6 Subways, 6 Bands, 3 Handstamps, 2 Venues, 1 Night....

Fortunado/Rudie Crew/Spider Nick and the Maddogs/King Django//Tap Bar
Blackout Shoppers/The Freeze//The Continental
5/26/06

I was really lookin forward to the ska show because I really need a change of pace from all the punk rock. 'Course I was gonna end up at a punk rock show at the end of the night, but that's ok. Sometimes, you just need to hear/see something different. I do, at least.

I went upstairs to find something to read before doors at the Knit and as I was on the stairs, a woman greeted me as if she knew me. She asked me if I was there last Saturday. I was taken off guard and I was there recently, so yeah was the first thing that came to mind and out of my mouth. She asked me if I got the tix for The Fall and I told her she had me confused with someone else. To cover for that, she stamped my wrist with a 21+, even though she never asked for ID. I froze. Was that the crazy guard? She had a walkie-talkie on her waist and definitely looked like the other one. Oh well.

Of course when I bought the ticket for the Knit there were only 3 bands on the bill. CT's Fortunado are the ska version of the punk bands I needed the break from. They kinda seemed like hippies, their "I made absolutely no effort tonite" enembles of jeans/shorts and Ts aside. And having horns in your band and 6 members does not make you a ska band, or good. I stood there watching them muddle through, thinking that there should be an age minimum before a band plays a show, except for rare exceptions. Their music barely even sounded ska, and it's funny how some bands who don't have horns can play a song and have it be ska and Fortunado, who does have horns, can't. I wanted to sneak a glance at my watch, but I was afraid to at first. I got over that real quick, don't worry. Their 2nd song did sound a bit more like it, but maybe it was their collective effort to make it look like they made no effort that was their undoing. Of course the standing up because I'm polite and feel sorry for you thing backfired because they said, "I wanna hear all 13 of you on this one! Especially you!" and they pointed to me, so I had to do the whoa-oh-ohs even though I didn't feel like it. I didn't even feel like dancin'. I started worrying, because I thought it might be me. Then they started screaming on a couple and I'm like, either you're emo or you're ska, not both. Stuttering when announcing their last song, it came out as "This is our last show" instead of "This is our last song for the show."

So the first--and last--time I saw Rudie Crew was what started my grudge against the Knitting Factory. There was this crazy security guard harrassing me all nite because all of a sudden you're not allowed to take pix there for some reason. And because she stopped me once (and perhaps because I'm a girl and therefore {she thought} easily intimidated), I was a convenient target and every time someone else's flash went off she threatened to throw me out. Look, you're not allowed to take pix in certain parts of museums. I know that because it's clearly posted. And everyone else I told that story to could not believe it because whoever heard of not being able to take pix at the Knit, right? Thus began my grudgematch against the Knit and I guess my skipping shows there scared them and they were losing money over this because no one has bothered me there since. I mean, when everyone had their big cameras at Art Brut, it was more of a Wow, people who see this band can afford these $899 cameras. They're real photogs and here I am with my amateur film camera and wussy zoom sorta thing and not, Whatever happened to no photography at the Knit?, tho that did cross my mind as well.

Anyhoo, I've tried to suppress all memories of said show (a shame because Seanchai was on the bill as part of a Clash tribute) but I didn't think that that night was so bad that I didn't remember Rudie Crew, dedicating their set to Desmond Dekker, as being an 8-piece band. It worked, of course, their serious reggae grooves blasting the unfortunate Fortunado experience right out of the room.

I've been meaning to catch Spider Nick. They played a Lo-Fi ska show last year, with the requisite DJ stints between sets and I was imagining another fiasco, so I skipped it. I have a CD and I can't remember how I heard of them or where the CD came from, but that hardly matters. They're fun, nostalgic party-starters who started off with a Penguins cover and ended with a cover of C'est Plan Pour Moi, weaving in Anarchy in the UK and Rockaway Beach, and asked for a moment of noise instead of a moment of silence.

Unfortunately Fortunado sought me out during the set change and insisted on selling me a CD. How annoyingly unprofessional. If I wanted it that bad, I would've sought them out. I fixed them with my best get bent look, which must've come across as I'm a cheap Jew who supports bands and could be haggled into it. I mean, I have another show to get to and I need to get something to drink. They thanked me for being up front for them and of course have already written a song about me--HJ in the Dancehall is the track that closes the CD. All thru Django's set I was antsy. It was getting late and for some reason I thought that the Shoppers were going on at 10:15. 15, 45--they're both vertical numbers. An easy mistake. It was like I was immune to his laid-back reggae vibes, instead trying to figure out at what point in the set I would duck out. But you've seen the Shoppers before, I railed at myself. At least this is something different, for a change. And you had no idea when you bought the ticket and set it in stone for the Continental that there'd be a 4th band added.

But the whole point of the night was to go to both shows.

But you know that even if they're on at 10:15, they really won't start at 10:15, so why stand around now and get all worked up over this? You always do this to yourself and it always works out fine. So you miss the 1st 2 songs. Big deal, you've seen them before.

But around 9:45, Django started fretting the set time and skipped a lot of songs on the setlist. I shot out of there at 10 after and headed for the 6, wondering when the walk down (up?) Bway had gotten longer and realizing that taking the 1 to the L to the 6 would be the same as 1st walking around the Canal St. station to the 6. I put my earplugs in on the train. And as much as I needed a break, as much as I was trying to stay in, as much as I worried that maybe it was all over, I felt a little stab of excitement when I got out at Astor. Seeing that van with the big Freeze logo on the side, I couldn't help but think how good it felt to be back there. It even smelled the same. Of course I missed the 1st 2 bands, but got there just in time for the Shoppers on at 10:45.

I feel like I haven't seen Blackout Shoppers in ages, even tho it was only back in April that I last did. It's just that when they play those all-day punk shows, by the time they go on I've already been there for like 5 hours and all the bands do 20 min sets and it's just the same bands hitting the same notes (or lack thereof) and it all sounds the same. And with only 20 mins, you can't do much because it takes time to get acclimated to the set. Which might explain why I was so pleasantly surprised by the Blackout Shoppers' set @ the Continental. All these new songs! A typed set list! I remember they only used to have, like, 6 songs. That night they were all really tight, musically, as a band. I couldn't believe it; it kinda reminded me of that magical "The Spunk Lads is a real band" feeling I had when the Lads hit their stride. I felt like I was hearing/seeing them for the 1st time.

The Shoppers were up to their old tricks again that night--opening for an old-school punk band. The Freeze are a hardcore band from Boston, so that means the Street Dogs can totally break up. "We would've started by now, but we forgot the lyrics," they said by way of apology for the slight delay. It didn't take long before I was hitting the wall. I was hoping I could totally get a stair, but no such luck. There was a lot of lyric-forgetting--"It's ok if you don't know the lyrics, we don't, either," but that hardly mattered.

" 'Us undead fans....' " I saluted Justin downstairs, and he thanked me for sending comments on his comics.

"But you wrote that we should email you comments, so I did."

"But you actually did, and that's so awesome."

"Because you said to, so why wouldn't I?"

I want to tell him that his comic strip is like the illustrated version of stuff I write--and that I do write about music--and the image of the guy looking in the mirror and seeing the guitar with a face was the best. But I don't. The convo is turning out to be the kind that would make a WWIX comic, and I'm just worried that I'll end up being drawn with flies and planets around my head like the crazy woman who offered them coke.

And thank you, Blackout Shoppers, for leaving the flyer for me in the box by my office—and for the “database error,” preventing me from saving/posting this. No, wait, the latter is probably all Fortunado’s fault. (Actually, no, it’s a “hardware problem.”)