Alex Hits the Pits

Middlebury High School student Alex Mayer reports on the action and reviews live performances by Sam Black Church, Kilgore Smudge, Last Ones Standing, DysFunkShun, Four Color Manual and Aaron Flinn's Salad Days.

The Four Color Manual
Aaron Flinn's Salad Days
DysFunkShun
Zola Turn
Club Toast, October 31, 1997

Ahh, the freaks do come out at night, and for the Zola Turn CD release party at Club Toast on Halloween night, they were all there! The crowd was as much fun to watch as the bands, and some of the best entertainment happened off the stage!

But on stage, Aaron Flinn's Salad Days. Some of you may remember Aaron smashing his head on the beam above the Toast stage last May when Salad Days opened for a packed Chin Ho! show and Aaron earned twenty-eight stitches in his head. The crowd on Halloween sure remembered and yelled "Watch your head" in a spontaneous welcoming chorus. Salad Days played some nice rock and roll, but maybe it was too nice because it all started to sound the same pretty fast. Flinn's a good guitar player and I really liked their first song, but it got old when the second sounded like the third and the third sounded like the fourth . . . you get it.

Next up was Four Color Manual, a solid indie-rawk band in the same vein as the Madelines. No real surprise since Colin Clary, formerly of the Madelines, plays guitar and Brad Searles of Starlight Conspiracy is on drums. They played a nice set of rocking yet emotional tunes. One standout was "Easy Target" with really beautiful vocals by Colin.

There's not much that I need to say about Dysfunkshun, except that they ripped shit up. The amazing guitar and rapping skills of Richard Bailey mixed with their super-smooth new disc jockey Mr. Clean. The band has recently had their yearly line-up change and they have added a second guitar and replaced both bassist and DJ in the past year. Their new line-up is already tight and they were in full costume and rocked the house. They played a lot of old favorites like "Jump In," "Here We Go Again," and "Hip Hop Girl," as well as some new stuff. They even played a Grateful Dead cover and held a twist contest!

Unfortunately I missed Zola Turn because it was really late and I had to get back to Middlebury. However I did pick up their CD Cousin Battie and it rocks! Some lame "alternative" radio station was there and I got a free Fiona Apple CD. The radio station sucks but I took the free CD anyway. I mean, it was Fiona Apple, ya know?

Sam Black Church
Kilgore Smudge
Last Ones Standing
Club Toast, November 8, 1997

Locals Last Ones Standing started the night off playing a rough blend of hardcore and speed metal. Last Ones Standing are a good, standard hardcore band with a lot of energy and emotion. They played crowd favorites like "Torment" and a new tune that totally ripped called "Accolades of Truth." They have an album coming out in the spring on Jeff Howlett's Pressure Point record label, and they have an exclusive song called "Innocence Lost" on the new Good Citizen CD Soundtrack to the Zine Volume Three, due out in December.

Kilgore Smudge came back to Burlington for a fourth time to kick our asses again. And this time they shared a lot of new material with us that will be released on an album that they spent the last few months recording out in California. They played some songs from their debut CD Blue Collar Solitude like "Cleaner," "Therapy" and "Hangtime." Somehow they duplicate their studio sound with only one guitarist, who plays solos and everything. Some of the new songs were "Never Again," "Double Edged Sword," which is against hatred and violence, and "TK=421" a song they recorded with Burt from Fear Factory. They ended a great set with a sing-along on "Hangtime," and then they told us that they were not our Jesus with "Senorita Beefeater."

And then the almighty Sam Black Church hit the Toast stage for a great freaking show. The band played a good balance of new stuff and old favorites. Most of the songs from their disc That Which Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Stronger rocked hard. Of course, they played classics like "Disco Inferno" and "Real Live." Other great tunes included "Ninth Circle" from the album Superchrist and "Jesco," a great, fast song about a big, dumb redneck. Another great show by Sam Black Church with the usual hyper-active performance by vocalist Jet. Well worth the time. ~GC~

Alex Mayer is a seventeen-year-old senior at Middlebury Union High School. He has written for 4/4 and The Edge. Alex plays saxophone, piano and guitar and he enjoys a wide variety of music.