 Flyer stolen from Facebook If this is the new "normal" way to watch live music than count me in!! 😁 To paraphrase Rikk Agnew: Quarantine life is just the life for meeeee... hahahaha My home stereo sounds better than most club PA's, so when the videos sound good it's great, but when it's in a garage with a shitty mix, not so much. All drums and vocals... ouch For some of the bands it was better that they sounded like that though 😂😂😂 Yeah, that Lean 13 Facebook live event was quite the strain on the ol' ears, to say the least. Its a great concept though - playing live on Facebook with as minimal human interaction as possible, but the sound quality is definitely an issue that needs to be addressed. It was rough. I was pushing buttons and twisting knobs on my home stereo to try to make it sound good but then gave up after a while and just listened to it au natural. I figured I was getting soft and spoiled in my old age, looking for good sound quality like I was. I mean, shitty sound at a punk rock gig, who would of thunk it, right? After a few beers and a few bong hits it all sounded listenable though... 😎 Just like an actual real gig, this one started late, with the opening band Kapital Punishment either unaware of their start time or not caring about it. Either or is a pretty PFR thing to do... heh  Kapital Punishment is comprised of 3 veteranos of the LVHC scene. It's basically the rhythm section of IDFI with Punk Rock Jones on guitar and vocals. Why? I don't know... hahahahaha These guys have been at it since they were kids, and now they're old men still out there fucking shit up like they used to do when they were kids. Kind of cool to see. They play an in-your-face obnoxious and angry sounding style of abrasive Punk Rock and it's definitely an acquired taste. Think Cattle Decapitation but with a more hardcore Punk element to it. They've definitely gotten better since the last time I saw them, that's for sure. Bill and Jimbo's tight as fuck backbeat and bottom end hold it all down musically while Tom's guitar squeals and screams over the top of it all, with everyone in the band yelling into a microphone about gawd knows what and sounding good while doing it, and with song titles like You're Not Punk, Getting Nowhere, Don't Be Stupid and Time To Kill, Kapital Punishment show that they have a little bit more to say than the ignorant 'who cares let's get drunk and party' message prevalent among local bands nowadays. They played their full set and then just walked off. And that was that. Funny to hear Tom thank everyone for coming out though... 😁 I like how even the guys in Kapital Punishment know it's a bad idea to let Tom talk too much... heh Good set.  After a long delay trying to get their guitar to work, Gob Patrol stepped into Carlos' garage and began to stagger through their typical "too drunk to punk" set of basic tunes, and it's pretty bad. Messy. It's almost like they don't even know their own material, signaling changes to each other mid-song, which is endearing in a childish sort of way. The bassist looks lost, Jay the guitar player is rudimentary and clumsy, eyes never leaving the neck of his guitar and the fretboard, the drummer struggles with the basics, speeds up and slows down like everyone else in the band and the singer just spews and staggers and struts and spins around, seemingly oblivious to everything while mass consuming beers in a most heroic fashion. I'm enjoying the visual spectacle of it all as it unfolds in front of me, vibing on the band a wee little bit, when they do exactly what they did the last time I saw them - they play a shitty, atrocious cover song in the middle of their set, and I just tune the fuck out. If you're gonna play a cover shouldn't you play it right? 🤣 Last time it was a Germs song, this time it's an Operation Ivy song. Ugh. If a bands original material is so weak that it needs to be bolstered by covers in the middle of their set then I just don't even bother watching after that. Guess I don't have that high school band backyard kegger mentality anymore. Rats. I went crack open another beer while waiting for Lean 13 to start. No waiting in line or trying to get a bartender's attention to get a drink either. Sweet. 🍺  I heard Paul's loud ass voice yelling stuff into the microphone, so I headed back to the TV to watch Lean 13 play and to see how the band was doing since the last time I saw them. They opened with Brown Ass Pride and it sounded sloooooow, shaky, and scary, like a runaway truck with no brakes coming down the Cajon pass. I think they were having problems hearing the vocals. It didn't sound good but they soldiered on. The addition of the second guitarist, who just wails and solos at every given opportunity, gives the band a crossover Metal sound, like a less intense Crumbsuckers or some later day metal sounding Suicidal Tendencies shit, I dunno. Sounds like something that could of been found on the Combat Core label back in the days. More Metal than Punk ya know? The band struggles through a couple of more songs, a new one I don't know and Fighting These Frijoles, from their 2018 Drinking In The Parking Lot release, with everyone losing the beat and their place in the song, and I'm losing interest in finishing watching this. It's hard to be objective towards a band that you know sounded better before and is just a shadow of it's once great self, limping along in a quest for popularity that's never gonna come. I just decided to call it a day. I had tormented myself enough. This Facebook Live Stream shit may be the wave of the future for seeing bands play, and if it is, I'm all for it. I could get used to seeing bands without paying for parking, paying for overpriced drinks, paying a shitty cover, and paying for cheap shots thrown at me while I'm trying to take pictures of bands. In these crazy times a band's gotta do what they gotta do to stroke their egos and fulfill their masturbatory need the perform in public, and if setting up a stationary camera in someone's garage is the way to do it, then I say more power to them. That's DIY as fuck! And it's great for the fans of the bands because it requires even less of an effort to show your support for your friends musical passion and art! hahahaha Besides the sound this was a fun way to kill a couple of hours. I give all the bands an 'A' for effort, which is the equivalent of a participation trophy I guess. 😝
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