Mu330 @ Asbestos Records NYC Ska Festival, The Rock Shop, Brooklyn, NY – Day 3

Live Reviews | Jun 5th, 2014

Asbestos Records NYC Ska Festival @ The Rock Shop, Brooklyn, NY - Day 3 (11)

Date: June 1st, 2014
Bands: Go Big, Survay Says!, Jiker, Slow Gherkin, Mu330

The last day of the “Apple Womp” was moved to a bigger club than the Cake Shop, and one that was actually free for the night. The Rock Shop in Brooklyn was available and was a decent place to see a show as well! I never been there before and wasn’t too much of a pain to get to…just took longer than usual to get to a show.

By now, most people knew who the mystery band was that was headlining and it was Dan Potthast plus people from Bomb The Music Industry and Slow Gherkin again. Mostly the same people as last time when they are played Apple Stomp. But we’ll get to them later.

I arrived early and was helping out some of the folks of Asbestos Records trying to film some of the bands playing a guitar they got for the festival. It was in the upstairs part of the bar but was just a little bit awkward trying to arrange everything, on top of trying to not piss off the people in the bar. I missed most of the set of Go Big but managed to get downstairs to see a few songs before they stopped playing. Go Big consists of a few members of High School Football Heroes.

Survay Says! were up after them and I caught the majority of their set, which seemed like a lot of the same songs from Friday night. Towards the end of the set, they finally got the crowd to dance a little bit. The club was a little weird with the way it was set up in that there wasn’t really any back rooms or loading areas so everybody was unloading their gear in the crowd pretty much. Still, it was a decent club.

Jiker was next and it was another reunion Asbestos Records wanted this year, for some reason. I’ll be honest, I don’t like Jiker and never have. Not going to sugar coat anything but I just don’t like their music. They always used to play all these shows I went to back in the 90s and just couldn’t stand it. I think some of the crowd enjoyed their set and their friends were hardcore dancing. The rest of the crowd looked like the band were murdering kittens on stage. Jiker never really fit into one style of music since they play a mixture of ska, punk, metal and hardcore. I’ll call them ClusterFuckCore. Some people like this stuff, a lot of people don’t. I will say though, they were fun to photograph at least.

The band a lot of people were there to see, including myself, was Slow Gherkin and they played second to last. In reality, they probably should have headlined and I believe Dan P even made a joke about it saying just because you’re playing last doesn’t make you the headliner. Or did he say that the previous night? Anyway, Slow Gherkin put on an excellent set and I don’t think anyone would disagree with me. I’m trying to remember the last time I saw the Santa Cruz ska band and I think it was in ‘99 when they toured with The Toasters and Edna’s Goldfish. I believe I saw that tour twice, once at Skater’s World in Wayne, NJ and another time at Sea Sea’s in Moosic, PA.

They played “Shed Some Skin” and then “Another in Your Life,” which between “Trapped Like Rats in Myers Flat” and that one are my favorite Slow Gherkin songs. James was having a tough time in the beginning, mic was falling apart, guitar strap was coming loose and the mic stand clunked my camera (it survived). I told him in-between songs that he’s breaking everything and he got a kick out of that. Later on he was pretty much falling over the monitor stands/stage thing, where it says “no standing” on it. It would be a a bit of foreshadowing for later during Mu330’s set.

It was great to hear Slow Gherkin’s songs live again, especially ones like “I Only Smoke When I’m Drunk,” “How Now Lowbrow” and “Get Some More.” During the last song, “Trapped Like Rats in Myers Flat,” Dan P and Jeff Rosenstock joined the band as well. I really hope I get to see the band again perform live, and hopefully its not in another 15 years.

Up next was the mystery band “Mu330,” which consisted of members of Bomb the Music Industry and Slow Gherkin alongside Dan Potthast. They played mostly the same songs as last year’s Apple Stomp, songs like “Raw Fish,” “KKK Hiway,” and “Tune Me Out.” I always love to hear “Tune Me Out!”

Dan was amped up for the set and was standing on the monitor stand/stage thingy, and ended up breaking it and falling down on to a few of us in front. It was kind of hilarious, especially since no one got hurt. Dan continued to stand on the other monitor stand and then put his hand on my head, and jumped over into the crowd! I’m lucky my camera survived that too!

And throughout the set, he would go and fired members of the band and then someone else would come up on stage to play guitar. It was like a comedy routine and I loved it. During “LA,” Sammy Kay was “forced” to go up on stage to play guitar and that was a lot of fun to see. Dan and the rest of the guys also played my favorite Mu330 songs “Hoosier Love” and “Stuff.” Those songs are some of the earliest ska songs I heard! I believe after “Hoosier Love” and one other song, the show was over. No encore or fanfare. It was nice not getting home after 2:30am for once, but still got home late. Glad I took off the next day.

Even though the Apple Stomp got postponed and we didn’t even know if these shows were going to go on, they were a blast! It reminded me of the ‘90s ska shows I used to attend. Big props to Matt Flood and everybody for at least giving everybody something to do that weekend.

Here are some of the highlights from the show. Be sure to check out SkaPunkPhotos.com this week and next for all the photos:

Go Big

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Survay Says!

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Jiker

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Slow Gherkin

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Mu330

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