August 6, 2010: Black Fag - Left Unattended - 1/2 Ast - Dick Falcon @ the LVCS
You have no idea how long I've waited for Black Fag to come back around to Las Vegas. After catching the tail end of the bands set @ Punk Rock Bowling a few years back, I have been both fascinated and appalled at the bands very existence! LOL How could they desecrate something so very near and dear to my heart? How could they make the music of Black Flag one great big 'The Birdcage' joke? How? Well, the answer is, of course, how could they NOT! hahaha If any band deserves to have their machismo taken away from them and maybe not be cast in such an oh so serious light, it's Black Flag. Institutions always need to be challenged and changed. As much as I hate to say it, it was a long time coming, and now that it's happened and it's here, let's dress fab-u-lous-ly and shake our booties on the dance floor all night long! ;-) The day of the gig had finally arrived, and I thought, 'Well, it's a momentously gay event, Bob has to be there! LOL I swooped by his house to pick him up and after warming up our dancing shoes to some obscure 60's Soul 45's we jumped in my ride and cruised downtown, smoking the OG Kush and keeping an eye out for the Po-Po's who are always, always, a major buzz kill.
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They didn't have Bob on the Guest List. Imagine that! They guy who plays the mac and cheese for 1/2 Ast isn't on the list? Oh the Horror! hee hee hee After a well placed call to Roxie we ride the escalator to the top and waltz our way into the bar and grab a couple of PBR tall boys and stand around and wait like everybody else is, waiting for the first band to begin. The turnout was good - lots of familiar faces in attendance, and the vibe was really friendly and alcohol soaked. This was gonna be a choice night. By the time that Dick Falcon took to the stage, there was a good amount of people in the place, and we all queued up to the front of the stage like lemmings to watch Dick Falcon run through a set of classic Punk Rock tunes played in a fast and sloppy manner. Very enjoyable stuff. The band got things going with a good choice of material culled from all those classic albums and cassettes you used to listen to when you were a kid, from the obvious hits like the Dead Kennedys Holiday In Cambodia to the semi obscure album tracks like Suicidal Tendencies Won't Fall In Love Today. For some reason, the singer was dedicating all of the bands songs to Black Fag, including their cover of Black Flag's Jealous Again. I never found out if he was being heartfelt or sarcastic. I suspect the latter more than the former. The band got more than a few people jumping around and singing along to what they were playing, including a guy in a GG Alin tee shirt who was front and center in his wheel chair taking it all in, swilling beer in between songs like the rest of us were and having a good time while doing it. Yeah, Dick Falcon is just another cover band in the Home of cover bands, Las Vegas, but Dick Falcon has one thing that those other bands don't - the Love of the Music. Even though they wear ski masks on stage, looking like a group of horny rapists, you can see that they love playing these songs, getting just as hyped on performing them as if they had written the songs themselves. That, my Friends, is a rarity. Dick Falcon finished strong to some well deserved applause, and set the tone for the rest of the evenings festivities with a well played set of punk rock tunes.
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My love for the next band that played, 1/2 Ast, knows no bounds. Many's the night I have made an ass of myself dancing the Gay Robot alongside a slew of others, all of us without Shame or Guilt. Fucking great. I was hyped on seeing the band play, as it's been a while since I last saw them, and boy, I was not disappointed! Tonight the band delivered an absolutely stunning set, full of oodles and oodles of brand new songs and all the classic hits you could want to hear from this seminal Las Vegas Punk Rock Institution. Opening up with a newer-ish song, Drink Beer & Butt Fuck, 1/2 Ast just exploded like a drunken cum shot all over the LVCS stage, leaving those close to the perimeter either recoiling in Horror or moving closer to get a good vantage point for the dirty action. Gawd Damn was the band sounding good! On stage the individual members of the band all assumed their roles for the evening - Brent was the Stoic Bandleader, making sure that everything kind of stayed on track musically, John was the 600 cubic inch, 2300 horsepower engine that moves the 1/2 Ast machine with lightning fast ferocity, Jesse is the jester hiding behind a fake nose and glasses and providing some seriously deep bottom end that had the LVCS stage a shaking. Bob was providing all the mac and cheese support that his nimble little hands could muster out of a box of Rice-A-Roni that he for some reason labeled as Mac and Cheese, and Joe was like Nero, leading the dance while fire and chaos reigned all around him. Pretty fun to watch. Like I said earlier, there was a bunch of new songs played, songs with titles like Snatchsquatch, Cannonball and Downtown. What they're in reference to is anyone's guess. The audience response / participation is always the barometer of how a 1/2 Ast set will go - if the crowd is lame, then the band isn't as good as they should be, but if the audience is shitfaced drunk, then you're in for a treat! LOL Tonight's crowd was closer to the latter than the former, which was good. The band feeds off of that crowd drunkenness, infusing it with their own intoxication, and out comes the night's entertainment. 1/2 Ast was dead spot on it tonight, playing a set of songs that, once again, establishes 1/2 Ast's hard earned, battle tested Title of Las Vegas' #1 Party Band. :-)
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Left Unattended played next, and I felt kind of bad for them. It seemed like Dick Falcon had a bunch of friends there to support them, and 1/2 Ast definitely had a bunch of friends there to support and ridicule them, but Left Unattended didn't seem to have anybody there for them. They played a sloppy set of punk tunes pretty much to themselves, save for a few scragglers standing about looking bored. I myself was distracted by drinking and chatting with various people in attendance, some of whom I haven't seen in years,to pay the band much attention, but from what I heard, it wasn't all too good. Even the singer explained afterwords that it wasn't their best set played, but I took a demo from him anyways. I remain forever optimistic. Maybe next time Left Unattended will redeem themselves by playing a set that sounds like they actually practiced the month before! LOL
The time had arrived. Here it was. The Moment I had been waiting years for. Black Fag was about to hit the stage. I think I came just a little bit. The Drummer, who looked a lot like D.H. Peligro, was first on the stage, making sure the mic's were turned on and working proper. He then went back to the side area of the stage to confer with his band mates and then they all came dancing out to something from the soundtrack to West Side Story, complete with Jets / Sharks dance moves. Don't ask me how I know that, OK? ;-) Liberace Morris saunters up to the microphone and says "Who's got a set of dice for me to blow on tonight, huh?" and then this short little dykey girl on bass starts hammering away on the riff to Slip It In and you can see it - The Beast is Rising. The drummer comes snarling in on the 4 and locks right into the riff and the guitarist stumbles a bit out the gate but catches up quickly, and it all eventually comes together and it sounds vicious, it sounds clean, and really fucking good. Liberace Morris is sashaying to and fro, seeming to be enjoying the calm before the storm, lost in thought, and then after a bit of musical build up, he starts to sing. At this point I'm completely losing it. Musically, it sounds just as good as anytime I ever saw Black Flag rip through the song, and tonight, Black Fag was owning this shit. The crowd is eating it up. Pit action is going on behind me, people are thrashing about for the opportunity to scream into the microphone, and the energy level is going through the roof. It is glorious my friends, glorious. They quickly launch into the next song, Nervous Breakdown, and the onslaught continues. Hearing classic Black Flag songs being given a Rainbow colored whitewash is such a treat indeed. Deliciously wicked. Right before the next song, Liberace gave a shout out to openers Dick Falcon: 'Hey Dick Falcon - This is how it's done' and the band launched into a blistering version of Jealous Again, putting Dick Falcon's version to shame, with the angry music being perfectly counter-balanced by Mr. Morris' insanely cute way of lisping the lyrics. He's like a mixture between Rip Taylor and Paul Lynde! hahaha The performance being put on by Black Fag was Strip ready! They had 2 cuddly bear back up singers called the Black Fag-ettes, who would come out and do backup vocals while shimmying and shaking everything that their Momma's gave them. For the next song played, Damaged, which El Liberace explained was about his battle coming out of the closet, him and the Black Fag-ettes did a Riverdance to a Dropkick Murphys cover, played very nicely by Greg Streisand, the guitar player, who looked pretty snazzy in a sky blue sundress, I must say. Hey Now! The backup dancers shined the most when doing the fan-fucking-tastic intros the band came up with for Gimme Gimme Gimme, which was kicked off with the chant from Gwen Stefani's Hollaback Girl, replacing the B-A-N-A-N-A-S with D-A-M-A-G-E-D. Fucking brilliant. And how they merged Deee-Lite's Groove Is In The Heart into Six Pack is anyone's guess. All I know is that I was both Proud and Ashamed that I knew it was a Deee-Lite cover! LOL I think it was the kazoo's that gave it away. And did I mention that the backup dancers had tea bags swinging from their nuts while the band played T.V. Party, which was now known as Tea Bag Party? Yeah, it's probably better that I don't. The band finished to a round of thunderous applause and howls of approval from the crowd, and came back on stage to play Spray Paint The Walls (a good bit of a shock with that one), Drinking And Driving (a natural choice for Vegas) and, of course, Louie Louie, which had the guitar solo breakdown part Marty McFly played at the Enchantment Under The Sea dance in Back To The Future inserted in the middle of the song, just for shits and giggles. Just fucking wow. Nobody, and I repeat, nobody, left the LVCS disappointed after this performance. Nobody. To say that Black Fag killed it would be an understatement. To say that Black Fag blew the roof off the joint would be doing them a huge misjudgment. Let's just say that Black Fag delivered a performance for the Ages, one that will go down in the annals of Las Vegas Punk Rock History as one of the best gigs EVER!
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For more Pictures of Black Fag, please click here. For more Pictures of 1/2 Ast, please click here. For more Pictures of Dick Falcon, please click here.
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