Tales of rock professionalism

HOWLING FANTODS had a show a week ago. At Tritone on South Street. We played last. The other bands were also comprised of middle aged dudes playing some variety of punk rock, a type of music my wife has taken to calling "husband-core". The first band was the Prisoners, also from Philadelphia. Surprisingly they seemed to be very patriotic, considering the band name. They had American flags on their pants, hats, shoes, shirts, amps, guitars, undies, friends, cars, pets and so on. Its always hard to tell what bands are singing about, but I presume the lyrics to their Supersuckers-esque style rock were about patriotic things like: God, country, Mr. Rushmore, Millard Fillmore, the Great Lakes, various amendments to the constitution, apple pie, 19th century men's facial hair and/or tracing one's family tree back to the Mayflower. Or more likely, their songs were about relationships or hating your job or something like that. Second band was the Accelerators from NJ. THEY WERE GREAT. They played some seriously cool Ramones type stuff, sounded really good, were nice dudes with awesome NYC area accents. They had a song called "I Wanna Be Like Dee Dee Ramone" or some such sentiment. Loved it. Evidently they know Bobby Steele.

We played and within the first 20 seconds of our first song (Plight Attendant) I had already unplugged my amp from the wall (see the Disconnection Notice post below!) and Matt Kelley had jumped in the air, landed badly and fallen to the ground in pain. IT WAS AWESOME. Classic Fantods! Honestly, despite the rough start, we settled in well and did good. Matt Kelly spent about 30% of the time in the air, jumping at key moments. Since I do the bulk of the singing, I don't get to jump as much. I was feeling a bit like a loser, tethered as I was to the mic stand whilst Kelley soared above me like some modern day Tom "Maverick" Cruise. So when I had a chance where I wasn't singing I'd do some jumping too. But my timing was always always off. So like I'd be jumping in the quiet part like 10 seconds before the rock happens. Or I'd jump while I was tuning in between songs.

JUMPING WHILE ROCKING is awesome. Its a great thing to see, and when you do it and its well timed, you feel pretty darn rock starry. Amongst my other favorite rock moves is THE POINT AND WAVE, which has been my main move (with the Disconnection Notice) in the Fantods. When you're stuck to the mic, you can't fly, you can't rock back and forth too much, and the P&W solves this. All you gotta do is NOT play the guitar and instead, while singing, point and wave! Preferably like some sort of crazy homeless person who wants you to believe the world is ending shortly. And if your band is on a tear, maybe you can get the audience to think for a second that the world really is ending!

The last thing I should mention is that Lance Crow played his set with a broken wrist and a (possibly) broken rib. He was in major pain when we were done. But he never stopped rocking, even when he was feeling like dying and that's the way of the Fantod.