Pioneers Of Punk

Pioneers Of Punk
Flipper / The Avengers / The Mutants / Negative Trend
The Fillmore, San Francisco
July 26, 2008

The evening began with an excellent dinner at Jitlada Thai on Buchanan @ Sutter! Wow.. It was really good and one of the best opening acts I've had for a show in a long time. Unfortunately, we missed Negative Trend because of the excellent dinner... Pad Thai over Punk, dude.

The Umlaut Nation Assault Team for this show consisted of Timo, Teri, and Todd. THANKS to Todd for getting me in.

The Mutants had a good time onstage.. Most of the crowd had a good time while they were onstage. They had a couple of their kids and / or grand kids dancing onstage with them. An upbeat, fun set... Unfortunately, I wasn't in the mood for an upbeat fun set... but that's just me.

The Avengers looked good.. Performed good... They have 2/5 (I think) of the original lineup intact and also the drummer from Pansy Division, who looked like he was 16, but who was easily the best drummer I've seen onstage in awhile.. BUT they were too slick.. not loose.. not "Punk" enough.. Yeah, yeah.. "Punk" is a state of mind.. but The Avengers are more of a "Rock" band onstage.. which is NOT a bad thing.. I'm just saying the show was billed as "Pioneers Of Punk". Penelope Houston did spit once onstage though.

Flipper were sloppy. Flipper were loud. Flipper were great. Flipper made me glad I stayed up late on a Saturday night. Raise your hand if you can honestly say you recognized Krist Novoselic on bass. LIAR. He looked like someone who has a pilot's license and flies his own private jet... Oh wait.. He does have both of those things.. but everything I knew about Flipper I learned from the Melvins anyway.

Best Quote: "HE was in Nirvana??!" - Teri

The clock struck 12:30AM and we hit the exit 'cause we're old... but Flipper had already played 'Sex Bomb', 'Way Of The World', and 'Sacrifice' so I was happy. To be honest, when these bands were in their full glory at The Mab in the early-80's, Umlaut was across the street at The Stone being Metal; I didn't like the Punks... but then they showed up at Motörhead shows and I realized they were alright and maybe we could get along after all. YAYY.

Number of Ramones shirts = ZERO!! WTF... Todd said he saw 1 Ramones shirt, but I didn't see it myself... and yet I did see a DEF LEPPARD shirt. WTF... The show was billed as "Pioneers Of Punk".. Am I wrong in saying something about this? I completely spaced on doing a merch audit, but since Flipper didn't have any girlie shirts Teri scored a Kid's Large that fit her for $12 instead. On the way back to the car, some pimply-faced teenagers called us fags. Almost 12 hours later the Umlaut Nation Assault Team was back at the same parking garage for The Dark Knight (!) at The Kabuki.

"Why so serious?"

Footnote: After the movie, the Umlaut Assault Team retired to The Confessional at The Irish Bank, where we were sadly informed by our regular waitress that she's returning home to Eire in 2 weeks.. What a bummer, but good luck and godspeed Kate!

Then it was a quick stop at Amoeba so I could pick up the new CD by the wonderful Fucked Up... and then home to Casa de Umlaut.

The End.

P.S. I'm listening to Year Of The Pig, the new Fucked Up CD, as I type this.. Fucked Up are a band who are moving forward with their sound, but in an unexpectedly great way. Kudos to those crazy Canadians.. !