There was excitement in the air yesterday. People on the street were buzzing. It wasn’t just the inauguration, it was the show happening last night at Market Hotel. Pouring off of the M train and into the still-snowy streets of Bushwick, fans of Fucked Up, Vivian Girls, Pissed Jeans and ’80s Hardcore waited patiently in line to get into the show, which felt just as crowded (and had a similar person-to-bathroom ratio) as the afternoon’s events in Washington, D.C.
The show kicked off with ‘80s Hardcore, which plays exactly that. The band opened with a cover of Minor Threat’s “Straight Edge” and burned through a set that came to a frenzied head with Black Flag’s classic “Wasted.” Cover bands don’t normally do it for me, but I was won over by the excellent song choices and infectious gusto of the band. I’ve got my fingers crossed that with time similar groups will form for other gone-but-not-forgotten genres, and patiently await the debut performance from ’91 in the Pacific Northwest.
Next up was Vivian Girls. It’s hard to keep track of where everyone is with this band. I’m a big fan and have been since the first single dropped, but the Williamsburg conventional wisdom on the trio seems to change pretty quickly. That said, my incredibly in-the-know companion agreed that the band was tighter than ever, delivering its Last Splash-era Breeders via Shop Assistants and Dolly Mixture sound with teeth bared. And there was no hateration in the dancerie—the boys were moshing, the girls were pogoing and one young woman was hopping about with only one shoe, having tossed the other into the crowd. New CW on the band: Part Shangri-La’s, always leaders of the pack.
Pissed Jeans took the stage in a mess of flash photography and wall punching. The band ripped through a set that brought to mind the great Arab on Radar/Locust tour of ’99—everyone was spazzing just cause it felt so good. I’d be hard pressed to name a band today that puts on a better show (“This looks like the end of the world,” a genteel friend of mine commented. “I love it.”) or whips the audience into more of a frenzy. People were standing on amps! People were diving through the air! Pissed Jeans makes the sort of music that turns good kids bad.
Finally, close to midnight, Toronto’s Fucked Up started playing. Opening with “Son the Father,” the first track of last year’s brilliant The Chemistry of Common Life, the band—thanks mostly to frontman Damian Abraham’s magnetism—had the whole hall jumping, mostly on top of each other. Smiling at the rowdy brood and recounting his own misadventure in hanging his sturdy frame from a rod above a Boston stage the night before, Abraham let loose some wisdom: “The only rule in Fucked Up,” he told us, “is don’t die.” The group, its five members taking up the entirety of the venue’s small stage, showed no signs of weariness as it ripped through material from Chemistry as well as 2006’s Hidden World and a number of its singles and mix tapes. The day’s “Yes We Can” vibe was nowhere more apparent than when Abraham announced a new song, called “Vivian Girls” in honor of the opening act, that showed the solidarity, friendship and respect that the world can learn from hardcore shows. Fuck the inauguration; this was the party to be at.
Photo by Bryan Bruchman / http://flickr.com/photos/subinev/
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