| Last year, the Whiskey Rebels had the good fortune of playing at the Beer Olympics in Atlanta, GA. The following is a conversation running down all the weekend�s highlights between Big Chuck, Jimmy & you, the reader. Oddly enough, you don�t have much to say: J: The Beer Olympics was awesome this year. Best one I�ve ever been to. C: How many have you been to? J: This was my first time. But it was a rad weekend to say the least. Summertime in Atlanta, GA. More than 20 of the best bands around. Who were some standouts to you, Chuck? C: Agnostic Front did one of the best sets I�ve ever seen. They got the crowd moving, and are some of the most awesome performers around. They�re what I think of as a professional band. They knew their shit. They knew they were going to rock the crowd. Shit got set off and then they were out. They�re fucking awesome. J: Yeah for some old guys, those guys can move. C: I wouldn�t call them old. J: I would. How long have they been around? 20 years? I hope I can rock that hard when I�ve been around for that long. It�s totally a compliment. C: They�re old enough to beat your ass for calling them old. J: I bet they could. Did you see how they rocked the stage? Whenever Roger Miret wasn�t singing, he was floor punching or otherwise working the crowd. And Vinnie Stigma had crazy chops. He was tearing that guitar up. Yeah, if I have half that much piss and energy when I�m as old as Vinnie is now, I�m going to be a happy man. C: If I can drink as much as Vinnie when I�m his age, I�ll be a happy old man. J: I�m sure you�ll be able to, Chuck. I have faith in you. C: That guy was killing the keg with us backstage on Saturday. He was practically the bartender. J: Good. How about Patriot? They got back together for 1 last show at this year�s Beer Olympics. They set things off, too. I think half the kids in attendance were from Florida, Georgia or the Carolinas, so Patriot played to a hometown crowd and everybody was into it. C: Patriot rocked. �Cohesion� and �Songs For The Youth� were the standouts for me. I dug it at the end when Gordon smashed his guitar all over the fucking place. J: Yeah, it was a pretty emotional set for them. How long have they been together? C: A long time. J: Its probably pretty tough to give up a band you�ve had for so long. C: Patriot puts on a great live show. They were hard, but had all the catchy sing-a-longs. They had the stage and crowd equally packed out. J: But they�re moving on into other things now. Gordon is about to put himself through flight school, and Pete has a new band called the Dirty Politicians. They didn�t play the Olympics, but if it has Pete�s hand in it, I�m sure it�s a rocker. Jack the bass player has a new project called The Agency with our new buddy Rand, and we were lucky enough to see them play on Saturday. Those guys are off the hook. Its punk rock, and probably could even be called streetpunk. But its more diverse than most streetpunk bands that are around today. I heard melodic parts like Pegboy from Chicago and hardcore parts like Blood For Blood. C: Pegboy is a pussy band. J: No they�re not. Screw you. They�re rad, and it�s a compliment. C: You always write pussy shit. They are going to kick your ass for comparing their band to Pegboy. I thought they could be the next Blood For Blood, if Blood For Blood didn�t get back together. Either way, they were one of the best bands I�ve seen in a long time. J: Totally. But they were more diverse than Blood For Blood. They had hard parts, but they also had melodic parts that rocked hard. Not the kind that you mosh around to, but the kind you listen to on your headphones and go nuts in your bedroom to. Rand was saying that they might be recording as early as this fall. I can�t wait to get my hands on a copy. C: I wasn�t saying that they totally sound like Blood For Blood, I�m saying that they have a hardcore edge�.they have that anger & seething hatred thing going on in their lyrics, as well as a punk element. Kind of like a lot of bands from Sacramento these days. J: Do you mean like the Trouble (from Boston), who are famous for toeing the line between hardcore and streetpunk? I�d agree in principle, but they don�t sound like the Trouble at all. C: They sound better. J: Don�t get carried away. But they definitely were rad. Our hometown bros Pressure Point and Suburban Threat brought the Sacramento pride on Saturday. The Whiskey Rebels were up in that, too, and a lot of folks seemed to get into it. Mike and Kenny from Pressure Point came out and sang some backup vocals with us. It was a great time, especially for our first time playing anywhere east of Nevada. Suburban Threat moved the hardcore kids and the Oi! kids. They have a lot of songs out on comps right now, so the kids were singing along. The Beer Olympics marked the halfway-point on the national tour they�re on with Pressure Point this summer. Pressure Point broke the Beer Olympics wide open. They were one of the few band this weekend that really moved the skinheads. Did you see how many skins were up front, moving around and smashing things up during their set? C: I thought a lot of the bands got the skinheads moving, but Pressure Point definitely put a boot in the crowd�s ass. Oi! J: Yeah, you�re right, but the 2 bands that turned the skinhead contingent out the most were Pressure Point and Ag Front, in my opinion. It seemed like everybody knew all the words. C: You know who else got the crowd moving like that? Oxblood, Patriot, APA Pist �n� Broke and Iron Cross. Iron Cross sounded really good and were nice guys. Pist �n� Broke played a really good set, culminating with that song everybody loves. You know, the one about Ireland. Patriot played it in their set, too. Fuck, maybe we should learn it. It was cool hearing old school shit from Iron Cross. They wrote some songs back in the day that can stand up to anything coming out now, and I hear that they�re back on the road. J: You know who got the girls moving? The Beltones and the Krays. Both of those bands are great, but I guess I didn�t realize that girls were so into them. For the Krays set, there was this line of 15 perfectly-mohawked-punk chicks in the front row singing along. C: Awesome. The Beltones were a crowd favorite for everyone I talked to. J: Yeah, I don�t know anybody who has heard them and doesn�t like them. Its weird, because you can�t really run around to their music. Its SO Stiff Little Fingers, and its SO good that all can do is just stand there and absorb how good it is. It always tripped me out that there are no background vocals. Its just Bill Beltone on the mic, carrying the message of the entire song. Impressive. C: I agree. They got heads nodding. J: Craig Forgotten must have had the most game of anybody in attendance. Why else would Bill Beltone go out of his way to cockblock him by announcing to the entire Beer Olympics that Craig has the clap and should not be slept with under any circumstances? C: I hear the Forgotten really get around. For reals, though. They�re our buddies, but I haven�t really seen them play in a while. Craig was on tour with Lars & The Bastards for a while, and then they were in Europe at the beginning of the summer. Now they�re out on the Pure Punk tour. Either way, they sounded as good as I�ve ever heard them. I�m glad they still play some of their old songs. They got an especially good response from the mohicans in the crowd. J: The Relix from NY were good, from what I heard of them. Unfortunately, they went on right before us, so instead of catching their set I spent most of the time fixing my hair. C: You can�t be serious. I saw them and they were pretty good. However, I saw them from the vantage point of the bar, where I was also preparing for our performance by drinking myself silly. One band I had heard a lot about and was waiting to see was APA. They did not disappoint me. Fellow ATLiens No Holds Barred opened the show on Saturday, and they rocked too. J: We saw a ton of great street rock & roll bands too: The GC5 from Ohio, The Hudson Falcons from Jersey, King Sized Braces from Canada. Each of those bands rocked really hard. It seems like every time I see the GC5 somebody falls down. Did you see it this time? C: I don�t think I saw it from where I was. Maybe I did, but I was too drunk to remember. He could have fallen on me and I wouldn�t have known. J: Oh, it was rad. On the very first note of their very first song, both Doug the bass player and Paul the mountain-man-guitarist ran into each other and fell down. Doug continued playing & writhing around on the stage, eventually working his way back onto his feet, but Paul somehow got himself wedged upside down next to the PA. He spent the entire first song with his legs up in the air and his head on the ground in the corner of the PA. He finished the song in true hero fashion, though. C: I agree. All 3 of those bands showed motherfuckers how to rock and roll. They sent them all back to rock school. Aren�t they all on tour or some shit? J: Yeah, I think the Falcons tour full time, and I know that the GC5 spend a lot of time on the road. Probably the entire summer. I�m not sure what the story is on King Sized Braces. C: Yeah, I remember when both The Falcons & The GC5 came through Sacramento. It was cool seeing them and it was cool playing with them. Those guys are bros. J: I don�t know what it is about the GC5, the Falcons and the Braces, but they seem to have extra heart. I know Mark from the Falcons always talks about leaving your heart on the stage and breaking your ass up there. But seriously, each of those bands puts so much power and intensity and sincerity into their sets, its hard to not get excited. The GC5 played a rad cover of Johnny Too Bad, too. C: That was one of the better covers � songs even � that I heard all night. J: The Belligerents pulled out the sloppy old school punk rock to open up the Beer Olympics. A Florida-style Circle Jerks, if you will. Weren�t the Breakaways from Florida, too? Hell, they might as well have been: everybody else there was. C: Yeah, Florida was in the house, on the fresh-squeezed tip. Dead Empty & The Boils represented Killadelphia with some good East-Coast Oi! The Beer Olympics were the first stop on their Pure Punk tour, which finishes up late August at Holidays In The Sun SF. Nice way to begin & end the tour, eh? J: Lets talk about disappointments this weekend�How many rad bands DIDN�T play? Terminus City is drummer-less, so they didn�t go on. I was really looking forward to seeing them. We visited Frank, the singer, at his shop Crash & Burn the day before the Olympics. The Templars couldn�t make it, either. I spotted Phil and Perry around the Masquerade, but I heard that Carl was in Finland that weekend. Even though The Templars didn�t play, Phil sat in with APA for a few songs, and they did a Templars cover. It wasn�t as cool as the real thing, but it was still pretty rad. They had all the Templars merch there, though, so I picked up their new split 7� with the Devilskins. And of course the whole Condemned 84 thing. Here�s the story, as far as we can tell: they wanted Mark Noah to move Pressure Point and The Templars to whatever day Condemned weren�t playing. They were afraid that, if word got back to Europe that they�d played with bands with black members, they�d be ruined. That�s absolute crap. If that�s how they felt, I�m glad they didn�t play. C: From bands talking about it onstage, to punks & skins talking about it at the bar, Condemned 84�s less-than-glorious boot from the roster was the talk of the weekend. Both sides have their own stories up on the internet right now, and if you go to any punk/skin message board, I�m sure you�ll hear a different side of the story. The Anti-Heros broke up over the weekend, which really sucks, and I hear it had something to do with that whole controversey. That would really suck if they stayed broken up. I guess their guitarist Mark McGee quit or got kicked out or something. J: I hear they might just find a new guitarist and keep going. C: I don�t want to spread everything out here without knowing all the facts, but Pressure Point is our good friends, so we�ve known about this Condemned situation from the get-go. It�s fucked up. I wanted to see the Ducky Boys again, but they didn�t make it for their reunion show either. Did you find out why they couldn�t make it? J: No. C: Saturday night�s headliner was Anti-Seen. J: They have a new one on TKO, which I suspect might be a lot of punks & skins first time hearing them because not as many people stuck around to see them as should have. I know it was a long day, and they didn�t go on until midnight, but those guys put on a CRAZY live show. Did you see it? C: I saw the part where he was all bloody after he broke that table. J: Oh, but its better than just that. I walked in while he was playing a washboard solo. When he finished that song, he picked up his bottle of Newcastle, broke it on the drum riser, and proceeded to cut up his forehead with the broken glass. Throughout the next few songs he beat himself with a big chain. Then he set up a folding table, poured thumb tacks all over it, climbed up on the drum riser, and when the band started the next song, he jumped off and broke the table, puncturing himself with all those thumbtacks. It was gnarly. No tricks, either. I was right there on the side of the stage. I saw the tacks sticking out of his arm and out of his back. I got broken glass on my leg, too. Those guys are the real deal. They watch too much ECW wrestling. Oh, at the end he tried to light the washboard on fire, but it wouldn�t light so he just smashed it. Interestingly, they finished their set with �I Don�t Like You�, a Skrewdriver cover. C: Yeah, after all the blood and broken glass and stunts, THAT was the thing that got the skinheads moving. At that point in the night on Saturday, though, I was near comatose. It may have been the BEER Olympics, but I think I might have medaled in Whiskey too. Oxymoron, Sunday�s headliner, were tight. The guitarist didn�t miss a single note on some pretty sick solos. They sounded great. �Mohican Tunes� was a standout, as was �Black Cats�, �Beware Poisonous� and �Wierdoz�. J: Yeah, I�m glad they played �Another Day, Another Mess� live. I�d only heard it on that Best Before 2000 album they just put out. It�s one of my favorites. C: I think they�re actually way better live than they are recorded. J: Really? I disagree. They�re records are off the hook. I think they have something new on Cyclone, too. A 4-song EP maybe? They�re also on that Pure Punk tour with the Boils, Dead Empty & The Forgotten. C: I�m not saying the records are bad. They just have a really good live show. They played the songs faster, I think. Either way, their set was one of the highlights of the weekend. Right before they went on, the last keg arrived backstage. But so people wouldn�t be tempted to stay backstage and drink, thus missing Oxymoron, Mark Noah & crew put it on the side of the stage instead of in the back area. Myself and Nate our drummer sat next to the keg and nursed it as we watched Oxymoron, standing on our chairs and whooping it up during the best parts. Imagine having Oxymoron play your backyard keg party: that�s what it felt like. It was fucking awesome. A great closing ceremony for the 4th Annual Beer Olympics. J: You, Chuck, were a true olympian. Now its time to let your liver recover. C: Yes, indeed. I am still hung over as we write this. I�m sure you can tell. ++++++++++++++ And these are the quotes I collected over the weekend: Drew Runsueor skinhead Atlanta, GA �The Beer Olympics keep getting better and better every year. I�ve been to all 4 of them. I got pissed off this year, though, because there wasn�t enough beer.� Warren APA Atlanta, GA �The coolest thing about the Beer Olympics was The Forgotten. I saw them once and didn�t care for them that much. But I saw them again this weekend and they fucking rocked. And thanks to Phil Templar for playing with APA. It was great playing on the same stage and playing Templars covers with him.� Dave McKean The GC5 Cleveland, OH �The highlights for me were getting to see Agnostic Front and Oxymoron.� J: Were they all you expected? �And more.� Craig The Forgotten San Jose, CA �The best part about the weekend was seeing Oxymoron. The worst part was the Anti-Heros not playing. Playing with all our West Coast bros was great, too: Pressure Point, Whiskey Rebels, Suburban Threat.� Earl Dunkerly skinhead Pittsburgh, PA �The Beer Olympics is what it is: a bunch of punks & skins coming together to drink beer and have a good time and see some of the best bands in the world play. It�s a good time for everybody. The Hudson Falcons are the best working class band in America right now. There is nothing else to say.� Dave Glass Dead Empty Philadelphia, PA �This is our first time playing the Beer Olympics, and I wasn�t expecting this many people. It�s been real cool: a good club and no fights. All the bands are good. It�s almost like the Can�t Get Beer Olympics, though. Pabst, the cheapest beer, is $2.50 so I know I�m going to be broke by the time I get out of here. � |
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