Hunx and his Punx and Dum Dum Girls 6/29,6/30 in SF: Weekend of Dreamboats

So I basically had my dream show double feature this weekend. Hunx and his Punx and Dum Dum Girls, back to back. I was pretty skeptical of going to an SF show after my last disappointing experience with A Place to Bury Strangers, where everyone in the crowd looked like a stranger who, in fact, needed to be buried. But I had gotten the Hunx and his Punx ticket months in advance, when I first discovered the band, so I decided to give SF another chance.

He was playing at the Independent, site of many a fantabulous show, so I was hopeful. My cheap $2 beer buzz from across the street abruptly turned into a nightmare when I walked in. The SF band Bridez was playing and god were they and are they awful! I’m not even going to try and put this any other way. I really wanted to like them because they had the whole “fuck it” attitude down real good and Liza Thorn, the singer and tambourine dabbler, had a sort of Courtney Love in her heyday thing going on and man do I love Love, but I just couldn’t. She wasn’t giving me anything to work with and every time she opened that gorgeous mouth of hers, suicide came out. I literally HAD to leave. The music wasn’t half bad, and I found myself actually rocking out to it during the instrumental parts. Not super complex or impressive but not bad at all. It was really the singer that did it for me. The stumbling glam rock junkie stage persona only works if you are good. When you’re not, you look like a drunk asshole at a party that everyone wants to make shut up and leave. Please someone put me out of my misery. The entire time they were playing, Seth Bogart (lead singer from Hunx and his Punx), who was, to my utter excitement, full throttle rocking Brando circa The Wild One, was leaning over the stage and staring Thorn down. I couldn’t tell whether he was into it or not. He seemed to be attempting to give them a chance but when he performed “You Don’t Like Rock and Roll” during his set, I could have sworn he substituted Bridez for Morrissey. Or maybe that was my subconscious desire for them to be called out on their suckage?

Conversely, Hunx and his Punx were incredible, in a word. I am a sucker for costumes when done right and the Punkettes definitely had the leather biker gang uniform down, but over the top doesn’t look so over the top when you’re the fucking coolest chicks on the planet. It was perfectly done. This band was definitely born to wear black leather and rock peoples’ worlds. I completely fell in love with every single girl and would totally have been perving on them, jaw to the floor, the whole time if it weren’t for Hunx prancing around the stage in his shiny black latex tights and motorcycle jacket, shoving his crotch into frightened little boys’ faces in the front row, and generally just being a kickass showman. At one point he swiped a swig of a beer sitting on the stage in front of him and then accidentally kicked it into the owner’s face that was standing mute in front of the stage. You’ll never guess what happened. The guy DID NOT move a muscle! He just stood there soaking with beer, either mesmerized by Hunx’s onstage cock power or was simply too scared to respond. I can see how the front row of a Hunx show would be a little intimidating if you have a penis. The audience participation level, AKA getting groped by Seth, is pretty high. When you’re seeing Hunx and his Punx, there are gay dudes, and then there’s everyone else. Honestly, I’ve never felt so square for not being a gay man in my whole life. The John Waters meets motorcycle gang image coupled with Seth’s Iggy Pop like stage presence was positively captivating. I’m pretty sure everyone in the audience, gay, straight, boy, or girl wanted him. About half their set was songs from their release, Gay Singles, but he didn’t play his commercial hit, “Gimme Gimme Back Your Love” for obvious reasons. I guess the whole Lens Crafters fame kinda spoiled it for everyone. The new stuff is equally as delicious as the stuff you can hear on Gay Singles, not an aberration from their signature 60s girl group/garage punk sound. I really can’t wait for a follow up album.

The following night I convinced a friend to accompany me to see the Dum Dum Girls at Bottom of the Hill. Bad idea. She just lost her wallet the week before which meant that she was sans a current license (she had her expired one) and the bouncer was not fucking around. Right before the Dum Dum Girls came on, he actually charged to the back of the club, a full fifty or so feet of jam packed hipsters and kicked her out for drinking a beer. Be warned. I was left to watch my girls solo, which is usually the case anyway. Dressed in their typical gothic/60s mod uniform, the girls came and just rocked it out. There was no introduction, no banter, no jokes, just straight up song after song after song, a ballsy move I might say. Honestly, they didn’t even need to build a rapport with the audience, the venue was packed and they sounded amazing. The sound guy actually managed to achieve that garagy lo-fi sound that Richard Gottehrer, who has also worked with groups such Blondie and the Go Go’s, and “Dee Dee,” front woman and group founder, so perfectly created. Bright red lips harmonizing perfectly, those leggy punk femme-bots delivered each song with not much more movement than consistent head bob. Usually, I scorn this type of automatron stage behavior but it worked really well for them. They delivered more edge and rock n’ roll energy than is available from the recordings and none of it had to do with flailing guitars or rolling around the stage. If they were robots sent from planet Hip to make us fall in love with that lo-fi, 60s girl group sound again, but with an injection of garage rock and still uniquely hip, I would not think twice. Mission accomplished.

APTBS in fresno/SF: Damn, Fresno!

One thing I will say about Fresno is you guys know how to party. On the night of 6/19/10, I got my world rocked and my eardrums annihilated at Audie’s Olympic by A Place to Bury Strangers. That show was fucking fantastic. The anticipation and excitement from the crowd was palpable, and the bands definitely delivered. Anyone in the crowd that night could testify to creaming their pants in delight, but I must disclose my exceptional authority on the subject because I went to see them the very next day in San Francisco. I should have known this was going to happen because I’m from San Francisco, and I’m a total whore for live music, but I was so blissed out on the intensity of the night before that my memory of the notoriously paralytic SF crowds had completely escaped me.

The opening band in Fresno, Quiet Americans, I actually loved. Being relatively new to the area, I quickly learned that Eli Reyes is the Jack White of drumming here, being on the roster for what seems like 24251435 bands (more specifically, Rademacher, Fay Wrays, Quiet Americans, PA Harper, Love Pollution, and probably more). If my memory serves me correctly (which is extremely debatable) this was my first show in Fresno, and it definitely was my first time seeing this guy in action. I have to admit that I was completely astounded by his demonstration of prowess as well as his stage presence – quite the feat for a drummer. Even Jay Space (drummer for A Place to Bury Strangers) couldn’t achieve that kind of bearing. The Quiet Americans were so impressive that they actually up-staged the following band, Light Pollution.

At first listen, Light Pollution, a Chicago based band, sounded noticeably inferior to Quiet Americans in terms of song composition and sound in general. I actually spent the most of their set outside giving myself cancer. Contrarily, in SF they actually killed it. Talking to band member, Jed Robertson, (total DILF, btw) outside of the Rickshaw Stop where they played on Sunday with APTBS and Weekend (listened to one song and left to get cigarettes and food – sound was so awful I didn’t care to stay), he theorized that the sound guy at Audies “wasn’t on their side.” Totally plausible, seeing as they sounded almost like a different band at the Rickshaw, and a much better one for that matter. I gotta say, they charmed the shit out of me that night. And their wall-of-sound/shoegaze vibe even managed to breach the skepticism spurred by the night before.

And then, what can I say about A Place to Bury Stangers? Hailing from New York to kick everyone in America's asses, they started the set fucking my ears up in the best way possible and ended it with some good ol’ guitar bashing and general debauchery. The setlists were mostly the same between SF and Fresno, and honestly, they put on an equally amazing performance in both places as well. They are an undeniably good band and their sound (I’ll go with Joy Division meets My Bloody Valentine) is a recipe for a great live show. Couple that with consistently good sound quality (they tour with their own sound guy), and you should get the same fucking phenomenal experience, right? Nope. The one distinction was the crowd. I can’t even tell you how much trying to be cool will fuck up a show. It was like night and day. I’m not sure if concert goers in SF arbitrarily stumble into shows without knowing who the band is, resulting in this stunned look of bewilderment; and if so, why wouldn’t they be moving, at least a bit, when listening to live rock n’ roll, for fucks sake? I mean it was baffling. Everyone there was like a perfectly put together indie mannequin. I felt robbed of a legitimate rock show. If you were at Audies, you couldn’t deny the energy circulating in that tiny club. I was drenched by the end and my neck hurt for days afterward from the head-banging and jumping. The Rickshaw stop isn’t all that much bigger but damn, it felt completely void of that excitement and spirit that live music is supposed to induce. Jay Space mentioned to me afterward that it’s always the random little places where the shows are fucking rockin. While most people may not agree that Fresno is all that random, I think we can all agree that at least Fresno knows how to fucking have a good time.