Aging Youth Gang, Stiff Middle Finger, and Rocket #9, Friday night at LanaLou's

Tribute acts can be a bittersweet thing: you are neither seeing the original band perform, nor hearing the people who are performing do material of their own, which you might actually want to hear.  So on two levels, no matter how good the tribute act, you might come away vaguely disappointed.

Case in point: Stiff Middle Finger, who began the night last night at LanaLou's. They were great -- check out "Wasted Life" here -- but as a Spores fan, it frustrates me a bit that I keep getting to see Danny sing other people's songs, but never his own. Spread out widely in time, across three different cover bands, I have now seen Danny do a set of Forgotten Rebels songs, a set of Stranglers songs, and as of last night, a set of Stiff Little Fingers songs (with a couple Damned, Clash, and -- was that the Undertones? -- songs thrown in for a bit of variety). Each one was fun in its way, but will I never get to see Danny sing a Spores song again?

Insert sadface emoticon here. I mean, call me a heretic if you must, but I like the Spores better than Forgotten Rebels, the Stranglers, or Stiff Little Fingers. Actually, I think I like the Spores better than the Damned, even (!). Sure, they're nowhere near as epochally or historically important, but I sincerely don't think that any of those bands has lyrics as witty or memorable as what you find in, say, "House of Frankenstein" or "Meat Bi-Product" or "Narcs in My Pants," for example. Sure, "New Rose" is a great song (they covered it last night!), but find me a single lyric from any of those bands as clever as "It's my economic orgasm/ It pays to be alive/ 'Cos I make profit off it/ While you work nine to five," off "Up the Boss," another entertaining vintage video of Danny's. The Spores made good use of the form. 

I mean, "I make profit off it," man; that's some witty wordplay, witty internal rhymin'. I like that! And hey, everyone here knows that Danny was also the cinematographer for Hard Core Logo, right? Undersung guy. He did this recent Bishops Green video, too. His complete filmography is unknown to me (and probably not on IMDB), but there's lots of stuff you'll know, sometimes in terms of his rock video output with him shooting while other people direct (I'm never clear): he did Poisoned's "Yeah I Guess," the Real McKenzie's "Mainland," Corsage's "The Shame I Feel," and much more... And some of his work in horror is just great -- try Incident in a Ghostland, for starters, directed by Martyrs' Pascal Laugier. Great movie, if a bit of a mindfuck (also true of The Tall Man, which Danny worked on, as well, and which I think you can see on Netflix; no, it's not a Phantasm reference).

Anyhow: last night would have been a great opportunity for some Spores action, because two other Spores were in the house, with Sandy singing and playing guitar for Aging Youth Gang and Boom Boom on drums (weirdly, Boom Boom -- whose real name I do not recall at the moment so Boom Boom he shall remain -- was the musician who impressed me most last night; that was some spunky, precise drumming, though Randy Bowman, playing with Stiff Middle Finger, was no slouch either, and it was fun seeing Orchard contribute to Aging Youth Gang). 

Of course, I ended up ducking out early -- staying long enough to see a bit of Rocket #9 and shoot a song they did, which Ed identified as an early Velvet Underground tune, but it's one I did not know, ironically and relevantly titled "I'm Not a Young Man Anymore" -- so maybe after Rocket #9's set, there was a semi-Spores reunion THAT I MISSED, but it really did not seem like that was going to happen (I had deliberately not asked anyone, so it would be a surprise, thinking it might happen at the end of AYG's set, but no; though AYG themselves did a couple of cover tunes, a mashup of Devo's "Uncontrollable Urge" and X's "Los Angeles," which, alas, I heard from the LanaLou's bathroom stall). It seemed really unlikely that Boom Boom would set up his kit again after all three bands had played. But if Ed wants to make me kick myself that I didn't stay for his band's full set, that would be the way to do it: tell me that that wished for Spores set actually happened, after Rocket #9 went off, and I missed it! (Note: I didn't). 

It's sadder still because of all the gigs of my teens and 20s, the one I remember least was the Spores. I did see them at some sort of festival of independent music, I think at the New York Theatre, circa 1986, and I believe Death Sentence and the Haters were also on the bill, with the Haters dressed in menacing dark hoods, using power tools to destroy various bits of metal on mic; there were sparks flying, and the noise they generated was quite overwhelming. I have told the story before, but I remember gawking in horror and then trying to get as far away from the stage as I could, telling people I was with, "It's not music!" It figures that the only band whose performance I actually have memories of from that night is the Haters. All I remember of Death Sentence and the Spores that night was arguing with a female friend which band was better, and having to say something like, "Okay, sure, Death Sentence have the better live presence, I grant you that, but the Spores have better lyrics." 

"In Flames" is okay, I guess (it's actually the drummer, Doug Donut, singing, I gather -- the video lies!). 

So what will I remember about last night? (Hell, what do I remember now?). Before things kicked off, I had chatted a bit with Nick (AKA Gnick, formerly of AYG, but not playing last night, even though he came across from the island to see the show; I actually had assumed while we were talking that he would be taking the stage, but no). I foolishly opined to him at one point that Husker Du, like Neil Young & Crazy Horse, is one of those bands whose songs I really just don't need to hear if its not them doing them (he had been talking about seeing Prong to "Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely"). Then I realized, while my mouth was still moving, that Nick is the man behind Huskee Dude, whose set is entirely made up of Husker Du covers. Oops!

I backpedalled a bit there: I really did enjoy the Huskee Dude set I saw, in some cases thinking Nick's delivery (on "Dead Set on Destruction," for instance) was better than Du's -- I never really liked those last two Du studio albums). Oddly, I think I saw Huskee Dude the night that Danny did that Forgotten Rebels thing. Or maybe it was the night of a Gun Club tribute? Or maybe that was the same night? Everything is a blur. 

But of last night's show, I will also remember the very friendly Randy Bowman, drumming for Stiff Middle Finger, finally laying to rest the mystery of how fast the Subhumans play on No Wishes, No Prayers. (Subhumans vocalist) Brian "Wimpy Roy" Goble (RIP) had said to me, a long time ago, "No way were we playing that fast," and I think (guitarist) Mike Graham may have gone along with that as well, which one early demo, donated to an issue of Mongrel Zine, seemed to confirm, as it is no speedier than what you hear on Incorrect Thoughts, but Ron Allan, the bassist on that record, had insisted that they really had been when I chatted with him at the Khats fest. Randy's answer was definitely off the record -- the part of it that can be published involved the fact that the Subhumans at that point were on a California label for that (SST/ New Alliance) and wanted to keep up with bands like the Circle Jerks -- but it confirmed Ron's take on things and provided a very good reason why Brian and Mike might not have mis-remembered things (and why they might have been playing faster than normal, too). Let's leave it there! The Subhumans REALLY WERE playing that fast! 

Also, it seems like after Jim Imagawa left the Subhumans, before Bowman was recruited, there may have been a brief period where Dimwit was back on drums again. I did not know about this. Did you know that Jon Card, the drummer for the last incarnation, was using Dimwit's kit when the Subhumans did Same Thoughts Different Day? 

What's that Art Bergmann lyric: "Who will ever know how much we cared?" (You can actually hear that whole album, Lost Art Bergmann, here; that song, "Who Will Ever Know," never actually made it onto Crawl With Me, so that album's the only way to hear it). 

What else will I remember of last night? Orchard Pinkish (whom I gifted a Birthday Party CD I had thrifted for a buck, earlier that night, at a Sally Ann) demanding on mike that Ed Hurrell buy him an imported beer? (Orchard tells me there was a pre-existing arrangement, it wasn't just random demandingness). Eddy Dutchman (Stiff Middle Finger's bassist, whom I gifted a Ramones tribute CD) telling me "The secret to having a good band is, you have Orchard Pinkish in it?" Using Orchard's pink outer coat, draped over a chair, as a landmark for the guy at the bar to let him know what table to bring my poutine to? Offering Ed Hurrell a Monty Python CD and having him say that he had it already, and gifting it instead to Nick? 

Oh, Stiff Middle Finger -- in the tradition of the Spores update of "Anarchy in the UK" -- updated the lyrics for "I'm so Bored with the USA" to include Trump and MAGA and so forth, but I only caught the tail end of that on video. That twofer -- the second song being "Wasted Life" -- was the high point of their set, which was pretty tight, fast, and fun to watch. Aging Youth Gang's most fun song was probably the super-tight, super fast "Money Money," which Sandy quipped was "the best 43 seconds of music you're going to hear tonight," but the song of theirs I'm preserving is, of course, "Maggots" (which sounds quite Sporeslike, you know? You can hear that Sandy was a Spore in the band's songwriting). Oh, and I bugged Sandy and Boom Boom to sign my Spores collection, which I think they had fun doing (got Danny to sign the 7 inches, too, which I hadn't previously done). Apparently that's Sandy's ass on the "Narcs in My Pants" cover ("I'll sign my ass!" he quipped), while it was Boom Boom's face used for the model on the Schizofungi! cover. People seemed awful impressed by my Spores collection last night, like it is somehow an unusual thing to appreciate that band.  

So it was a fun night, well worth doing. In some ways, my biggest regret after there not being *even* *one* *Spores* *cover* (unless it happened after I left) was that I missed out on most of Rocket #9's set, because they're in fact a really great band. It's weird that now the default seems to be to have the headliner as the middle act (Nick: "no one wants to play last, when everyone is going home"). I had actually figured that Rocket #9 would be opening, but Ed's quip that they were the real headliners was in a way to the point, as they could have been. Very solid band, in no way lesser than the rest of the bill.

There's not much else that I've retained, but at one point during Stiff Middle Finger's set, Danny observed that "There's fucking young people in here!" (He'd elsewise described the evening as "curmudgeon rock" or something, since I think the average age of bandmembers was about 60; I would guess Orchard was in fact the youngest person to grace the stage last night and that the majority of folks in the house were my age or older). Some of those young people were actually the children of some of the band members, in fact. At one point, Randy introduced me to his kids, and I quipped that I had a record that their Dad was on "since I was your age."

But actually, they didn't look like they were much older than 40, and No Wishes No Prayers came out in 1983, so the truth is, it might be that the album is actually older than they are.

Someone sure should reissue that. 

Oh, and since some people are asking, the Stiff Little Fingers songs covered also included "Suspect Device" (another high point), "Alternative Ulster," "78rpm" (which opened the night) and "When We Were Young." Which is the song that Stiff Middle Finger played when Danny was observing that there were "fucking young people" in here. Makes sense!