Punk fucking rock: Bad Brains, Trash Talk, and Trap Them at SXSW [video]
No account of punk rock at SXSW would be complete without at least something from Off! -- not to mention Bodega Girls covering Off!, if we can borrow Kates's Flipcam -- but for now these videos will have to suffice, since our Off! video is currently on a plane.
Within 10 seconds of TRASH TALK taking the Fader Fort stage, someone had managed to throw a trash can into the pit. Which was about the tamest thing that happened over the next half-hour, as wall-of-death runs, bottle fights, flying bodies, circle moshes, and mic-cord clothelining competed to rob the audience of its sense of well-being. Which, of course, is the point. First video here, shot from the stage by our intrepid photog k. bonami, will give you a sense of what it was like up front; the second video shows Lee stalking the pit, crowd surfing to the open bar, successfully negotiating a beer, gunning the beer into the pit, and then ascending the camera riser to bait an audience that by this point was booing him mercilessly. Brilliant, epic, wonderful: the Odd Future fans standing behind me were in awe.
Still, if you had to give me the choice of punching one of them in the face, I'd probably fuck with Lee before I'd fuck with the singer in TRAP THEM. Dunno why, exactly, the dude just looks too fucking gnarly: broken teeth, bad tattoos, horrible attitude. Don't get me wrong, though: these are my kind of people.
And last, but the opposite of least, fucking BAD BRAINS, dude. I'll be honest: we had pretty low expectations for this show, based on memories of Soul Brains shows and reports that their last NY show was pretty terrible. This was not terrible, and for moments it was pretty great. Still, we almost left when they started pulling out the reggae tunes, but then we sorta looked at each other and went, "Nah, they'll definitely play Pay To Cum, right?" Right:
FULL COVERAGE: Boston Phoenix at SXSW