I wish you could feel the way I feel

Music by N8NOFACE, Drain, the Minutemen and more

Tonight I’m heading up to LA to see a secret show that I’ll tell you about next week. I’d say more but as an industry insider I signed a blood oath not to reveal these sorts of things. So today I want to tell you about the show I saw last week and what I’ve been listening to lately.

N8NOFACE

Last week I took a road trip up to Santa Ana to see Tucson’s N8NOFACE and Gel Set from LA. I went with an old friend from the bad old days before I got sober. We talked about the bands that brought us together, the mistakes we made, and the people who are no long with us. That sounds grim but believe me when I tell you we laughed all the way there and back.

I was supposed to go see N8NOFACE in San Diego back in March but I bailed at the last minute. (What can I say? It happens.) So when I saw that N8NOFACE was coming back to SoCal I mashed the BUY button on the ticket link even though the show was 90 minutes away in Orange County. Part of my enthusiasm was due to the fact that I mistook Gel Set for Gel, the hardcore band from New Jersey.

Well, Gel Set isn’t Gel. Not even close.

This is Gel:

And here’s Gel Set:

Gel Set is a two-woman outfit that does minimalist synth that’s dance-y and repetitive. At it’s best it achieves Negativland “Escape from Noise”-style improv but ultimately the lead singer’s lack of enthusiasm was a non-starter for me. She hid behind the keyboards like a DJ who sings.

N8NOFACE, on the other hand, has a ton of energy and is a riveting performer. He looks like a cholo and sounds like Tomato DuPlenty spitting lyrics at 200 beats per minute.

If you’re going to sing over pre-recorded tracks you have to bring the energy and N8NOFACE doesn’t disappoint. The beauty of this style of performance is it can be remixed an infinite number of ways.

N8NOFACE played the Constellation Room, which is the smaller venue at the Santa Ana Observatory (formerly the Galaxy Theater), and the place was packed. The crowd skewed young and Latinx. The young woman next to me had feathered hair dyed green like a punk Kristy McNichol. There were two kids dressed in Spiderman bodysuits. One wore a denim jacket and, somehow, a Mohawk while the other was shorter and thicker. For most of the night I thought there as one Spiderman who kept changing his outfit and I attribute my confusion to the insane amounts of weed being smoked. Vapes, joints, you name it. The Constellation Room felt like the inside of Spicoli’s van.

(True story. In grad school I taught a composition class for education majors and I thought it would be a good idea to screen Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Guess who forgot about the excruciatingly long masturbation scene?)

Anyway, N8NOFACE was great and showed why he’s at the vanguard of a new wave of synth punk bands like IZM, MSPAINT, and The C.I.A.

Drain Living Proof

The biggest bummer from my Gel Set/Get confusion was if I’d known that Gel wasn’t playing I would have also bought tickets for Drain who played an all ages show in the big room at the Santa Ana Observatory before the N8NOFACE set. I figured I’d get my metalcore fix from Gel and you know how that worked out. Also, I learned that if you buy tickets to the early show there’s nothing stopping you from walking into the Constellation Room afterwards, but not the other way around. Live and learn.

The new record, Living Proof, by Santa Cruz hardcore band Drain has been on constant rotation at home, in the studio, and on the road. It clocks in at 25 minutes and I’ve listened to it several times a day since it came out last month. When I was on book tour it was the first record I played when I set out on a long drive and the record I used to gear up for an event after spending hours alone in my car. There’s a 50/50 chance I was listening to it while I pissed my pants.

Drain features singer Ciaramataro and drummer Tim Flegal from Gulch plus Cody Chavez on guitar. Fun fact: when I was at Schellraiser Festival, Nick Aguilar from Frankie and the Witch Fingers and Slaughterhouse told me that Flegal is from San Pedro and they went to the same high school. He said, “There’s some history there. You should look into it.” Duly noted, Nick!

I don’t know how Drain got its hooks into me as deeply as it did. The vocal style is right there at the edge of my acceptable range. Too screechy and you get Gulch. Too croony and you get shit like Avenged Sevenfold. But Ciaramataro’s vocals unlock the Angry Man Who Lives In My Skull. The cover of The Descendents “Good Good Thing” is the chef’s kiss.

The tempo changes on a dime and the riffs will rip your face clean off. If Living Color was a hardcore band, you’d get something that sounds an awful lot like Drain.

In a video about the making of the album, Ciaramataro talks about his band in terms I find hugely inspirational: “We weren’t great musicians. We weren’t particularly young. We weren’t particularly cool. We just wanted to play music.”

The title refers to the band being living proof of what can happen when you believe in yourself even when no one else does. Seven years after they started Drain signed with Epitaph Records and have put out their best album yet.

More Tuneage

This spring I was exposed to a ton of music through recommendations from friends, new acquaintances, and the iTunes algorithm, which served up some surprisingly deep cuts. Some standouts:

MSPAINT: I mentioned them earlier and grooved my way through the album Post-American a fair number of times. Very hard to classify and the name cracks me up.

Trapped Under Ice: Listening to this Baltimore hardcore band whose members went on to form Turnstile is a kind of like listening to Bleach after Nevermind.

Take Offense: Speaking of Turnstile, guitarist Greg Cerwonka is back from touring with Turnstile and gearing up for some shows with his Chula Vista bandmates.

Mysery: This San Diego band only released one EP nine years ago but Survive the Vibe feels as fresh as ever. iTunes dug it out for me and I can’t stop listening.

Scowl: Another Santa Cruz band with sick riffs and hooks for days.

Psssssst!

I missed Record Store Day because of the LA Times Festival of Books so when I went on tour I was on a mission to find two RSD releases. After striking out in California and Arizona I found them both in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at Rush-More Records:

OFF! FLSD EP: Four unreleased tracks and the full versions of F, L, S, D. These are the saxophone freakouts by Jon Wahl formerly of Midget Handjob and Clawhammer. Essential listening for Keith Morris completists.

Romeo Void Live from Mabuhay Gardens November 14, 1980: This show took place while the band was recording its debut album It’s a Condition and is a snapshot into the band’s surprisingly polished early days. Love me some Romeo Void.

My event at Lion’s Tooth was sponsored by Rush-Mor and I had a great conversation with owner Doug DuChaine. We had fascinating talks before, during, and after the event and as a result I realized I’d missed an opportunity for Corporate Rock Sucks. I found plenty of people who had nice things to save about Greg Ginn and plenty more who didn’t, but none of them had had any kind of dealings with him in decades. Talking with Doug I realized there’s a whole set of people who have had rewarding relationships with SST for years and years: record store owners.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Remember when the Stains debut became available last year and we were all scratching our heads trying to figure out if it was a bootleg or a reissue? Apparently, SST became aware of a bootleg that was being pressed up, seized the copies, and promptly released it as a reissue. So now the question of whether a new SST release is a bootleg or a reissue requires a third possible answer: both.

I kind of wish I’d spoken to some record store owners like Doug who had longstanding relationships with SST and could shed some light on how the label operates today. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. Maybe that’s a project for the next edition, if there ever is a next edition.

Anyway, during my time in Milwaukee I collected so much loot that Doug offered to ship it to me. Well, when I returned home and opened the box guess what was inside? A newly minted reissue of SST 028.

Nolan Knight, who has a new novel you should get right now, said, “If all you’ve ever heard is streams or the CD there’s things on there you’ve never heard before.”

I turn 55 next month. Maybe this is the summer I finally fall in love with Double Nickels on the Dime. Could this be the San Pedro history Nick said I should look into?

That’s it for this week. I’m off to CDMX for a working vacation so my next dispatch will come from under the volcano. I’ll leave you with a question:

What are you living proof of?