Lesson Learned: Don't miss the opening band

Bleed

How could Daikaiju possibly have topped that set at the Bay View Bash last September, I wondered to myself as I rushed to Club Garibaldi last Friday to catch them and two great local bands. The first I unfortunately missed, but Dick Satan was there, and he said that the band, The Ornerys, were great.  "Reminded me of a faster, slightly heavier (The) Reigning Sound / Greg Cartwright. Olivia Salazar maintained, in fits and starts, a tightly barred rhythm as Eric Mildew furiously maintained eye contact with his frets often doubling her rhythm with tremolo strumming rather than solos and the occasional play with is stack for feedback. Drumming vocalist Tony Sagger rising off his throne, pounding out rapid fire beats when not singing. Good energy!"

Dick told me that when he mentioned to Salazar that it's a "pity I don't listen to lyrics," she answered that “Half the time I don't even know. I pretty much wrote 'F*ck Me Up' which is about posers in 'the scene' but the rest are Tony (Sagger) saying what's on his mind which include things like not liking people and not caring about people.... Wanna Get Dead is inspired by a story told by Daniel James of Indonesian Junk- a dirty trailer park kid in a diaper back in the day had a huge knife smiled and said, 'wanna get dead?' Creeepy.”  I'm really sorry I missed this.

I did get in time to see Bleed, the legendary Milwaukee psycho punks who don't play out all that often anymore, and they might be one of the few bands that could open for Daikaiju and still be memorable. The highlight of the night was a psychotic,  "Let It Shine", an extended blues waiting number with stops and starts and ridiculous but tight thrashing that defies the concept of "time signature" yet stays on track. They've been described as "hillbilly punk" but I'm going for just straight up, blues/garage-based punk here. They are one of the few bands in the midwest that could successfully rev up the energy to open for the surf players from Alabama.

So, yeah, there's protective poly on the pool tables. I'm expecting Daikaiju to end up on top of them at some point -- and yeah, Secret Man obliged.  And I'm not expecting as much fire as was at the Bay View Bash -- I suspect you're just not going to get the fire marshall's permission to do this kind of thing indoors.  But I would venture to guess the majority of the crowd Friday was on the street last September, and Daikaiju knew it.  So, they started their set not on stage but on the floor already, which eliminated the idea that they would at least eventually end up off the stage, like at the Bash. And the crowd ended up on the stage, and that would have been enough. And there was plenty of crowd surfing while still playing. As for the music, they're just as technically great and dangerous as ever. As a matter of fact, most of the set was newer stuff. Aluminum Knot Eye's Keith Vercauteren (who was a skeptic before the show started and was won over) coined it best: "Prog surf. It's a thing."

I maintain that you could take away the kabuki masks and the pyro and you still you have a really great instrumental combo I would be more than happy to hand over a $10 bill to see. But why take away that kind of fun? What did they do this time that took them over the top? Well, they completely moved from the spacious floor/stage area in the big room at Club G and crammed their instruments (and the crowd) into the front bar while still playing. The move was a spectacle in itself. This wasn't a neat and clean operation: patch cords and powerstrips were tied up in a bird's nest of a mess, amplifiers and pedal boards somehow kept running as they moved through the crowd, (and the crowd helped make it happen by untangling cords, assisting the lifts, and in a pinch, actually thumping on instruments while the band climbed up on whatever pieces of makeshift stage they could assemble in the bar. I'll stop writing: just watch this and don't miss them the next time they come through. Oh, and Milwaukee promoters have yet to mis-bill opening bands for these guys, so don't be like me and miss the openers.