By: Corey C.
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| White Load, Photo by Josh Landes |
Harris, the front man
of Glue, just got slammed in the face with a piece of pale green insulation by
Steve Pid, lead singer of White Load, and now Harris’ nose is bleeding and he
looks like Darby Crash, which is cool cuz that’s what he’s going for anyways,
and now he’s singing from the huge gaping hole in the wall where Pid got the
insulation, and he’s crawling up on this sort of ledge, a piece of wood that’s
horizontally criss-crossing the gaping hole, and now he’s shouting from the top
of this piece of wood, and he’s turning his back towards the crowd like he’s on
the top of the ropes at a wrestling match.
He gets ready to Moonsault into the crowd, and he’s coming my way, and I
try catching him, but no one helps, so he lands on my buckled right knee,
back-into-knee contact. It hurts him way
more than it hurts me, but he doesn’t show it, and he stalks his way back to the
stage, which is really a just an inch-raised platform, where Steve Pid waits
again, this time with a hunk of snow, which he proceeds to stuff down the back
of the singer’s shirt. He’s then forced
to strip out of his four layers and scrape the snow onto the ground and now he’s
shirtless in approximately 25-degree weather and now Harris really does look like
fuckin’ Darby.
In the meantime, I
jump into the fracas and spray the rest of my Mayflower IPA into the crowd and
onto the hay and I do a little dance into the pit and emerge at the other end
of the crowd unscathed. Spectators who
have been taking in the carnage from the loft of the barn start throwing hay
from their elevated vantage point, directly onto the people who are beneath
them, including me, and now I’m covered in horse food and it’s going down the
back of my shirt and it’s all over my Red Sox winter hat. I’m out of beer and out of breath.
I’m 26 years old and I feel the most alive at
DIY punk rock shows. When will I outgrow
this shit? My first moment of free time
in months, with no real responsibilities, and my truest natural instincts
demand that I drive two and a half hours from Providence, RI, to the back woods
of western Massachusetts. I land in a
barn in Haydenville, a village in the town of Williamsburg, MA, twenty minutes
northwest of Northampton.
I’ll admit, I’m not a punk. I’m a recovering
indie rocker. (Hi, my name is Corey and I
used to care about Pitchfork.) I’m the biggest squirrel in the world when I’m
in a mosh pit. I’m not in a band.
Whenever I try to practice on my guitar I break a string and get discouraged. Chances are, if you notice me at a punk show,
you’ve thought about what a big pussy I look like. I don’t own a black leather
jacket or punk patches or black boots.
My fashion icons are Stephen Malkmus, David Berman, and Mike Watt. I work a square day job. I’m in the middle of going to graduate
school. The only alleged creative skill
I have is writing, and the jury’s still out on if that’s worth anything.
So why do DIY shows rule? I’ve been involved in the torture chamber
known as the “music biz” for a little while now, and I’ve come to understand
some certain, irrefutable truths: fuck booking agents, bouncers, bartenders,
roadies, ticket agents, middlemen, sound guys, promoters, record execs, A&R
reps, door men, and any other dreadful, soul-sucking, money-grubbing, no-talent
hacks that infiltrate music simply for the cash and the ass and the drugs and
the scene cred.
Give me a punk show in a frozen barn with a
hole in the wall in the boonies of western Massachusetts. Give me two punk bands from Providence (Power
Masters and White Load), one punk band from Austin, Texas (Glue), and one psych
group from Northampton (World Domination).
That’s right folks: four bands, five dollars. Give me frozen toes, six roaming dogs, a
donation bucket, a few bloody noses and black eyes, a trash can fire pit, a
barely-working PA systems, and any other conceivable yet solvable obstacle if
it means I can get away from people who are involved in ‘the biz’ for all the
wrong reasons, which are most of people involved in music. Give me the rare people who are there for the
music, the intensity, the joy, the fucking fun!
Power Masters were the first band to play
that night. While White Load are the
filthy elder statesmen of Providence punk, Power Masters are coming of age
right in front of our tits. Their music
has evolved from a darker, tortured hardcore sound to a more fun-yet-still-nasty
punk sound, a huge improvement. They
have real charisma and are a joy to watch.
Watch out for these guys.
As cool as Power Masters are becoming, they
haven’t quite reached the levels of slop that is White Load. They are the greatest and most underrated of
Providence punk bands, three total douches whose music and blasphemy will no
doubt be appreciated more in the future than it is today. Their only LP is called “Wayne’s World 3 b/w
Godfather 4”. I’ve seen them play at least
ten times in the past four years, and I after I always feel deeply offended and
uncomfortable.
Unfortunately, the Providence music scene
leans more towards self-serious metal, noise, and art rock, and White Load have
been unfairly ostracized in town. (OK,
so maybe some of Pid’s shenanigans go a little too far, but if you have any
sense of humor, you can appreciate the benefits of his debauchery.)
For example: Pid likes to stalk the crowd as
he howls into the mic, pushing, shoving, tackling, and throwing any and all
audience members in his way. His in-between
song banter typically consists of him belching to the crowd “YOUR
WELCOME.” He’s more of a punk rock
hockey player wrestler.
During Power Masters’ set, the crowd had
stayed pretty tame. But from the first
instance of disturbing guitar noise squalls from White Load, the crowd launched
into an obnoxious mosh pit. The
insulation, which had been covering that huge hole, was soon taken down and
used as a prop in the punk rock game known as ‘moshing’.
I can’t forget to
note that White Load blasted License to
Ill out of their amps in between each of their so-called songs, and kept
the record going on another channel while they played, so every time the music
stopped The Beastie Boys would be mid-way through ‘Brass Monkey’ or ‘No Sleep
Til Brooklyn’ and White Load would play along and would pick the perfect moment
in the song to launch back into their own hardcore attack on punk music and
general sanity. MCA would’ve been proud,
and emotionally scarred
There yah have it, folks: another
cooler-than-thou essay about a cooler-than-thou punk show that you didn’t hear
about. Ask yourself: why? Who are my friends? What was I doing December
28, 2013? Huffing paint and snap-sexting
yr ex-girlfriend’s sister? Watching Netflix
with Honey Boo Boo while drinking sizzurp and smoking middies? Ballroom dancing with that normal chick you
met on OKCupid who looked like a 7 online but is really only a 4.5? Face it, you fucked up and missed out on
once-in-a-lifetime punk rock fiesta.
I’ll never letcha live that one down, bunky.
Corey C. is on loan to us from his own Zine, What Goes On
