Saturday, May 31, 2014

2014-05-26 Punk Rock Bowling

Day 4 - Monday, May 26, 2014

Instead of going to the pool party to watch The Dogs and The Pool Boys (members of lots of PRB bands doing cover songs), we stopped by Claim Jumper for some lunch for the last time.  While sitting there, we noticed the guitar player from the Adicts at a table across from us.  More members of their entourage and band would show up later.  Earthdog also saw Stephen Egerton from the Descendents/ALL running down the hall with guitar in hand most likely heading to the pool party.

This would be the hottest day of the festival with temps topping 102°, but it was a dry heat.  Dry heat my ass!  If felt like when you open up the oven door when you are cooking a pizza at 450°.

Thus, we once again arrived at the outdoor venue (which was a paved parking lot this year instead of the rough gravel that it had been in previous years) around 5pm.  We only had to suffer through a few hours of the heat before the sun started to set and it cooled down slightly.  Purposefully, we missed Rats in the Wall, Clepto, Bad Cop/Bad Cop, and Cerebral Ballzy.



We made it in time to see Good Riddance who I have never seen play live nor have I spent much time listening to their recorded catalog.  Russ Rankin, their singer, also sings in Only Crime a band I am more familiar with due to their drummer being Bill Stevenson of Descendents/ALL.  I enjoyed the set, and I am glad we got their in time to see it.



OFF! were next.  They had too much time on the schedule so Keith Morris, their singer, spent a fair amount of time chatting between songs.  They were great as expected.  We ran into Keith checking out of the Golden Nugget the following morning.  He mentioned it was their last show of their USA tour and their next tour would be in Japan.  Here is the setlist based on a pic I took that was taped to the side of the speakers on stage.



It was now time to get some food so it was off for another buffalo burger while we skipped the noise that was Leftover Crack.  I also stayed behind at the tent for most of the Against Me! set too as I was not too fond of their studio recordings.  I did meander toward the stage to catch the last 5-6 songs of the set and was pleasantly surprised.  I do recall hearing “Drinking with the Jocks.”




NOFX would close out the festival.  As always, Fat Mike and El Hefe trade barbs and jokes with each other and the crowd throughout their set.  They were very entertaining.  They did have a few impromptu tunes that appeared they made up on stage to add to their list of too many reggae influenced songs on the setlist.  Maybe one day they will play “Liza & Louise” when I am at one of their shows.  I do recall them playing the following songs in no particular order.

Linoleum
Seeing Double at the Triple Rock
Stickin in My Eye
Ronnie and Mags
Quitter
72 Hookers
We March to the Beat of an Indifferent Drum
Franco-Unamerican
Who Will O’d 1st at PRB?
Bottles to the Ground
It’s My Job to Keep Punk Rock Elite
Don’t Call Me White
Murder the Government
Bob
Kill All the White Man
War on Errorism
The Shortest Pier



So there you have it, the end of the weekend.  We had tickets to go see The Last, but decided to skip it to get some sleep.  Our expectation was that they would play until around 2am like the other club shows.  Much to our dismay when we found out Tuesday morning that The Last had a 6-7 song setlist that went for about 25-30 minutes and ended before midnight.  In hindsight, maybe we would have toughed it out and watched them before heading back to the Golden Nugget.

Many thanks to Earthdog for traveling out from the Boston area for the weekend, for splitting the cost of the hotel room, and for going on line to buy most of the club show tix that sold out almost immediately.  Thanks again to Ben for being a gracious host while we were in his hometown of Las Vegas.

Here is Earthdog's wrap up.

DAY 4: GUITARS FOR BREAKFAST? Last day of the show and as we sat down to eat at the restaurant inside the Golden Nugget, we noticed that The Adicts guitarists were right behind us. Their roadie brought one of their guitars down, as they were playing a pool party. We actually bagged this since we didn’t want to get shut out like the Peter and the Test Tube Babies event. But it was funny seeing them whip out a guitar as they were downing their OJ! Side of grapefruit with that boys? Anyway, first band we saw on the last day of the festival was Good Riddance. Had never seen this band either. I thought they put on a rocking set. I just think the crowd was still struggling with the heat for the most part. Next was OFF! They were on fire and played stuff from all 3 of their records. Lewdd would chat with Keith Morris the next morning in the hotel check-out line. But today it was all about the rawk! I checked out Against Me!’s set. Drummer Atom Willard was impressive. Laura Jane Grace’s bra was cute. That is all. NOFX closed out the night. Although the guys should have played half the amount of reggae tunes they did, it was still totally entertaining. The music and the wisecracks in between songs both made me happy. Fat Mike said he had been awake for 4 days-he may have looked it, but the band still came up with the goods. Stick it in my eye! Well, that pretty much wraps it up my friends. I won’t bore you with additional mundane facts like we didn’t catch The Last, even though we had tickets. Or that my return flight was delayed and it took me fucking forever to get home. No, I will just leave you with this-Punk Rock Bowling rules and we can all thank the Stern brothers from BYO for that. So don’t be a wallflower-make sure you go in 2015. End transmission.

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