M13 @ The Grand Victory // Sunday Hardcore Matinee
May 4th, 2014
The Mugs
The Blame
Skum City
ANYWAY, I was a bit concerned about this show going into it. The Mugs, Skum City, and the Blame are all incredible, but I had so many fucking expectations for the new SUNDAY MATINEES at the Grand Victory and as much as I LOVE every band on this line up, I didn't think it was the right line up to start these off. As occasionally happens, I was brutally wrong.
In my mind, these All Ages Matinees should have been for the newer bands. Bands formed in the last with names no one knew. These are all established bands with fans and names you can find on dozens of shows a years. I did not think people who could have seen this show at a late night bar would have shown up on a Sunday afternoon, and I did not think the performers would give it their all with hangovers dragging them down.
As I said, but need to say again, I was fucking brutally wrong.
First off, let me admit my bias. I am in bands with dudes from The Mugs and Skum City, so there could be perceived reason to suspect me of underhanded compliments to people I just adore. However, anyone who says I am biased is a fucking liar, and has always hated me, so seriously never trust them bastards.
Every time I see Phil from The Mugs he reminds me he does not hate everything I am (thus implying that he does in fact hate most of what I am ) but I find this banter and loathing to be almost sweet, not to mention heartfelt and sincere. The Mugs are an experience live. Phil spent most of the time during his set at the bar, literally, singing while sitting on top of the bar. I also want to qualify my support of The Mugs with saying that I have to set aside Phil's philosophies and behavior toward other genders, races, nationalities, animals and well pretty everything. If you are able to block out or filter a lot of the SUBSTANCE of what he is saying, he is a fucking blast to see perform. He does shit that I find totally insane at almost every show. His brain is just wired different than mine. I don't condone almost ANYTHING he every does or says, but beyond that I think The Mugs are awesome.
During the set, Jay Rogan on drums made up or Phil's stage absence by not only hammering the drums, but delivering a look of pure joy while he played. Sammy from the Mugs withstood the constant blast of insults from his band mates well, and I thought between his clearly dehydrating performance and beer swigs, his bass playing was tight as hell.
Matt D. from The Mugs is like a god damn brother to me. His glow on stage, whether it be playing guitar or singing, is uplifting. I am just going to ignore his relentless shredding, his focused riffs, and brilliant, unique vocals, and just say that this dude, coupled with the wild cast of characters that is The Mugs, make this band a fucking blast to watch live. AND there was no one kicked in the face or stabbed at this Mugs show, so I felt pretty good about that. I think that may be the first time I have been to a Mugs show and not seen someone headed to the hospital after it.
Skum City is also filled with some of my favorite people on the planet. I don't know a drummer in NYC that is more insane to watch that The Beast. He is flawless, every time. Even when he is playing for bands he has never heard, or songs he has never played, he plays them better than the band, and he gets you to believe it and enjoy it. What a fucking performer!
Let me get to the crux of why I was wrong about this show. I know these people. I know they party hard. Phil from The Mugs, Mark Sux and Christine of Skum City, these folks put your saturday nights to shame. I was worried they were gonna come in on a sunday bender and drag feet. Again, I was wrong on a massive fucking scale.
Christine and Mark were on point a-z. Christine kept up that on stage charm that makes Mark's antics seem acceptable, and Mark did his god damn job like a professional. The man is more animal than human. His reckless abandon is legitimately dangerous. Between him and Phil I was pretty certain injuries would lead to ER visitor passes. Christine and Mark bounce off each other perfectly on stage. They compliment each other like...um...complimentary angles. Damn, that's all I could come up with, fuck. Sorry, they are better than complimentary angles, what is something that complements something else well? They compliment each other like overly eager bathroom attendant compliment your genitalia proportions. How is that, better?
But is is Moose, on guitar, that make Skum City the juggernaut it is. This dude is a pure bred guitar freak. He gets on stage and just zones every one of you fuckers in the crowd out. He buries his head and goes to town. His playing is flawless every fucking time, FLAWLESS. Mortal Combat flawless. I get to play with Moose and Matt in two different bands, and just am amazed at how what they do on stage is actually who they are, all the time. The genuineness (is that a word?) comes through on stage, and make their bands, their performances immaculate.
As for the rest of the line up, The Blame write some of the catchiest tunes in NYC Punk. You can't get these tunes outta your head. Phil and Paul are two of the kindest vets in the scene, and deserve a million pounds of respect. These dudes hold no pretensions and play with pure focus. They are serious professionals but never act better than someone else, even though they could, because they are. It's hard for me to pick if I love their attitudes or their music more. I think their tunes squeak out ahead just by a hair, because I stand their, song after song, just unable to understand how the fuck they can come up with this stuff. Impressed.
I love the bass player for The Blame too. That dude is steady. One a hilarious side note, this dude had like 4 huge cans of Monster in front of him while he played. WELL beyond the doctor recommended dose. I did not comment, kind of hope he doesn't read this, but I was awestruck that someone could plan that well ahead for caffeine fixes. Impressed!
M13. I am a fucking sucker for in between song banter. I prefer uplifting banter that encourage people to make the world a better place for everyone, but Phil from The Mugs had some interesting banter too. M13's in between song feather ruffling was spot on. The sings just hit it. It was as good as I have ever scene. Pointed and irreverent, personally relevant, but universally appealing, poetic and still politically changed. That dude was unshakable. Beyond that, his performance was menacing!
He fucking brought the boom. The god damn band was inhuman good. If Jean Claude Van Dam character from Cyborg was in a HC punk band, it would have been this one. It was that tight. I had never heard these tunes before, but I could not hear a misplaced note or unsung syllable.
I was only gonna stay and hear one tune, as I was already late for a meeting when they started, but I stayed their whole set. I don't know if they consider themselves a political band or not, but I just think the outlook they expressed and the feelings they focused on were a great balance for this show. They made me think, and made me want to fight. This is what I think the greatest hardcore bands do, and I feel like these guys contended on this day.
The show didn't have “new” bands on it, but it was a million miles an hour. Not a sing person in this show seemed slowed by Sunday morning bullshit. The crowd showed up, and got down hard along with the bands. The Grand Vic. crew did a great job putting together a line up of folks who put on a top notch show. I had my concerns about it, but was totally wrong. The thing I was reminded of through all this, and my shameful lack of for sight concerning these Sunday Matinees is the power of music. Music and REAL musicians are transformed by these tunes. They comes out any time, any place and pour their fucking hearts out, endlessly. I am not going to forget this lesson again. I owe this show a debt of thanks for printing this though on my ignorant brain in such a singular way.
--------------- Now on to something SLIGHTLY different...SUNDAY HC MATINEES and THE GRAND VICTORY ---------------
Now, I know you prob. think this review is already a bit long, but fuck you, I wrote it, so I can do whatever the fuck I want. I still want to say some things about the larger issues in motion here.
Sunday Matinees. I have proposed doing all ages sunday matinees to like 15 bars and DIY spots over the last few years. Mainly, people like it, but don't want to wake up early enough to do it regularly. I LOVE ALL AGES SHOWS, and I know it is not easy for a bar to do it. I also LOVE punk/hc matinees. They embody a dozen reasons why punk is better than whatever shit someone else listens too.
So when I heard that the Grand Victory was doing Sunday ALL AGES matinees, I was fucking stupid jacked. I hope our scene can grow these shows, and it becomes a place for us to get down with wildly unknown new bands and some of our favs as well.
Punk is not about tradition or living in the past. It is about the here and now. And sadly we have a HUGE fucking problem in our scene with only a few ALL AGES venues stable enough to book long in advance, ABC NO RIO being one of them, along with a smattering (that's right I said smattering, FUCK YOU) of DIY venues, and now, GV being another. We should fucking cherish these places. They put punk over profit a lot of the time, and are the beacons for us to build this scene again. BOOK UNDERAGE BANDS, PROMOTE TO UNDER AGE KIDS, and let's make use of these gems before profit or police take them away from us.
All that said, I want to say my piece about The Grand Victory. When I first walked into this place, I almost walked right out. I am an unapologetic communist. I am a flag burning anti-nationalist on every front. So seeing the décor of the GV and it's patriotic undertones was not something I was super excited about. I understood this was a WWII themed bar, not a nationalist bar, I just didn't appreciate the difference enough at the time. This bar could not have started out in a worst position with me. I felt like there was almost no way I would return after my first visit. BUT as seems to be the major theme of this article I was brutally wrong.
That flag makes me uncomfortable and I am sure my immigrant family feel the same way. I def. needed to be won over into being ok with this place. I hate nationalism because, among other things I find it a petty and narcissistic ideology, but the people at this bar could not be further from that. This bar, despite the huge American flag on the stage, is hands down one of the best in NYC. (Those of you who know me, know that is not an easy thing for me to say, I really do not appreciate that fucking flag.)
Here is how the GV took a loathsome communist and turned him into an avid fan. First the atmosphere in this place is professional but not pretentious. This is almost impossible to do in NYC/Williamsburg. Bar owners in NYC have this thing where they want to make their bar exclusive and in doing so they make it douchey and unapproachable. I am not gonna shit talk bars, there are a number we regularly do shows at that go out of their way to make their space open and appeal to fans and bands. I appreciate that. But GV not only has incredible sound, attentive staff, they are actually fucking WELCOMING. They put on all types of shows, and don't have an air of superiority.
This bar LOVES the punk scene. The music, the bands, the fans, everything. They have more respect for every one of those things that most venues have for any one of them. They put tons of thought and money into making this sound great and be comfortable. You just don't find businesses very often that actually care about what they are doing. All they want is profit. This place is part of our community, not simply a place out community uses for our shows. I can't thank them enough.
I enjoy spending time there, even though I have to see that flag all the time. I respect the people involved in this place enough to know that this symbol to them does not mean the same thing it does to me, and a lot of the rest of the world. This is something I think a lot of radicals need to deal with better. We can despise a symbol and what it represents to us, objectively or subjectively, while not despising the people who appreciate that symbol. That does not mean I respect the symbol, but I do have respect for the people. They are not dumb or mislead, they are looking at something and seeing something I don't see. They love that symbol because to them it represents freedom and equality, opportunity and courage. I have the utmost respect for that love, even though I deeply disagree that this flag does in fact represent those things.
Ok, you punks may not care about this thought process, but this bar did not have it easy to win me over, but did so effortlessly because the people who are involved in it are good people, genuinely good people. So I had to reflect on my own how such good people could believe so much in that flag, and felt like I had been unfairly judging these people. I did the same thing to Christians when I was 18, but had not given as much thought to flag waiving as I had to cross bearing. I still have problems with it all, but GV helped me see things a bit differently.
I am not sure what first started me on the road to being won over to GV. But I can't say enough about how hard it is for a place to be COOL in BK without being pretentious. I have known the security, Ira, for many years, and have a ton of respect for him. So it may have been his encouragement, or simply his way with people. (I have a buddy who did not know Ira, one day, he was telling me how he went to a show, and there was the nicest, most considerate security guy he had ever met, I asked where this was. He said at the GV. I showed him a picture of Ira and ask if this was him. He said, holy shit, you have a picture of this door guy, he is great, right?) or if it was the owner Sean, or the guy working the sound board when we first played there, I don't know. But I am glad I was won over.
Sean, the owner, is the nicest dude in the scene, forget even being a bar owner, he is just a good dude. When the will played there, as one of our first show, not even being known the guy working the bar, not sure if it was Sean or a dude who looked a lot like him, I thought he said his name was Frank, but I was also crazy high from the set, and not making any sense. I do remember him smiling ear to ear and saying he dug our shit and then telling me why. Bar tenders don't thank musicians for playing, they sure as fuck don't listen closely enough to explain why, fuck MOST of them in NYC don't even smile (I suspect a number may not even have 2 ears to smile between). This bar is not normal. It has fucking incredible sound, ALWAYS. It has wildly clean bathroom, without a question the best in the punk scene. Great staff, and genuinely give a fuck about our scene, not just making money. But that is not the only or even main reason why I love it here.
I could not be more proud (well, I could be, if they took that flag down, but I am a raging asshole) that the Grand Victory is doing Sunday ALL AGES matinees, I hope to play a thousand of them! Spencer Kray is booking some killer fucking shows in the HC matinees.
get down,
joey steel
