Rolling Rock & Roll
Little Steven’s Underground Garage//Irving Plaza//9/21/06
As soon as I bought the ticket I thought it was going to be whack and I almost regretted it, but it was the only local appearance from The Mooney Suzuki. When I got the email and saw that they were going to play Irving Plaza, I was like, yeah, that’s about right. That was bound to happen. No heart stopping, no shortness of breath, no worrying about getting caught skipping out at work to head to the Merc to buy tix during lunch. And then I saw the part about it being the Underground Garage festival and thought that it would be cool. And the Woggles were on it as well. Two bands which are better in a small venue.
I got down to Irving at like 4 one early Friday to get the tix and there were already a few kids sitting outside, all playing with cell phones. As I got up to the box office, I had to wonder what crappy screamo band was playing that night. Circa Survive. Ha ha. Can I call it or what? Then again, maybe it was one of those earlier shows and doors were at 6:30 or something, so getting there at 4 wasn’t all that ridiculous. But they probably got there earlier. (I once knew of a girl who slept outside venues for the Strokes and the Vines.) The weird thing about Irving is the tix, while still going thru Ticketmaster, are now sponsored by Live Nation, or something. The tix are all blue and don’t say Ticketmaster anymore. I knew people who wouldn’t set foot inside Irving because the shows/venue was sponsored by Clear Channel. And after I got the ticket I read it. LSUG presents the Rolling Rock & Roll Show. I thought it was going to be whack. I almost titled this one “Fogeyfest.”
I got on line at 20 to 7, for 8pm doors and a 9:00 show. I was the first person on line, even though for me, that’s late. There were tour buses parked at the curb with the Underground Garage logos and Rolling Rock And Roll, and Sponsored by Rolling Rock and corny stuff like that, but they also gave the place a buzz of the circus is in town, or the big event. A guy in a Q104.3 “The home of classic rock” polo was handing out key chains—y’know, the type of promo “get paid to go out” marketing/PR ads I answer on Craigslist but they never get back to me. Proving the “courting the rubes” vibe true were all the stupid questions: Is there seating here? Do you know what time this thing is going to be over?
A kid gets on line and security notices how young he looks. It’s a 21+ show and the kid, while looking 15, is actually 20 and not allowed to attend. Give me a break, 20 is practically 21, and believe me, the kid didn’t look like he’d get shitfaced and start kicking ass. He kept pleading his case: nobody asked him for ID when he bought the ticket, if it really was 21+, how come they didn’t, I took the railroad all the way from the end of Long Island for this, what am I supposed to do. The guard kept apologizing and said to either sell his ticket to the box office or sell it to someone on line. The kid kept up his complaints, and it was on the tip of my tongue to say that I’ll be his guardian and keep an eye out for him and the guard must’ve guessed that I was going to say that, because he said, “This isn’t my decision. This event is sponsored by Rolling Rock and it’s a 21+ show. Everyone is going to have to show ID that they’re over 21. It’s not up to me.” He’s still bitching that no one asked for his ID at the box office and the guard tells him to sell his ticket to someone on line and write a letter to Irving Plaza about what happened and they’ll put him on the list for something else.
I get in and establish my spot and check out the merch tables. Rolling Rock has a promotion where they hand out coasters shaped like guitar picks and you’re supposed to hold them up to a blacklight and if it says Rock Star, you win a T-shirt and if it says Sorry you get a bandanna. I figured I was sorry and most definitely not a rock star. Besides, I explained to the PR gals there, I didn’t even realize the lamp for the blacklight was shaped like an amp. “But you caught on,” she reassured me. No, I admitted, I heard those people over there discussing it. Big surprise, I’m not a rock star and didn’t win a T-shirt, which is fine by me since I have more than enough Ts. At first I thought the bandanna would be great except it had the Rolling Rock logo all over it, but when I unfolded it, it also had the Little Steven’s Underground Garage logo on it. And the PR gals were taking pix of people with their Ts and doing the promo, another one of those “event photographer” gigs that I try to land but no one gets back to me about.
I’m checking out the last of the tables when the couple from the Continental, who were behind me and then behind that space invader, recognizes me and says hi. We have great taste in music, huh, we say and then we agree.
“Did you hear about the people who killed after the show?” the woman asked.
What? “What?”
“Yeah, a family going home after the show was killed by a drunk driver. . . . A young kid, too. . . .”
I saw a young kid there. In fact, I noticed that even though it was an A/A show, there was only 1 teen there, which I thought was odd. How come I didn’t hear about this? What, do I live under a rock? Next you’re gonna tell me we’re still in Iraq looking for Osama bin Laden.
Dazed, I made my way back inside and when I saw the guy who was yelled at by the “photographer,” I asked him if he’d heard about this.
He tells me that the woman was driving in the wrong lane or something, and her kid was killed. I couldn’t hear exactly what he said. Or maybe it’s that I didn’t want to.
(The woman was so drunk that she was driving north on the southbound lane of the Saw Mill River Parkway and crashed into another car, killing her daughter’s friend, who took the train in and met up with them. And according to the Post online the woman has a Myspace page where she lists her occupation as “Roccer Mom” and says she’s “just an old fangirl rediscovering my punk rock roots after being bored in the ‘burbs for years” and there’s pix of her and her daughter’s friends at CBGB protests and Ramones shows. I wonder if that was the woman with the girls at the Abrasive Wheels show. I love how the article ominously mentions the underage daughter and her teenage pal. Yeah, it was an A/A show, big deal. Get over it.)
There’s a banner above the stage that advertised the AT&T Blueroom website, whatever the hell that is, and the monitors were set up midstage, making a catwalk for the go-go girls. There were 5 of them and I was a bit too close to them because I wanted to put a dollar in their hotpants. This would be a good job for me, since I’m always at gigs and dancing anyway, so why not make some $, right, but I need to be comfortable at gigs, so no go-go boots for me, and they all wear wigs and tons of makeup and I schvitz like a chazza when I dance, and while I dug the psychedelic getups and the tacky-on-purpose earrings that probably came from Girlprops which they changed before every set, that whole rule about how you have to be flatchested counts me out. Still, to pass the time between set changes I tried to guess which one of them was coming up with the moves that the others copied.
Just like the Little Steven’s International Underground Garage Festival in 2004, they let local acts join the bill. This time around The Anderson Council, from New Brunswick, NJ was the opener. They have a song called Strawberry Smell (AKA what not to name a song) and at times it seemed like they were fucking with Paint It Black, just to be funny or show their (garage) roots, and it seemed like the song kept going. Has punk rock warped my brain so much and made my attention span that much shorter? As if that wasn’t bad enough, the lead singer reminded me of Shaggy. The guy has a really long face and his hair is thinning, so to counteract this he wore it ear-length and layered, so his head looked like a mushroom. Or at least triangular.
I thought The Woggles should’ve been later on in the bill, given how long they’ve been around, but this is NYC so the Atlanta band just wiped the stage with the Andersons’ asses. Security kept freaking and every time they jumped offstage and into the crowd, and I’m like, they do this all the time. What’s the big deal?
Back to the go-go dancers. And then I realize that not only would the whole evening move quicker if we didn’t have half-hour go-go dancer interludes, unlike the International Underground Festival, there are no women on the bill. Except for the go-go dancers. What the hell? Women aren’t wallpaper. Ken Dashow from Q104.3 who was MCing the night said that they were going to have other Underground Garage shows. The Plungers would kill. At the Underground Garage merch table they were taking applications for go-go dancers and I considered writing my band suggestions on one of the forms. And I don’t want to sound like an ass for pointing this out, but Les Sans Culottes would’ve killed.
The Fleshtones also should’ve been later on in the set because they’ve been around since the 70s. Though I was totally digging their rocker shirts, it was clear that the bass player didn’t get the email that they had to dress like rockers because he just wore a T-shirt. They also jumped into the crowd, challenging audience members to push-up contests. Stepping up the challenge, they asked who was a real man and then they had takers. Of course.
Even though The Mooney Suzuki probably learned their dance moves from The Woggles, they definitely brought the rock that night—as did I. They made the whole long night worth waiting around for. Graham stumbled a bit jumping off stage and first I got gouged in the wrist with a guitar string and then cracked in the opposite side of my face with the top of the guitar. The curse of CBGB lives. (They really did a number on me when they played at CBGB and that show was a typical Concert Joe scene, so I wore the CBGB shirt he got me, which is sweet because I secretly wanted one but it was something I never would’ve bought for myself.) No, I don’t have to get hurt by them in order for it to be a good show, it’s just a coincidence.
Ken said that videos from the night’s show are going to be on the AT&T Blueroom site. I wonder if my getting smacked in the face will be. Or if that’ll show up on YouTube somehow. And more thanks to Rolling Rock and AT&T for keeping rock & roll alive, and then they thanked Little Steven and got him onstage for a bit.
The Zombies closed out the night with Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone doing many Zombies and Argent classics (She’s Not There and Time of The Season). Argent’s lead singer wrote the original version of God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You. You learn something new at shows every day. Or at least I do.
The show ended at 1:15, which is weird because I thought that place is unionized and shows can’t go past 11. They never have in the past. Or past midnight.
As soon as I bought the ticket I thought it was going to be whack and I almost regretted it, but it was the only local appearance from The Mooney Suzuki. When I got the email and saw that they were going to play Irving Plaza, I was like, yeah, that’s about right. That was bound to happen. No heart stopping, no shortness of breath, no worrying about getting caught skipping out at work to head to the Merc to buy tix during lunch. And then I saw the part about it being the Underground Garage festival and thought that it would be cool. And the Woggles were on it as well. Two bands which are better in a small venue.
I got down to Irving at like 4 one early Friday to get the tix and there were already a few kids sitting outside, all playing with cell phones. As I got up to the box office, I had to wonder what crappy screamo band was playing that night. Circa Survive. Ha ha. Can I call it or what? Then again, maybe it was one of those earlier shows and doors were at 6:30 or something, so getting there at 4 wasn’t all that ridiculous. But they probably got there earlier. (I once knew of a girl who slept outside venues for the Strokes and the Vines.) The weird thing about Irving is the tix, while still going thru Ticketmaster, are now sponsored by Live Nation, or something. The tix are all blue and don’t say Ticketmaster anymore. I knew people who wouldn’t set foot inside Irving because the shows/venue was sponsored by Clear Channel. And after I got the ticket I read it. LSUG presents the Rolling Rock & Roll Show. I thought it was going to be whack. I almost titled this one “Fogeyfest.”
I got on line at 20 to 7, for 8pm doors and a 9:00 show. I was the first person on line, even though for me, that’s late. There were tour buses parked at the curb with the Underground Garage logos and Rolling Rock And Roll, and Sponsored by Rolling Rock and corny stuff like that, but they also gave the place a buzz of the circus is in town, or the big event. A guy in a Q104.3 “The home of classic rock” polo was handing out key chains—y’know, the type of promo “get paid to go out” marketing/PR ads I answer on Craigslist but they never get back to me. Proving the “courting the rubes” vibe true were all the stupid questions: Is there seating here? Do you know what time this thing is going to be over?
A kid gets on line and security notices how young he looks. It’s a 21+ show and the kid, while looking 15, is actually 20 and not allowed to attend. Give me a break, 20 is practically 21, and believe me, the kid didn’t look like he’d get shitfaced and start kicking ass. He kept pleading his case: nobody asked him for ID when he bought the ticket, if it really was 21+, how come they didn’t, I took the railroad all the way from the end of Long Island for this, what am I supposed to do. The guard kept apologizing and said to either sell his ticket to the box office or sell it to someone on line. The kid kept up his complaints, and it was on the tip of my tongue to say that I’ll be his guardian and keep an eye out for him and the guard must’ve guessed that I was going to say that, because he said, “This isn’t my decision. This event is sponsored by Rolling Rock and it’s a 21+ show. Everyone is going to have to show ID that they’re over 21. It’s not up to me.” He’s still bitching that no one asked for his ID at the box office and the guard tells him to sell his ticket to someone on line and write a letter to Irving Plaza about what happened and they’ll put him on the list for something else.
I get in and establish my spot and check out the merch tables. Rolling Rock has a promotion where they hand out coasters shaped like guitar picks and you’re supposed to hold them up to a blacklight and if it says Rock Star, you win a T-shirt and if it says Sorry you get a bandanna. I figured I was sorry and most definitely not a rock star. Besides, I explained to the PR gals there, I didn’t even realize the lamp for the blacklight was shaped like an amp. “But you caught on,” she reassured me. No, I admitted, I heard those people over there discussing it. Big surprise, I’m not a rock star and didn’t win a T-shirt, which is fine by me since I have more than enough Ts. At first I thought the bandanna would be great except it had the Rolling Rock logo all over it, but when I unfolded it, it also had the Little Steven’s Underground Garage logo on it. And the PR gals were taking pix of people with their Ts and doing the promo, another one of those “event photographer” gigs that I try to land but no one gets back to me about.
I’m checking out the last of the tables when the couple from the Continental, who were behind me and then behind that space invader, recognizes me and says hi. We have great taste in music, huh, we say and then we agree.
“Did you hear about the people who killed after the show?” the woman asked.
What? “What?”
“Yeah, a family going home after the show was killed by a drunk driver. . . . A young kid, too. . . .”
I saw a young kid there. In fact, I noticed that even though it was an A/A show, there was only 1 teen there, which I thought was odd. How come I didn’t hear about this? What, do I live under a rock? Next you’re gonna tell me we’re still in Iraq looking for Osama bin Laden.
Dazed, I made my way back inside and when I saw the guy who was yelled at by the “photographer,” I asked him if he’d heard about this.
He tells me that the woman was driving in the wrong lane or something, and her kid was killed. I couldn’t hear exactly what he said. Or maybe it’s that I didn’t want to.
(The woman was so drunk that she was driving north on the southbound lane of the Saw Mill River Parkway and crashed into another car, killing her daughter’s friend, who took the train in and met up with them. And according to the Post online the woman has a Myspace page where she lists her occupation as “Roccer Mom” and says she’s “just an old fangirl rediscovering my punk rock roots after being bored in the ‘burbs for years” and there’s pix of her and her daughter’s friends at CBGB protests and Ramones shows. I wonder if that was the woman with the girls at the Abrasive Wheels show. I love how the article ominously mentions the underage daughter and her teenage pal. Yeah, it was an A/A show, big deal. Get over it.)
There’s a banner above the stage that advertised the AT&T Blueroom website, whatever the hell that is, and the monitors were set up midstage, making a catwalk for the go-go girls. There were 5 of them and I was a bit too close to them because I wanted to put a dollar in their hotpants. This would be a good job for me, since I’m always at gigs and dancing anyway, so why not make some $, right, but I need to be comfortable at gigs, so no go-go boots for me, and they all wear wigs and tons of makeup and I schvitz like a chazza when I dance, and while I dug the psychedelic getups and the tacky-on-purpose earrings that probably came from Girlprops which they changed before every set, that whole rule about how you have to be flatchested counts me out. Still, to pass the time between set changes I tried to guess which one of them was coming up with the moves that the others copied.
Just like the Little Steven’s International Underground Garage Festival in 2004, they let local acts join the bill. This time around The Anderson Council, from New Brunswick, NJ was the opener. They have a song called Strawberry Smell (AKA what not to name a song) and at times it seemed like they were fucking with Paint It Black, just to be funny or show their (garage) roots, and it seemed like the song kept going. Has punk rock warped my brain so much and made my attention span that much shorter? As if that wasn’t bad enough, the lead singer reminded me of Shaggy. The guy has a really long face and his hair is thinning, so to counteract this he wore it ear-length and layered, so his head looked like a mushroom. Or at least triangular.
I thought The Woggles should’ve been later on in the bill, given how long they’ve been around, but this is NYC so the Atlanta band just wiped the stage with the Andersons’ asses. Security kept freaking and every time they jumped offstage and into the crowd, and I’m like, they do this all the time. What’s the big deal?
Back to the go-go dancers. And then I realize that not only would the whole evening move quicker if we didn’t have half-hour go-go dancer interludes, unlike the International Underground Festival, there are no women on the bill. Except for the go-go dancers. What the hell? Women aren’t wallpaper. Ken Dashow from Q104.3 who was MCing the night said that they were going to have other Underground Garage shows. The Plungers would kill. At the Underground Garage merch table they were taking applications for go-go dancers and I considered writing my band suggestions on one of the forms. And I don’t want to sound like an ass for pointing this out, but Les Sans Culottes would’ve killed.
The Fleshtones also should’ve been later on in the set because they’ve been around since the 70s. Though I was totally digging their rocker shirts, it was clear that the bass player didn’t get the email that they had to dress like rockers because he just wore a T-shirt. They also jumped into the crowd, challenging audience members to push-up contests. Stepping up the challenge, they asked who was a real man and then they had takers. Of course.
Even though The Mooney Suzuki probably learned their dance moves from The Woggles, they definitely brought the rock that night—as did I. They made the whole long night worth waiting around for. Graham stumbled a bit jumping off stage and first I got gouged in the wrist with a guitar string and then cracked in the opposite side of my face with the top of the guitar. The curse of CBGB lives. (They really did a number on me when they played at CBGB and that show was a typical Concert Joe scene, so I wore the CBGB shirt he got me, which is sweet because I secretly wanted one but it was something I never would’ve bought for myself.) No, I don’t have to get hurt by them in order for it to be a good show, it’s just a coincidence.
Ken said that videos from the night’s show are going to be on the AT&T Blueroom site. I wonder if my getting smacked in the face will be. Or if that’ll show up on YouTube somehow. And more thanks to Rolling Rock and AT&T for keeping rock & roll alive, and then they thanked Little Steven and got him onstage for a bit.
The Zombies closed out the night with Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone doing many Zombies and Argent classics (She’s Not There and Time of The Season). Argent’s lead singer wrote the original version of God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You. You learn something new at shows every day. Or at least I do.
The show ended at 1:15, which is weird because I thought that place is unionized and shows can’t go past 11. They never have in the past. Or past midnight.
posted by heather @ 12:10 AM
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