to bring it full circle since a show of theirs was the last post I made.  It was an unusual show because it was at the recently(?) opened Country Hill BBQ offshoot in Brooklyn and since the entertainment is usually lesser known travelling Americana type bands, there was no opener. It worked out well though because the Shack Shakers bring enough energy to get the crowd going straight out of the gate, kicking it right off with Hip Shake and speeding through a solid mix of old and brand new stuff, the most recent being “Sing a Worried Song” off of their brand new album, After You’re Gone.  Since my last post, long time bass player Mark Robertson has been replaced by former Two Man Gentleman band member Fuller Condon (see photo) who I saw open for them a few years back. He seemlessly transitioned in and this was actually my second time seeing him with the band.  Another planned lineup change actually didn’t happen for this show. Rod Hamdallah had actually gone on hiatus to work on some other projects and had been replaced by Gary Siperko, who a lot of Upstate New Yorkers will remember from his days with Ithaca’s hot rod rock and roll trio, MOFOS. I was looking forward to seeing him, but it was nice to see Rod back at the helm for this leg of the tour. 

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The Legendary Shack Shakers@ Kitting Factory, Brooklyn 9/11/14

The Legendary Shack Shakers are back! This time at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory, the type of intimate venue where they thrive. This was the band’s first NYC area appearance since taking a two year hiatus while drummer Brett Whitacre recovered from major heart surgery. They were this time joined by Rod Hamdallah on guitar (who played a few shows before the break and has been touring with J.D. Wilkes and Mark Robertson in the Dirt Daubers), and recent addition Adam Holliday on Hammond organ, whose sound blended seamlessly into the mix. That’s quite a compliment to his playing style. It’s not easy to join and band with a new instrument and make it seem like it’s always been there. The set list was a great mix of the classics, pulled primarily from Cockadoodledon’t through Swampblood. Frontman Colonel J.D. was as energetic as ever, further cementing his status as one of the greatest front man out there right now. The new guitar sound was punchy and clean, pleasantly reminiscent of the bands earlier sound. I’ve seen them more times now than I can count and I can say this was one definitely one of my favorite shows. The big bonus of the night was $5 Hatch prints at the merch table.

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Jello Biafra@ Highline Ballroom, NYC 6/27/14

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Brody Dalle and The Bowery Boys@ The Bell House, Brooklyn 5/4/14

(all photos Jason House) The Bowery Boys

Brody Dalle

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Today marks the 3rd anniversary of I'm Just Here for the Bands! I've been spending the day playing catch up. Things have been busy lately. This past Wednesday I hit the road for an EYEHATEGOD show in my hometown of Binghamton, N.Y., then followed it up with Smokey Robinson on Friday and finished off the week with a second EYEHATEGOD show at Club Europa here in Brooklyn. Photo sets on the way!

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The Adicts@ Highline Ballroom, NYC 5/29/14

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Kvelertek@ Terminal 5, NYC 5/15/14

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The Brooklyn Folk Festival, The Bell House, Brooklyn 4/19/14

(all photos Jason House) jam session

Peter Siegel and Eli Smith

Piedmond Bluz

Wyndham Baird

Blueridge Entertainers

Willy Gantrim

The Tillers

East River String Band (feat. R. Crumb)

Tahuantinsuyo

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Screaming Females, Thou, and Rosetta@ ABC No Rio, NYC

(all photos Jason House, words by Emily Mancini) "I've never been so tired and so awake at the same time,"

It’s hard to capture the spirit of a punk show in words. For one thing, there’s no single word in the Oxford English Dictionary that can describe that exotic smell that comes from a combination of over 250 sweaty people (and at least four crust punks) crammed in a tiny room. But that’s just a tiny part of the experience. The best description I’ve come up with is this: punk shows are the closest I’ll come to experiencing religious ecstasy.

My friend and I were lucky enough to hitch a bus out of Binghamton down to NYC and catch Deadwurm, Rosetta, Thou and Screaming Females play at ABC no Rio one warm Saturday in March. The venue was pretty easy to spot: it’s a well-worn tenement on the lower east side, covered in graffiti with a yellow plaque by the door that says ‘culture of opposition since 1980.’ Around 3pm a decent line started to form out front. What’s incredible about shows like this is that there is no “target demographic”: I saw a whole cross section of ages, races, genders, what have you. And that kind of put me at ease.

When it comes to venues, I usually expect a bar and a stage. ABC no Rio had neither. Everyone packed into this narrow off-white room and the bands set up right on the floor at the far end. I spent a few extra minutes in the closet-sized, red-lit bathroom examining all the graffiti and stickers stuck on the walls. ‘FUCK THE MAN’ was scrawled in thick black sharpie over the toilet. The punk ethos is stronger than the floors at ABC no Rio; the ground floor is literally a bunch plywood slabs and you can see through the cracks to the basement below.

Dead Wurm, self-described loud as fuck New Jersey sludge, opened the show with exactly that. Once the guitars started screeching, the docile crowd got going, heads started banging, people started flying across the room. In between sets everyone would go out into this little courtyard behind the building to smoke and hang out, breathe a bit. There were around 200 or so people at the show, I think, so it got pretty hot pretty fast.

(note: Dead Wurm decided to play in the dark, so no pics available- J. House)

Next came the Philly-based band Rosetta. Holy shit, how can I describe them? They joke about how their music is “metal for astronauts,” but that’s actually pretty accurate. And my god it was beautiful. Here’s the first instance of punk-as-religious ecstasy. When you’re there in the crowd, these huge waves of music washing over you, enveloping you, you go somewhere else. I closed my eyes and felt like I was in some sort of trance. My body was swaying in time with the music on its own. You lose all sense of time and place when you get like that. And it sounds strange and less profound writing it down, because it’s such a rare and nuanced and incredible feeling. “Mike Armine is a preacher when he performs,” my friend Adrian said later. And he’s absolutely right. Frontman Armine parts the crowd like the red sea. He wades in and reaches out to us in the crowd like a preacher, beckoning us on each verse. It’s no longer a performer-and-crowd dynamic. It’s something else, verging on religious. 

After Rosetta we headed out to the courtyard again to catch our breaths. Outside I caught a glimpse of Marissa Paternoster, Screaming Females’ frontwoman, hanging around with her bandmates Mike and Jarrett and a few other friends. I’ve been to quite a few Screamales shows at this point, and this is a pretty common thing. Marissa floats around the crowd in a T-shirt and jeans and watches the other bands play. I’ve actually moshed alongside bass player King Mike once or twice. They’re all really approachable, nice people. Which makes their on-stage transformation that much more surreal.

In the courtyard I ended up striking a conversation with an older guy with a long tan coat. He’d come just to see Screaming Females play live.  

“Isn’t that Marissa sitting right over there?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “She usually hangs around before they go on to play their set. Is this your first time seeing them live?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re in for a helluva good time. I’ve never seen any band play live like they do. When Marissa gets on stage it’s like she’s a completely different person than the one sitting over there. You know how some performers either focus on the crowd the whole time, lock eyes with everyone in the front? Or just focus in on what their band members are doing?”

He nodded.

“Marissa doesn’t do either. Look at her eyes when she plays. She’s somewhere else entirely. It’s like she’s possessed in some way. She will hardly ever make eye contact with anyone. And holy shit, the sounds that she pulls out of that guitar. Out of herself. It’s unreal. And Mike and Jarrett are right there with her.” 

He nodded again and lit his cigarette.

The crowd was fired up from THOU’s sludgy metal set when I walked back in from the courtyard. Once they finished up their set, everyone kind of scattered outside to get some fresh air. My friend and I wandered around and ended up talking to some really cool people, including a blue-haired girl that shared my taste for flannel and boots. Out of the blue, Marissa popped up and started setup right there in front of us. She’d changed out of her jeans and into her performance dress. To the unsuspecting, she’s a small-statured girl in a black schoolgirl dress. But we all knew better.

The band did a short sound check. Marissa picked up her guitar. I glanced at the set list; they were playing ‘Bell’ first. I knew what was coming but nothing can prepare you for that first chord. Jarrett tapped his snare and that was it.

Like I was saying to the courtyard guy, when Marissa plays, she’s somewhere else. That quiet girl that says “Hi we’re Screaming Females from New Brunswick New Jersey” is gone, possessed by some insane energy that starts as soon as she picks up that guitar. And that energy spreads like wildfire. With an intimate, no-stage venue like that, you can easily get swept up in it. It’s like religious ecstasy: you forget who you are, what you’re doing, how you got there. Or maybe not forget so much as that perception of the self just disappears for a bit. I’ve heard or read somewhere that that’s a form of enlightenment. Whatever it is, I think that whatever ‘possesses’ Marissa on stage got to us that night.

I have never head banged so hard in my goddamn life. My long hair was flying every which way. I slammed my boots with every downbeat, screamed every single lyric back at the top of my lungs. Shanz the blue-haired girl, Adrian and I moshed like a bunch of lunatics. I must’ve looked like Ian Curtis during one of his epileptic dance fits, sweaty and thrashing. At one point I remember seeing Marissa’s eyes roll back in her head during a guitar solo. Suddenly she veered off and charged right into the crowd, guitar screaming. We pressed against her as she belted out the rest of the solo. She didn’t move an inch, like she was anchored to the floor. The whole thing was extremely surreal, each of us thrashing wildly like it was our last goddamn hour on earth. Marissa finished the set by somehow mounting two stacked amplifiers while finishing a guitar solo. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I usually hate the term mind-blowing but that’s what it was. My brain could not process what the fuck was happening in front of me. As the last note rang through the air, I stood there open-mouthed and utterly dumbstruck. I realized suddenly how sweat-soaked and out of breath I was. My ears rang. I smiled. So this is what religious ecstasy must feel like, I thought to myself. Well, that was fucking awesome. 

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Radkey@Mercury Lounge, NYC 2/20/14

(all photos Jason House)

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Unlocking the Truth@ Trash Bar, Brooklyn 2/9/14

(all photos Jason House)

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Negative Approach, The Casualties, Lords of Death, Nuclear Santa Claust, and Miscegenator@ Club Europa, Brooklyn 12/6/13

(all photos Jason House) Miscegenator

Lords of Death

Nuclear Santa Claust

The Casualties

Negative Approach

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EYEHATEGOD and Trenchgrinder@ The Acheron, Brooklyn 11/16/13

(all photos Jason House) Trenchgrinder

EYEHATEGOD

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The Business, The Welch Boys, and the 45 Adapters@ Mercury Lounge, NYC 11/8/13

(all photos Jason House)

The 45 Adapters

The Welch Boys (Boston)

The Business

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Ch3 and The Krays@ The Grand Victory, Brooklyn 9/18/13

(all photos Jason House)

The Krays

Channel 3