This show was packed. It was crazy how many people were there and how posi-mosh everyone was. It’s the most smiles I’ve seen in a mosh pit in a while. Troy (bassist / singer, also in Stickers) is singing whatever it is that he’s singing. I can’t understand much of it but I think a couple songs are about eating that 13 egg omelet at Beth’s Café on Aurora. I haven’t eaten that particular endtrée yet but when I can get my hands on whatever recorded material White Coward puts out in the future, I’ll look for the songs that are reviewing the experience of that meal.

I remember on the trip back home, the van I was busy with talking about how great White Coward was and how great the show was overall. How much shredding and kind shoving occurred. How some of us in the car who live together, werne’t vocalizing how we weren’t so excited to leave a figuratively and literally warm space and enter into our house, which was literally cold. 50º F or something. How I was incredibly displeased with myself over the audio being blasted out from Heavy Flow‘s set. How it was okay, because they’ll tour up to the NW again and White Coward played a killer set.

This is Cold Lake. They are your new favorite band.

They consist of Corey J. Brewer¹, Clyde Petersen², Jeff Mitchell, and James Burns³- all Bellingham expats. They unified and form a band of best friends who gets reasonably upset about things that are very reasonable to be upset about. Courage and Consequence and Troll III are my favorite examples of their social and political attitude about the turds that love how they smell.

Corey was sick. He sounded kind of stuffy but I think he mostly had the sniffles. I didn’t follow up on if he was delirious from being sick or if he was just really drunk. Regardless, he was having a ton of fun climbing on everything and taking in how wonderful this night was overall. Don’t Talk to the Cops!, TacocaT, Police Teeth… Cold Lake. Closing the show, they had a very special song very fitting to what had happened in the recent news and has been a big issue for Seattle: Seattle Police Department (SPD) being discriminatory, violent, and generally poor in quality. Co-screaming that special number was El Mizell of DTttC!

Here’s the document from the Department of Justice’s site detailing their investigation of the SPD’s awfulness. It’s a good read.

This was the going away part of wonderful friend and rippn’ bassist of Swamp Meat, Laura Seniow. She didn’t go far- just to Bellingham, WA to finish school but still, she’s not in immediate vicinity of everyone who she’s been around in Seattle.

The house that this took place in is called the Seasick Halfshell Embassy; a house annexed by a few Bellingham ex-pats that I knew from my time there a few years ago. It’s really weird that Seattle is the migration point for the generation of Bellinghamsters that I was somewhat a part of- but it’s still cool. Opening up their house to allow great things to happen inside of it. This particular night contained a lot of people I knew, a few who I haven’t seen so often and the first show I was aware of at this space since a really rad BBQ event over the summer. It’s exciting… The prospect of more house shows operated by great people in Seattle where there has been a drought for a while. The location of this place allows it to have louder shows (if necessary) and not be as likely to be shut down by the po-po.

Back to the band: They rip it up and have type of accuracy-based sloppiness that I really admire. The kind that shows they are having fun. I’ve had the opportunity since this show to listen to a few Swamp Meat recordings that sound stellar. I can’t get over how rippin’ Laura Seniow’s bass playing is. She plays a few other string instruments and is very proficient at those too. Someone should hire her to play in their band.

Someone should also put out a 7″ for Swamp Meat.

Hint hint.

I’ve been wanting to capture their souls ever since that fateful show at the Echoplex in Bellingham, Washington, where our paths crossed in appreciation of So Many Dynamos. We love that band. Police Teeth only were able to play one song before the cops shut down the event (which was already pretty late in the night) because someone had complained about noise. The noise that they complained about, turns out, wasn’t from the bands (the garage was pretty well insulated) but rather the car in front of the house allegedly blasting hip-hip hop loudly out it’s doors or windows.

I was able to see Police Teeth at the Vera Project in Seattle the next day just to see both bands again. It would be at the Vera I would see Police Teeth play again (with So Many Dynamos) about a year or so later but the last until this moment.

I’m adverse to bars and clubs. I’ve been lightening up about it over the years but it’s a mostly unenjoyable experience even if I’m in the company of people I care about. It’s hard for me to speak loudly and I have to cup my ear to hear most of the time. So I try not to talk. I really never ever have to do this at a house show. Police Teeth’s decision to play at Funny Button came after a show they played at the Comet Tavern on Capitol Hill that they stated would be their last 21+ show. When I was informed of this through a friend, also attached was that they’re ready to play house shows again. Seeing them in any other environment would feel unnatural.

The band knows each other from Bellingham, which has a tradition of having house shows since most of young people there are college students who don’t have access to bars. There were warm feelings in the basement and with knowing that a good proportion of folks in attendance of this show hadn’t seen Police Teeth before, I was remembering the fist time I saw them. Except this time they played a full set and not just one song.

I know very little about Weed other than the shows I’ve seen the band play. I do know that it’s been the musical endeavor of Will Anderson for however many years. I’ve seen Weed maybe three or four times, and I always love it, but it’s also been a different lineup each time. Has understandably sounded different each of those times but this particular show at Black Lodge felt spot on like, “this is the Weed lineup.” The body bobbing, the sound, how  I didn’t notice any major musical goof-ups. Also, really paying attention to Will’s lyrics for the first time. It helped that Black Lodge let them be audible but I was paying more attention this time.

Weed reminds me of the 90′s “indie rock” I fantasize about. I’m not comparing them to Weezer when I say this- but it reminds me of what I wanted that band to do more with. What Will expresses through Weed in his lyrics aren’t raw in the way that punk or hardcore bands convey their message; they’re raw like when you sit down with your friends and talk to them about what’s on your mind.

I wanted to hear this when I was a teenager and I’m fortunate to hear it now.

Great cake & great people!

The morning after this show, while cleaning up the Funny Button basement with Clyde Petersen, I had found a cryptic setlist taped to the bulletin board, a few red plastic drink cups, a bottle of vodka and next to the drain that keeps the basement from flooding, a mostly empty two-liter bottle of strawberry lemonade. I mentioned to Clyde what I saw and we both remembered that they had set up their own mixed drink zone next to the merch table. While everyone else at this show had corner store beer, TacocaT had this operation planned well in advanced.

The strawberry lemonade was salvaged and stored in the Funny Button refrigerator for a week before being thrown out.

Lori is an intimate shredder. You can see and here how years of playing music has created such a bond between her and the cello, how fluid the experience is, that you hear them speaking their own language. You can’t understand what is being said but you can interpret your own idea of what’s going on.

There are a slough of musicians that were participants in the NW music community in the 80′s and early 90′s who don’t seem to play out as frequently as they may have in the past. Great people who still make great music: Steve Fisk, Sue Ann Harkey, Calvin Johnson, David Lester and Jean Smith  are the few others that I can come up with off the top of my head. Although Calvin performs often enough, still there are so many more who are either no longer active, passed, or don’t reside in the NW.

I wish that they would come out of the woodwork and present themselves to the community that is so rich because of them; our unknown or forgotten legends.

Healthy Times had a limited capacity that when it was filled up, the average was around 100 people. Furniture was moved out of the way in preparation for the event and. This show pushed the it’s absolute limit (well beyond 100) and the ticket idea was for the concern of going overcapacity.

I had showed up extra early to help, to setup this recording, and to hang with the crew that was around. It was a gradual flow of people coming into the show and was pretty sparce when Planets started playing and by the time Flexions came on after, there was a greater amount of people.

Then came the big squish.

Lightning Bolt had backlined their gear- amps that were towering an upper-limit of around 15 feet. The most amps I have ever seen inside a room. While they were setting up, everyone was patiently waiting and psyching out each other. They started after the drummer, Brian Chippendale, put his miked face mask on and both him and bassist, Brian Gibson, did a quick sound check to make sure everything was loud enough. They started pretty quickly. You could say that it was a lightening-fast sound check.

Remembering this night is kind of blurry. I don’t remember when I did it- probably pretty quick before their set- I had pressed record and managed to hop on top of the the rooms’ unused left PA speaker because I know that I was going to have a greater time not being heaved back and forth in a crowd. Everything got packed super-quick. There were people standing around and kind of in Lighting Bolt’s performance zone and I was having a hard time figuring out how I was going to get down from my position if need be. 1/3 of my left foot was on the ledge of the bottom speaker that the top one was set on and holding onto the top of that speaker.

It was hellish. A room full of friends and fans all with their faces flushed red wearing t-shirts and dripping with sweat. Looking over this human sea that had flooded Healthy Times, it was the most spectacular sight I’ve seen. The monoliths overlooking a room full of insanity; people pushing, pulling, shouting.

How loud that I was wondering how much electricity was being pulled and if a breaker would switch. The power did go out though but it wasn’t a breaker. Something had happened where an extension cord was moved or something (no one really knew) and people were anxiously sustaining their Lighting Bolt high while the squished group of people to the left of a PA stack I was on were trying to see what the problem was. Nothing seemed to be wrong and I don’t recall whether or not I forfeited my position to see if I could remedy the situation.

It was a good break for everyone to chill from the mayhem. It wasn’t long after the mess of cables was fumbled around with that Brian G. started shredding bass again. That was good for maybe five or 10 minutes* until the power went out again and that was kind of it. This entire phenomena was about an hour long and who knows how much longer it could have gone. I feel like Lightning Bolt puts their audience as a priority and perceives what they do as less of a band and more of a social experience that they just happen to curate. It was an amazing experience.

I hadn’t had a clue what I was getting into either. Basically, my friends were so excited about this in a way I didn’t really understand. I had told Taylor Wingett (Secondary, Footwork) that I’d never heard, seen, or even watched an internet video of Lightning Bolt and when he relayed that to William Statler (Punishment), William said something to the effect of, “Wow! I’d wish I could to relive what that was like again.”

This event is burned into my mind.

*It was hard to keep track of time. It really only felt like only half an hour

Don’t Talk to the Cops! may not have played a house show before this one (I’m unsure) but they were absolutely excited about it. There’s a special feeling that is brought about by a cozy crowd of people in a basement who want to dance, that know they’re supposed to, is something that you can’t achieve in any other environment.

It’s that feedback exchange and lack of self-conciousness of everyone in this space is the best. You can feel it. I can’t help from laughing and wanting to dance when I replay this video. It’s hard to sit still and you can just feel the magic that was happening this night.

Everyone is having a good time and no one is sitting down. Don’t Talk to the Cops! are of those bands that wants everyone to have a good time and are real about it- because that’s what they’re about.

This entire night was filmed and each bands performance will be presented on Off Tempo within the upcoming weeks. Please be tuned.