Opening Bands: The Mission 120, Darkbuster
Date: 2000?
Venue: Karma Club, Boston, MA

Before saying ANYTHING at all about the show, I need to write out a thank you…..

To my friend Peter…. Who drives me everywhere… Thank you so much for all the times… Everytime… Everywhere. To clue everyone in, Peter is the one who drives to the shows, not me. Any review I’ve ever done is because he got me there, and without him you’d never been reading my wonderful words… So thanks Pete, I owe you big time……

And on with the review. So, I wake up real early, and we order tickets the morning of the show, and we’re out of Cheshire by 8:15ish or so. Damn that’s early for a show that the doors don’t even open till 3 pm!!! So we’re driving along, we stop and get gas in god knows where, and we decide to go to Denny’s in Vernon CT. Except that the wait at Denny’s is 15-30 minutes for non-smoking. Screw that… If I want to eat cancer for breakfast I won’t do it in public…. Ugh, do people really have to smoke while eating? Can’t all restaurants be smoke free??? Enough with the rant… So we stop a while later at some rest station. Oh, did I forget to mention that it started SNOWING when we hit MA? Yeah. Flurries. Whew. It’s cold out. So we get in, and I make an ass of myself as always. These cute girls sit right behind us and I was happy and all, but I have to make a jerk out of myself everywhere I go….

So I yell at Peter “You lost F*cking God?!?!?!?!” (God is the name of his ice scraper) And they all turn and stare at my like I’m psychotic… I mean I do look odd… I’ve got that whole bleached hair thing going again, and I look cute and all, but for some reason I never know when to shut up!!! So it’s cool and all. So we finally get to Boston, and we can find no parking, and we’re cheap and don’t want to pay. We drive forever… And end up parking up by Mass Art and Wentworth. (That’s way out by Northeastern….) And so we go to try and find a friend of ours… Security is nice but stupid…. And we walk to Karma, and find him there. And NOBODY else is there yet. hehe it’s 12:00 and we’re early.

So Matt from KITH comes up and shoots the stuff with us for a while, and then StraightEdge Sean comes by. Sean’s cool, you all should meet him. Good guy. So we go get pizza, and end up eating it while waiting in line. Now it’s freaking cold out. It’s flurrying, and It’s barely 30 degrees out. So I’m gonna skip 3 hours of my friends and I acting like idiots, nearly demolishing a door to Axis (next to Karma), and seeing a guy put a nail RIGHT into his nose, all the way in…. And they finally let us in. Took em long enough. I buy 5 KITH cd’s…. And end up with a bookbag FILLED with everyone else’s stuff. Got it’s heavy. Ryan from KITH is nice though and let me stash it next door in Bill’s Bar with their stuff. So, the bands… First up was The Mission 120, and they are on Fork In Hand Records. Now I’d never seen them, and I was really really impressed. They just rocked out really hard. Good guitar riffs, and get this, their drummer totally sings, and he was good at it as well. Highlight of their set? The fact that the stupid web crap that Karma put up above the drummer kept getting caught on his sticks, and eventually they just ripped that crap out….

Oh yeah, they were dressed as zombies too. Good costumes. Next up was Darkbuster, winner’s of the WBCN’s Royale Rumble this year. (A battle of the bands basically.) For some reason they reminded me of Dropkick Murphy’s without bagpipes. For real too. They were really really good, and I look forward to seeing them again sometime soon. And then what… Oh, yeah. The 2 Boston hardcore kids. Sigh… Everywhere I go, I meet some sort of idiots. Well, these 2 were my daily dose of idiocy from the world. They had no clue who Kicked In The Head was…. Which made me mad. They were literally HURTING people during Darkbuster. IE slamming their elbows into people’s heads, punching people, THROWING people against their will into the pit. There is NO room for this in my scene, any scene I’ve been to, or (I hope) YOUR scene. Total idiots….. And next was Reach The Sky. They were the replacements for Catch 22, who were originally set to play the show. No offense to Reach The Sky, but I would rather have had C22, as they fit the bill more than a h/c band does. RTS had a lot of fans there, but their fans were jerks. Punching and beating people. I got hit one too many times and said screw it. Sean tried to walk on people and grab some pipe and went down hard…. Lots of people got hurt, and they took one person to the emergency room…. Fools… Fools…..

Oh well. And then Kicked In The Head was up….. Hmmmm. Dressed as auto Body workers. Pretty cool. God, they played everything.. “Put Up A Fight”, “Tidal Wave” “Lost Cause” “Churn It Up” and more….. Highlight for me was getting onstage and singing KITH’s cover of Slapshot’s “I want you Dead” with Gary (their lead) and Sean. Sean set up his camera to videotape us during that part, and I actually dove off stage too. Never done that before. Some guy actually tried to block me too…. And I totally SOARED like Superman over his head. Now I may have stated that I hate stage divers before, but I think I know what they are all doing wrong. Some of them just roll over into the crowd, some just jump right into the front… You need to FLY over everyone, so you can give them time to grab you… And watch your feet! Don’t hurt anybody with them, they are dangerous weapons! And that’s all about that…

Next up was Big D and The Kids Table. What can I say, they rocked. But I had so little energy…. Save for the first song. They opened up with “Iron Maiden”!!! For those who don’t have it yet, pick up the Too Hep compilation, Metalliska, go get it now. And go vote for Big D on their site!!! http://www.toohep.com Go vote!!!! Oh well, Big D was great and played some new songs, including a Rudiments cover. (Anybody ever hear them? Check out their split with the Suicide Machines entitled “Skank For Brains”) What else… Big D covered “Sound System” like they do oftentimes do to the crowd demanding it. And that’s it really. We went out, visited my older brother, ate pizza, made lots of noise walking back to Wentworth… Im’d people on some kids buddy list while visiting friends of friends of friends…. People should know never to leave their computer without a password of some sort somewhere locking it out… It was too tempting. Hope his friends don’t mind us asking them for sex. Correct that. Begging for it. Oh well….. I’m cruel, what can I say…. It was Sean’s idea though. And then we drove home. (Peter drove home actually) Got home at around midnight… What a long day….