Shots from the next night to come tomorrow.
More on the soon-to-be Expect Resistance Flickr
Back in June I had the pleasure of photographing a concert one of my friends set up inside of a Gettysburg rec hall. The 
bill consisted of The Hammer Bros, The Bonus Army and The Fake Boys, all from Massachusetts and all on tour. Additionally, Alive in the Moment, Twin Killing and Rutabaga Suicide played but all of them were fairly local.
While overall the show blew me away on a whole, what impressed me the most were the three guys from Lowell, Massachusetts who called themselves The Fake Boys. They opened their set with haphazard covers of Lit and Guns N’ Roses prior to ripping into quality punk rock in the same vein as The Loved Ones or Jawbreaker (who they covered the next night in Baltimore).
I picked up both of their albums, entitled Pop Punk is Dead and Sleepwalk, and rarely a day goes by where I don’t listen to at least one of those records the whole way through.
The combination of Jim Domenici’s “almost too good for punk rock” vocals along with the trio’s instrumentation that brings a slew of influences to mind (the band lists 27 different bands as influences on their Myspace, including things ranging from The Beatles to Black Flag or Black Sabbath to The Replacements).
The new songs on the recently released This is Where Our Songs Live are some of the best of the bands short career. Everyone should hear this record if they have any interest in punk rock. I simply cannot say enough good things about them. Hopefully their tour “all over the US and Canada” in May will be successful. This record is a definite contender for my “top of 2009” list.
Go to http://www.myspace.com/thefakeboys to hear more from this band. You will be glad you did.
EDIT: Just pre-ordered This is Where Our Songs Live on Baby Blue vinyl. So psyched.
During their show with Brand New and Glassjaw I had the chance to speak with Alex about what touring with your friends is like, how Crime in Stereo see themselves as a band and how Bridge 9 is a great record label.
First off how’s the tour been going so far?
Amazing, its been really incredible. It’s different, because most times you tour and you typically tour with your friends, but they’re friends that you’ve made from touring and from being in a band. But on this tour we’ve all been friends since before we’ve been in bands. So between us and Brand New and Daryl and Justin from Glassjaw like, we’ve all literally known each other like 14-15 years, before anybody had bands so now to be on a tour together playing rooms like [The Electric Factory] is to be honest pretty wild.
How was it being in The Rookie Lot so long ago, and then doing this now?
I don’t know, we were literally just kids then who liked playing music, and it’s kind’ve the same now. We did the rookie lot when we were in high school, and I went to college and these guys started Brand New, then I graduated college and started Crime in Stereo. They’ve obviously done tremendously for themselves and I like to think we’ve done okay for ourselves. It’s not really a coincidence, we’ve always been friends, everybody’s always hung out and everybody’s always played music. It’s really rad, especially for them, especially for Brand New, they’re really so big, they’re so tremendous, so to see people that close to you really make it in such a positive way is incredible.
You guys did the First Unitarian Church a month ago now, and then you did The Broad Street Ministry 2 months before that for Paint it Black’s record release show…
We have played Philly so much recently. We played the ministry with Paint it Black for their record release a couple of months ago, then in august we played the church with Four Year Strong. I was at the last Kid Dynamite show ever, and I seriously think there were more people at that Four Year Strong show. Then we played a month later in early October with Strike Anywhere, and now we are back here at the Electric Factory with Thrice and Brand New and Glassjaw, so we’re all over Philly.
So what’s it like switching from those stages to this one?
It’s tough to be honest with you, I would say we were pretty shitty for the first three nights. Being a band that plays 300-500 cap rooms pretty typically, to come onto a tour and play 3000 cap rooms, the sound is totally different. It’s worlds different. It really took us the first couple of nights to realize that, and then the first week to really flesh it out. So I feel like we’re sounding better now, but the transition was to be honest pretty crazy. If you stand onstage when these bands play, you have no idea how low they’re actually playing. Their amps are so low, and their singing volume is so low, Jesse and Daryl and Dustin from Thrice are singing at almost a conversational volume. The shows we play, coming off tours with Strike Anywhere and Polar Bear Club… Our amps are cranked, we’re belting out the vocals. Then you come on a tour like this, and to try and do that is just a disaster. Now we’ve kind of learned to turn everything down, sing at a lower volume, keep the amps at a lower volume. These guys on the tour are awesome and give us pointers on things, so we feel like we’re getting it.
What’s your relationship with Philly, you’re from NY, I assume you guys come here a lot…
We have a lot of friends here, we love hanging out. Instead of just being a New York band we feel like we’re part of Boston, New York and Philly. At this point Boston is just like our second hometown, if we’re doing a big show, a big hometown show, we typically do two nights, one in Boston and one in Long Island. And then there’s Philly in that trifecta there. I don’t really know how it came about, it’s really like having 3 hometowns. We really don’t play Jersey anymore, so now I think a lot of the South Jersey kids come out to our Philly shows.
Any reason why you don’t play NJ anymore?
We were bigger in NJ before we were big in Long Island. That was the first place we started having good shows. When we really started touring as a full time band we would book jersey as the last stop on the tour. We would play NJ then we would go home, then for 3 consecutive tours things would happen towards the end of the tour. Twice our van exploded, once a member quit so we just had to go home, so there was these 3 tours where we cancelled our tours early. So we would miss the NJ shows and end up going home from St Louis or Cleveland or something like that. The kids that we booked the shows with were like local kids that we had built up a rapport with, we were playing their basements and their VFW’s or something like that. They just felt very slighted that we kept canceling shows, so a lot of the positive rapport we built up with our fan base in New Jersey was lost. The really grassroots thing, the kids that we were friends with and kept playing their house shows, that fell apart a little bit. I don’t know, we have amazing shows there. On the last Have Heart tour we played a show there that was the best part of the tour. I don’t think it’s like that kids hate us, but we just used to play there all the time and now we don’t. Which is kind’ve a bummer, but kind’ve alright because I hate New Jersey. As a state, not because of the kids or because of the hardcore or anything, but the left turn thing drives me crazy. We get lost there, everytime we’re there something bad happens.
What’s next for you guys? I know you’re releasing that new record….
Yes, our new record is called I Was Trying to Describe You To Someone, its coming out Feb 23rd. We couldn’t be more excited about it. Everybody when they put out a new record says “its our best record,” this is legitimately so much better than anything we’ve done before, it really is. If I could make kind’ve a long winded analogy, Explosives [and the Will to Use Them] and The Troubled Stateside, those two records are like what this record and Is Dead is. When we did Explosives, we had never made a record before, we just went in and did it and had no idea about songwriting or anything. Then when we did Troubled Stateside, we took the things we learned from Explosives, and were like “all right, let’s right good songs now, let’s make this good.” That’s again what I feel like happened. We went to make Is Dead, and now Kristian can sing, and we have all these amps and effects pedals and things. We just went in and didn’t know what we were doing and made a record. Now we know all those things, we know that Kristian can sing we know that we can make all these other kinds of sounds and rhythms and stuff, so we were like “lets take all that stuff we learned and make a really good record,” so thats kind of the analogy I make.
How do you guys see yourselves, you’ve toured with Have Heart and played with Bane, but you’ve also done stuff with Against Me and you do this kind of show. Do you find that kids sometimes don’t come up to the Against Me shows to see you, but they’ll go to the Have Heart ones?
It’s hard to tell, because I’m sure that there are kids tonight that are here to see us. But when we play Philly there’s maybe 300 kids at the show. There’s 3000 kids here tonight. So even if, say however many kids come out, they’re standing in a sea of 3000 people. They’re probably at the bar drinking, just watching. Also, with a show like this, if you’re even a fan of Crime in Stereo, you’re also probably a fan of Glassjaw or Brand New, maybe a bigger fan. You might be psyched Crime in Stereo is on the show, but you probably came to see Brand New anyway. We love playing big shows. We”re a hardcore band in the sense that we’re hardcore kids and that’s where we came from. I think our influences are somewhat apparent if you’re a hardcore or a punk kid, but I wouldn’t necessarily say we play hardcore per se anymore really. Id like to think that we do, but there’s a lot of bands that I consider hardcore bands that don’t sound like Chain of Strength.
Like Polar Bear Club for example
Yeah, and even that whole kind of genre, like Fugazi and Shellac, and kind of bands like that, Cursive even. I use that term more loosely, more than if you have fast parts and breakdowns. So aesthetically we are. That’s where we came from, we’ve always been hardcore kids. I would love to be in the biggest bands on the planet, the truth is we don’t really have to change who we are in order for that to happen this is the music we play regardless. Regardless of if we play basements or arena’s we’re still making the same music, we’re still the same people. It’s not like we go and put on eye liner and costumes or anything like that. So we feel like if we do just what we do naturally, and we can be very successful at it, we would love for that to happen. But at the same time we love hardcore shows and stuff. You have to realize that all of those bands are bands we came up with. When we started touring as a band it was us and Guns Up and Blacklisted and Have Heart and Ship Wreck, all these bands are all really good friends of ours. I really feel like we have the best of both works. Like, I love AFI, I really do. Maybe not the most recent records, but I got into them on very proud of ya. They became this giant band, but they did this goth thing on Black Sails in the Sunset, it wasn’t like “now we’re on a major label, let’s do this weird shit,” that’s what they were doing anyway, and if someone comes and wants to go and throw money at you for what you’re naturally doing then god bless. Sick of it All used to be gigantic. They used to draw 3000 people in the Scratch the Surface/Built to Last era. Shear Terror signed to MCA… I think its just about the way that you do it. The truth is, I would sign to a major label, but I wont most likely. Not because it’s like “damn the man” you know, this aesthetic thing. Business is business, if you’re signing a contract then you’re signing a contract. The truth is that major label deals are shitty. You will get a better deal from an indie. Bridge 9 will treat us better than a major label will because they’re friends of ours and we work closely with them. Contractually speaking, they know what its like being a struggling band, they will give us a better deal than a major label will.
Speaking of that, how has Bridge 9 been working out?
They’re awesome, I can’t even describe it. If we need something, even things that aren’t in their scope of doing things for us they get it done. We work really closely with them. Carl, who signed us to Bridge 9 was a huge fan of us years before he worked there. Chris Wrenn, who owns Bridge 9 is a huge fan of ours. He and his wife come out to all of our shows and they’re super supportive of us. Stephanie who now runs Bridge 9, we were working with for years before she was even at the label. We have really tight ties and connections to everyone there. Again, we have really tight ties to the Boston hardcore scene, you know like Have Heart, Shipwreck, Colin of Arabia, the Ambitions guys, Guns Up, all of these bands that we came up with, Death Before Dishonor. I kind of feel bad that I even started naming bands now because I know I’m not going to be able to think of everybody, but like, we’re just very very tight with the Boston hardcore scene. To be on not only what we feel is “the” hardcore label, but such a hub of the boston scene is really awesome for us. They signed us initially because they loved Troubled Stateside, it’s not like they had heard “Is Dead” before they signed us, they loved that record. When we were talking about signing with them, we said “we’re not giving you that record, were not doing another Troubled Stateside, its not going to sound like that,” and they said “hey we love your band, whatever you guys want to do we’ll be into.” Everything we’ve given them they’ve been super supportive of and gotten behind. They never said anything because we didn’t sound like American Nightmare or The Hope Conspiracy. They never said “you guys should give us more fast songs or more breakdowns,” or anything like that. I swear to god if we handed in an acoustic record they wouldn’t have said anything, they would have been like “cool, we’re into it.” I cannot say enough positive things about Bridge 9.
What was it like touring with Thrice, they were the one non-new york band on this tour?
Honestly, they’re the nicest guys. Like, scary nice. They’re the coolest, nicest most down to earth guys who also totally came up in the hardcore scene. We were talking last night, their first full US tour was a
Thrice, Hope Conspiracy, American Nightmare and Converge tour. They’re really the coolest dudes, I thought it was really ballsy that they came on this tour and only played their new record, cause they have some old giant rock radio hits. They came out and played their new records and a Beatles cover and thats it. And they kill it, I mean they are flawless performers, some of the most talented musicians that you’ll ever see. Touring with them, you get to see really cool stuff that fans never see. Dustin would sound check and play an acoustic cover of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” by The Flaming Lips. Touring in hardcore you really cut your teeth, and you know what its like to worry about shit. In the beginning it’s“do we have gas to get to your next show,” or “can we eat?” Then you get bigger, but then it becomes “can I pay my rent this month, can we pay our merch bill, can we pay our van payment,” not that we don’t have those concerns anymore, we do. But it’s its nice to get to a tour like this, there’s full catering everyday, they literally give us 3 full course meals every day at the venue, laundry/showers in our dressing rooms, we get long sound checks and there’s a guy working front of house sound for us. It’s just easier. Every band on this tour came from where we came from, Thrice, Glassjaw, Brand New, there’s nobody here that doesn’t know what this is like. There’s no one who did the Slipknot/Panic at the Disco thing where from your first show your on a bus. We conceived the idea for Crime in Stereo in the back of Brand New’s van. This was before they had a trailer or anything and the van didn’t have any seats so we just rode on the floor. They were opening up a show for Murphy’s law at The Chance in Poughkeepsie. Kristian, our singer rode along to take pictures, and me and our original bass player Mike had a fanzine, so we were riding along to basically interview and bullshit and go to a show. The show was Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, this band Fizzlewink and Murphy’s Law. Fizzlewink went on years later to become Matchbook Romance on Epitaph. While Taking Back Sunday playing, me and Kristian and Mike were sitting in the van drinking and we were like “yo, we want to start a hardcore band” and that was how it came together. We know what it’s like, we conceived this idea sitting on the floor of their van while they were struggling out of pocket to pay for gas. And now its awesome that we get to open up for them, they’re on buses and were playing giant ass rooms. It’s pretty wild.
What are you listening to right now, what music have you been really psyched on?
Actually, I love the new Thrice record. I got it before we were on this tour and I liked it when I heard it, but watching them playing it every night made it really click with me. Like Against Me and New Wave,
and they’re one of my favorite bands, and I loved the record when I heard it but seeing them play it every night you appreciate it on a whole new level. Mostly, really all I listen to is this band White Rabbits, who I have never heard of before. I still don’t know anything about them, where they’re from or anything, but they have a record called It’s Frightening that I love, just the most wild percussion things happening on it, the guys just a phenomenal singer. I still love the Manchester Orchestra record. I play a lot of Yeah Yeah Yeahs in the van, they’re basically my favorite band. Im obsessed with Karen O. Things like Turin Breaks, more chilled out stuff like Mogwai. A lot of the other guys in the van spin old classics like Hot Water Music, Avail, Lifetime, As Friends Rust, Bouncing souls and stuff like that. So, I try to counter balance that, which is pretty much what our records now sound like. On the one half just classic melodic hardcore and on the other side just totally out there weird stuff to just throw a wrench into it.
Local Philly boys Braindead have broken up after four solid years of music.
On their myspace they posted this message:
Its been a good run.
Thanks to everyone who made the last 4+ years a great time.
There will be no last show or reunion. Our final performance was 8/16/09 at This is Hardcore 2009
Look for new projects soon.
Support Burn Bridges Records and Philadelphia hardcore.
Thank you,
Eric
No Consequences was one of the better records of the last couple years. You will be missed.
So Expect Resistance Philly is a big fan of Polar Bear Club. And they’re on Issue Oriented (which ERP is also a big fan of), so go to their guest blog on IO
PICS OF THEIR SHOW WITH STRIKE ANYWHERE IN PHILLY TO COME
HOW GREAT DO THESE SOUND?!?!?!
One of the best and most interesting aspects of live music is the infamous house show. The concept of inviting a band to your house, then inviting a bunch of kids to come see them creates a weird, if not inviting atmosphere. While not exclusive to major cities, I certainly have witnessed more house shows while living in Philadelphia than I ever did in rural PA.
On November 8th, California hardcore band Touche Amore played to a packed room alongside an odd assortment of bands at a place known as The Diamond House in North Philadelphia. When I arrived there I expected the show to be down in the basement. I was completely wrong on this, which I found out quickly when I walked into the building for the first band setting up in what I assume to be the living room. This band, which to the best of my knowledge were not on the flyer and didn’t say their name during their set, sounded a lot like Algernon Cadwallader or Cap’n Jazz. Aside from a guitar string malfunction in the middle of the set, it went off without a hitch.
After them was a group called Trunks & Tales, a band from the Philly suburbs who played indie/folk music that seemed so out of place that they pointed that out during their set. But you know what? It kind of made sense. Touche Amore is a bit of an atypical hardcore band, so it’s only fitting that their openers be as well. T&T went through a couple simple folk songs using only acoustic guitars and at one point an electric slide. They covered American Nightmare’s “There’s A Black Hole In The Shadow Of The Pru” and it was great.
Next up was Touche Amore, who looked kind of cramped with five members in a small room. They had some issues before their set with a piece of equipment shocking the bass player, which they soon resolved (somehow) and quickly ripped into most of their debut full length “…To The Beat of a Dead Horse.” The band played through most of the record, including “WeHateFredPhelps.Com,” a song about homosexual rightsfrom the 7″/Demo prior to Dead Horse (sidenote: I recently heard a prominent hardcore band (who will not be named) throwing the term “faggot” around on one of their records. This probably isn’t new, but how fucked is that? Thank you Touche Amore for breaking the mold in yet another way) They closed the show with “Adieux,” which involved an epic sing along, with their singer managing to crowd surf across the tiny room.
Overall it was a good show. Touche Amore, with shout outs from Geoff from Thursday is definitely a band to watch in 2010. Look for these guys to destroy the hardcore scene. You know, in a good way.
To the people at the Diamond House (and The Terrordome to some extent) I’d like you to know that you’re great. Thanks for putting together this show, please do a bunch more. I’m so sorry I couldn’t stay for the last two bands. If anyone knows the first band’s name please let me know.
And buy Touche Amore’s record here: http://www.6131records.com/store/ It’s great
