By Lisa Burke
February 27th 2016, The Troubadour, West Hollywood CA: On Saturday February 27th 2016, punk rock came back into my life as I attended the Troubadour for Anti-Flag featuring support acts Leftover Crack, War On Women, Blackbird Raum, and Homeless Gospel Choir.
This show was an unusually early one and the name Homeless Gospel Choir is actually extremely frightening to me, so needless to say I arrived in time to see Leftover Crack who blew my mind and brought great joy to my evening. One great aspect of The Troubadour is being able to stand on the side of the stage at the bottom of the stairs next to and level with the band, separated only by a small railing which made for a great view of the audience and gave a close-hearted feeling to the band by proximity. You can also go upstairs if you have access and enjoy a much less crowded bar and bird’s eye view so you don’t have to push through the crowd or get clobbered in the pit by the crowd surfers if you don’t want to. Sometimes a good motto to have at a show like this if you are over twenty-five is ‘no sweat, no death’.
Leftover Crack, despite my NY upbringing, somehow slipped through the cracks of my radar, so much for not using obvious puns, but they mixed death, punk and ska together so well and not necessarily in the same songs, yet sometimes it actually was. They were one of those band of troops type bands where they brought singers on and off, and even an accordion player for certain songs. The variety in each song was fantastic, the keyboard took on exciting multiple personalities as it was played by different people, and the female vocalist sang death scream style vocals in the best punky way possible, and the random but purposeful ska jams were done so tactfully, I fell in love. Believe it or not, I used to listen to some ska for a year or two and I grew up with punk because most local shows I could attend as a young teen in upstate new York were of this nature. The point is that it definitely brought a sense of nostalgia to me but the most important element they brought forth was the perfectly crafted genre mix of death, punk, and ska that is such an out of the box combination that it turned out to be nothing short of creative brilliance at work. A favorite song of mine was ‘Burn Them Prisons’ and the fucking pigs chanting that came with it was comforting and fun to say the least. In 2016 punk rock is neither dead nor on its way out despite what you may think, yet mohawks are few and far between. I did count an entire two mohawks in this venue on this night and I suppose this is as it should be. The Troubadour stage is also pretty crowd surf friendly and one of the girls took advantage of this, although perhaps it was her first time because it took her three tries before she realized front first was not the most modest way to belly hop onto the audience’s frantically grabbing hands. At the end of Leftover Crack’s set, the crowd couldn’t get enough and started singing their own songs that they wanted to hear and this girl next to me was frantically begging for more tunes and the guitar player had to politely remind her he didn’t even know her and did all he could to avoid having to fight her away.
Once Anti-Flag finally reached the stage, even more of the young audience members were about to dive into the sea of sweaty hands and a couple of times they arrived onto the stage at the most awkward moments and got called out by one of the singers in a playful sort of way. The amps on the sides of the stage set the mood with punk banners that read ‘pray for a cloudy day’ and ‘army of one’ and once I got past the not super dirty punk jams with the all black and not too dirty attire of the band members, it was a blast. I mean, punk rock to me is The Vandals and Buzzcocks and G.G. Allin, not Blink 182 or NOFX etc, so a band like this should be as dirty and raw as possible, and the bass player who was acting as a second vocalist was the one who carried all the right flavor for me. These Pittsburgh boys are anti-war activists of course, yet over time they have certainly softened up and there were clear pop elements thrown into the punk mix. While I tend to lean towards fast and dirty, I do respect their diversity and they’ve carried their own style well throughout the last twenty-six plus years. The bass player made all the great punk jumps and he messed with the audience and did the 1-2-3-4 count that happens before every 4-minute quality punk song. Messages like “Stay out of the army” and “Donald Trump is a fucking asshole” happened, but right after that was what I felt was their weakest song played. Later on, they played ‘This Is The End’ which was fun and the audience was pretty engaged throughout. There was an adorable moment where a lost crowd surfer girl with a Vandals shirt got a hug from the singer and then at one point in my visit to the bar, the bartender told me a joke that a Lindsay Lohan shot was Red Headed Slut with a shot of coke. I’m not sure why that was important for me to know or you to hear about, but it happened.
I am a firm believer that most if not all rules are made to be broken, and punk bands for sure cross some boundaries and explore uncharted territory which add into this theory. I must conclude based on highly credible evidence of overwhelming creative conceptualization and sheer tremendous talent that Leftover Crack stole the crown title away from Anti-Flag with flying colors for best band of the night.
Remaining Tour Dates:
3/4 – Seattle, WA – El Corazon
3/5 – Portland, OR – Hawthorne Theatre
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