Show review: Dayglo Abortions, Citizen Rage, and Car 87 at the Rickshaw, June 14, 2022

...So that sure was fun. 

The high point for me was seeing "White People" played to a happy, active moshpit. The moshpit itself was a joy to behold (you can get a small taste of it here). Healthiest pit I've seen in some time; people took advantage of the space not being so full to really spread out, and those of us on the margins were happy to let them do it. No overt thuggishness or violence that I could see, and what excess testosterone was sometimes visible, in the form of angry glances from the shoved, they didn't keep it from being a... "gender neutral pit?" 

...What's the non-binary-inclusive way to say that it wasn't all just dudes? "Gender-neutral pit" sounds like there's a toilet and a sink, but no urinal. 

If I might just be binary for a moment, it's always nice to see a pit with girls in it. It's kind of like seeing frogs in a pond: you know the ecosystem must be healthy - in this case meaning, "inclusive," aside from it being mostly white people. Hell, there was a guy older'n me, moshing away, crapping on my too-old-to-mosh excuse (I got out from where I was standing the first time someone collided with my back; I'm still sore there now). This guy had long white hair and seemed in no better shape than I am, but he could be seen wading right in several times. There was even someone with a wheelchair in close proximity to the action, too - closer than I wanted to get. 

I don't think he moshed, though. 

And whether songs were super-fast or slow and heavy, whether they dated from the 1980s or were off Hate Speech, that pit was exuberant and moving all night, and occasionally added in pleasant ways to the experience of the songs. Take a minute here and contemplate mostly white kids moshing along to lyrics like this:

Those white people have done had enough
They keep getting in shit every time they fuck up
They can't figure out where it all went wrong
Cuz they've been working for Monsanto for way too fucking long.

Those white people say that they're coming to save the day
But really they're just coming to take your pay
And the rent is due in your shitty apartment building
The one with the broken windows and the roof that needs fixing

Here comes some white people feeling sorry for themselves
Here comes some white people feeling sorry for themselves
Here comes those white people feeling sorry for themselves
Cuz it's all about themselves yah – Fuck Every One Else

Those white people are mad at every one
Cuz no one will fight no more wars for them
The coloured folks are shooting at them with their guns
And everybody's laughing at them watching them run

So the white people prayed to their angry white god
Come and save the earth cuz it's going to the dogs
But it turned out that god wasn't white
And she laughed as they all got dragged off into the night

There goes those white people feeling sorry for themselves
yah there goes white people feeling sorry for themselves
There goes those white people feeling sorry for themselves
Cuz it's all about themselves yah – Fuck Every One Else

There goes those white people feeling sorry for themselves
yah there goes white people feeling sorry for themselves
There goes those white people feeling sorry for themselves
Cuz it's all about themselves yah – Fuck Every One Else

This isn't just political punk, it's viral political punk. It's getting under the skin of these kids in ways that will, one hopes, replicate inside them and permanently affect them, make changes to their RNA, like Murray is (sorry) vaccinating them against FOX News or something, programming these kids as to what song they should be humming to themselves the next time they see some aggrieved Tucker Carlson type mouthing off on teevee. It's not just a song: it's an implant that will make these kids smarter, stronger, and more resistant to self-pitying/ racist/ overprivileged white bullshit. It's really, really smart - which I knew before I saw kids moshing to it, but appreciate even more now. 

After all, Murray had said to me - previously quoted on this blog - that songs are "a super-powerful way to transfer information to people," talking about how to use music to get past people's defenses: 

Because when you’re telling people certain things, and you start infringing on their belief systems, like, “I don’t think this whole transgender thing is…” If you start a conversation with a social justice warrior-type like that, it’s a fight; they have a mental breakdown, they’re screaming at you and shit. So you don’t! You don’t start it like that. You validate their beliefs, right away, and come up and get things goin’ really nice: play them a bit of music, la-la-la, look, it’s groovy, melodic, everyone’s rockin’, your friends are rockin’, and now that everything is relaxed and all the walls are down, all of a sudden, like a vat, you start pouring in all of this [he leaves the thought unfinished - all of this WHAT? - but it's something like, "evil shit"]: Mwah-ha-ha, like mind-control. It’s exactly what the television and what everybody’s been doing to us forever, so why not?

I admit, my eyebrows had raised a little when Murray was saying that. I didn't take the bait re: "transgender," one of those hot-button/ reaction-provoking words, but certainly an apt one, as conversation often seems to break down around that particular topic (for reasons somewhat puzzling to me, actually, since most people I know seem to be adapting to a more trans-inclusive world just fine; I've seen people who were balking at using preferred pronouns a few years ago getting kind of used to them, in ways that make it all seem less difficult than I think a lot of folks thought it would be. You mean a much-mocked, abused, discriminated-against minority can feel more included in society if I just adjust my language a little? I mean, what kind of person is not gonna be okay with that, if you put it to them reasonably?). 

I assumed that was a red herring, but I still wondered just what kind of evil shit was Murray thinking about with his "mwa-ha-ha?" There's a lot of evil shit out there to choose from, a lot of stuff you could use music to indoctrinate people into, but based on last night, I like to think that inoculating kids against the backlash of challenged white privilege is the sort of thing he was talking about. From the point of view of someone on the left, it's not actually all that "mwa-ha-ha" after all.  

...although it was pretty fun to see kids moshing to "I Love My Mom," too, so maybe it's just the sheer incongruity that was amusing to me, in both cases. 

Not to say that, great a time as I had, there weren't a few rocky patches, performance-wise. In particular, "Sacks of Meat" - which Murray intro'd as being a Black Sabbath ripoff, saying he likes to put one on every album (or something like that) - kind of went off the rails at one point: or to use another metaphor, the bridge washed out, and a few sections got swept down the river, kind of hilariously, such that Murray closed the song (after a fast rescue) by saying, sotto voice, "...or something like that." 

Elsewhere he told the audience he could sympathize with them for their unfamiliarity with the  new stuff: "We barely know these songs ourselves" (or, again, words to that effect). It didn't stop them from playing tons of material off Hate Speech - "Raised on Chest Milk," "Kill Kill Kill," "Sociopath," and maybe one other were all on the setlist. I think, properly understood, the sometimes-rougher delivery of those songs was testament not to the band's lack of professionalism, but their desire to get these songs out there even if they haven't become ingrained in their DNA yet.

I mean, the other option for getting back on the road after COVID would be to not play the new stuff at all; that's what the Blue Oyster Cult did, for a half-dozen shows they did after their new album was released, not playing "That Was Me" or "The Alchemist" or any of the new stuff until they'd had a chance to work up live arrangements and practice them and so forth. They added the new material very gradually, one or two songs a show. Personally I prefer an album-release show that actually has lots of songs from the album in question, so...

And of course, the Dayglos were  razor-sharp on the older songs, including a generous helping of material from The Armageddon Survival Guide, which they had in vinyl on the table,  doing "Your Facebook Can Kiss My Assbook," "Cockroaches" (which Murray dedicated to the street people outside the Rickshaw, saying that "everybody's gotta survive.") and "To Prove that We are Free," on the heels of a request from the audience (Did Murray say some variant on "Ask and ye shall receive, maybe," on playing that song? I didn't note down his exact wording, but again, it was something like that). 

And there was plenty of stuff off Feed Us a Fetus and Here Today, Guano Tomorrow. (I didn't catch a lot off Two Dogs Fucking but I don't know that album as well). I was particularly happy they did "Acting Like Black Sabbath," a song that the Shittys taught me, back when I didn't actually know the Dayglo's catalogue very well (I came to them late), and happy, too, that here was a decent crowd (201 people on a Tuesday is not bad at all; probably the biggest crowd I've seen the Dayglos draw, given that both my previous Dayglos experiences were at Funkys, a much smaller space).

The social element was fun, too: I got to chat a little with a few people, musing with Phil of Precious Dudes  about his having been a bouncer at the Rickshaw and getting some recommendations off Talesha about local rockabilly. My only two wishes left unfulfilled by the night were that I'd kind of hoped there would be a copy of the second Mutated Earthlings album. That's Blind Marc's band; Murray is apparently on the second album, but I've never seen it. I have the first one, tho', and it's quite hilarious (there is a song called "Swearing in Braille" but the only song on the internet by the band is not that one). 

Also, I kind of had hoped to get a Hate Speech t-shirt, except they didn't have white in my size and, more significantly, I ran out of money.

Actually, after paying for my Hate Speech CD, I spent about fifteen minutes fretting about a missing $25, going back through my day to figure out what exactly I'd bought, even phoning the restaurant I'd had dinner at to see if I'd dropped a bill on the floor, before realizing that, d'uh, I'd PAID TO GET IN THE RICKSHAW. Exactly $25, as a matter of fact. 

I don't need any more t-shirts, anyhow. 

Car 87 - whose bassist wore a Citizen Rage shirt - opened with pummeling hardcore, which I could make out not a lyric of. Their singer looks like what would happen if you cross-bred Henry Rollins with Ian MacKaye, and their guitarist looks a bit like a young Greg Ginn. I think they're the type of punk band for people whose favourite Black Flag album is Damaged, and that ain't me (tho' I really liked one slower song they did, the one that began with a beat kinda like Black Flag's "Gimme Gimme Gimme;" it was a bit more tuneful and the vocalist almost took on a Lemmylike growl at a slower tempo). Good band, if not my cuppa; they got a pit going right off the bat, if a bit on a smaller scale than what the Dayglos later inspired. They were one of those bands Todd Serious had nice things to say about to me, when he was trying to get his friends press. 

Citizen Rage, from Calgary, were more on the Suicidal Tendencies end of things, with a singer (wearing a Car 87 shirt) who seemed like an ex-gang-banger turned "Scared Straight"/ tough love guidance counsellor for kids at risk, or - gee, I hope he has a sense of humour - maybe what Dadrock sounds like when your Dad is in the Special Forces, and starts DEMANDING a circle pit like he might order pushups. 

But he was just fine as a frontman (not getting his name from their bandcamp, which doesn't have either of the songs I mention below on it; presumably they are from their upcoming Cursed Blessings LP? ). And he ably demonstrated that introducing the topics of songs, or even just telling people the title, can really help an unfamiliar audience learn how to appreciate a band (assuming an opening slot is viewed as an opportunity to teach an unfamiliar audience your music; kinda makes sense to me, anyhow). I liked "Talk to Me" more for knowing that it was about not keeping suicidal feelings to oneself, for example, and could even pick out the chorus, so it made the song catchier. I didn't get what "Watch What You Say" was about, besides the announced title, but I assume it's something akin to Body Count's "Talk Shit Get Shot." 

It isn't really my type of punk, actually - I don't break out my Suicidal Tendencies or Body Count very often, and I don't even have any Cro-Mags - but I appreciated the undergroove, liked the bass player's shirt, and enjoyed each song they played more than the last, as they "taught" me how to dig them. Near the end of their set, I found myself thinking, "Holy shit, these guys would have been awesome opening for DRI." 

It was the only time I thought of DRI the whole night.

All photos, such as they are, by Allan MacInnis