June 15th, 1999: Hot Water Music, Leatherface, Swank, Panthro UK United 13 @ St. Andrew's Church, College Park, MD

Two days later and I get to see Hot Water Music and Leatherface again, this time in a much better venue. Jamie Arthurs and I began working on this show together, but by the time the show came around I was a bit disillusioned by the whole booking agent thing, which just wasn't my idea of how punk bands operate, that I let Jamie take things on himself and stepped back from booking these big shows that would be held at the Church and stuck to helping out the smaller bands at smaller venues. I still helped Jamie staff the Church shows but I just had no interest in being involved in dealing with parties other than the band members. Hot Water Music were one of my favorite bands at the time and they played a great, hot, sweaty set. Leatherface were great to see live and thankfully played a set full of hits sprinkled with a couple of songs from their split with HWM. It was cool to see a bunch of "older" people come out of the woodwork for them. Swank was kind of a funk/ska/punk band from Virginia featuring the inimitable Tony Weinbender, future head honcho of The Fest in Gainesville, FL. Dave from Codeseven also played trombone for them sometimes as a fill in, but I can't remember if he played this show or not. It sounds like an odd combination of sounds, but they made it work. Very high energy and especially fun live. Panthro UK United 13 were a solid band from Gainesville on No Idea Records. They had a couple of really good songs and then a handful of decent ones. The bass player Jimmy "The Truth" would move to DC a few years later to start SuperChinchillaRescueMission with members of Latebloomer and De Nada. Good stuff.

June 13th, 1999: Hot Water Music, Kid Dynamite, Leatherface, Radar Mercury @ Chameleon Club, Lancaster, PA

What a line up. I think I went to this show by myself which, looking back, kind of blows my mind that I couldn't find anyone else to travel an hour and a half with me for this show. Maybe cuz it was a work night, but that's no excuse. This was my first time seeing Leatherface. Unfortunately it was at the Chameleon Club which is a terrible venue for hardcore/punk shows. Shitty staff, meathead security, and a barrier in front of the stage. Weak. If I remember correctly Kid Dynamite's split 10" with 88 Fingers Louie had come out just before this show. Their songs on that split were great. All the bands on this show were really good but it was just a lame vibe cuz of the venue. Thankfully I'd be seeing HWM and Leatherface again in College Park a couple of days later.

May 28th/29th, 1999: The final Sound Exchange shows

This is the flyer for the final two shows held at the Sound Exchange in Ellicott City, MD. SX was run by the genial Josh Greenbaum and staffed (I think mostly voluntarily) by a good group of Columbia/Ellicott City punks, notably Jon Falk and Aaron Fishbein (the Falsies). I found the place on a whim when I moved into a house in between Ellicott City and Catonsville and took a bike ride into old EC. To my surprise I found a little punk rock record shop nestled cozily amongst the antique stores and boutiques. I checked it out and found some flyers for some upcoming shows, one of which was for Kill Your Idols. Stoked that the place was doing shows for cool bands I became a regular there and met many of the people that I am still close with today. I saw and booked a lot of rad shows there. Josh lived in the apartment above the store and during and after the shows he would hold Tetris tournaments up there. Lots of rad late night hangouts. Josh was working on writing a book about those years of his life but I'm not sure if it's still being worked on or not. As you can see by the flyer, Josh was always super supportive of local bands and the store was really an important factor in getting a lot of Columbia, Baltimore, Annapolis, and College Park area bands some good shows. For those with poor eyesight, the line ups for the shows were: Kill Your Idols, Codeseven, Torn Apart, El Secondhand, Chernobyl Kids, Allied War Effort, Bullet Holes and Blood Stains, and Third Strike on the first day and Purpose, Two Man Advantage, Crispus Attucks, De Nada, Mendoza, East Liberty, The Falsies, Code Blue, and Third Strike on the second day. Josh now lives in Brooklyn working quite happily as a pet groomer. It's always good when I get to bump into him. Thanks for the memories and the friendships Josh.

BONUS TIDBIT: I used to live up the road from the Sound Exchange. Literally up the road. You went up a big hill from Ellicott City to get to my house, so I became known to those around the store as "Mike From Up the Street". If you read this blog regularly you know that I have a terrible memory. The time that the Sound Exchange was around was the time before everyone had a cell phone. I know most of the people I knew did not. I called the Sound Exchange so often to chat or book shows that it was one of the few phone numbers I had memorized. One night while driving some friends to the movies in Towson (on a suspended driver's license) I got pulled over for speeding and got arrested. I got taken to a police station somewhere around Reisterstown and the only phone number I could think to call was Josh's. He and his roommate Jason came to bail me out and from then on out I became known as "Mike From Up the River". That crew was the best.

photos from March 19th, 1999 show at St. Andrew's Church

I found a bunch of photos that I scanned and edited but forgot to upload for the March 19th, 1999 show entry (Kid Dynamite, Grey Area, Kill Your Idols, Fast Times. Sorry, no Good Clean Fun photos). I forgot that Kid Dynamite was in between bass players at this time so Ernie from Grey Area Played bass for them this night.

Fast Times

Kill Your Idols

Grey Area

Kid Dynamite

MACRoCk 1999 photos

Here's those photos from MACRoCk 1999. I couldn't find any of the ones of bands playing, though I know I have some. Maybe one day. Until then, here's the MD posse...

(I don't remember the names of the four on the left. The group on the right is Alex D at top left, Cristin Ryan to his right, Mike D to her right, Aaron Fishbein in the middle, Funny at bottom left and Chris Penna at bottom right.)

May 9th, 1999: Ensign, Kill Your Idols, Good Clean Fun, Committed @ Stalag 13, Philadelphia, PA

A few weeks after my last visit and I'm back in Philly at Stalag 13 for another show. I never liked Committed. The fact that the singer really tried to ape Ray Cappo always bothered me. Good Clean Fun were still pretty fun at this time. I remember them covering "Not Just Boys Fun" and most of the crowd going apeshit. Kill Your Idols were the band I primarily went to see. They were great. I broke my hand getting rammed into the speaker during their Sheer Terror cover by Jesse from Something In the Water. To this day I wonder if it was on purpose or not since I was friends with some of the people that went to his house to fuck with him after he made a rather disrespectful comment about the frontman of a very popular band at the time. I never cared for the dude and that didn't help matters. Ensign's Cast the First Stone album had just come out and while there were a few decent songs on it, it didn't really grab me like their previous stuff had. Actually, to this day I still think their debut 7" and their split with Good Riddance contain their best stuff. They played a good amount of of the older songs at this show along with the best songs off their new album so it was a good set, although my hand was a bit sore (I didn't realize it was broken until the next day) so I couldn't fully enjoy it. Good show.

EDIT: Former Ensign/Something In the Water/Purpose member Chris Oliver noted that I was remembering some of my history incorrectly...It wasn't Jesse's house that they visited but Jesse said something along the same lines when Looks Like Rain played a house show in New Brunswick with Something In the Water, Tear It Up, and Holding On, and that had gotten back to that same group of people, though this time nothing came of it except for some words on some message boards, but he said something that made me think he thought it was me that said something, and that's why I wondered if the shove during KYI's set in Philly was purposeful, but the New Brunswick house show wasn't until August of 2001 so this was not the show where I broke my hand, it was another KYI set and it may have been at the Killtime since I think Stalag 13 was not still running in August of 2001. My memory sucks.

April 30th, 1999: Daybreak, De Nada, Kojak, Lycosa, Midian, Noothgrush, Page 99, Pig Destroyer, Xibalba @ E-Level, JHU, Baltimore, MD

Here's another flyer for a show at a room on a college campus that I'm pretty sure doesn't exist anymore due to renovations. I only heard about ten or so shows booked at E-Level at Johns Hopkins University, and I probably caught four of them. Strike Anywhere played there when they still only had a demo out. This was the first show I saw there. Keeve from Daybreak booked it. I think this may have been the only Necrofest. Solid line up of grind, powerviolence, and metal bands. Xibalba was Ben Valis (Small Intestine, Stars of the Dogon), Dan Jensen, and friends doing some evil metal. Pig Destroyer is one of my all time favorite heavy band names. I don't remember what they sounded like back then compared to now, but everyone into that stuff in the area was super into them from the start, so I'm sure they ruled then as they rule now. I remember picking up the Pg. 99 /Enemy Soil split 7" at this show. This kinda stuff was never really my scene so I couldn't tell you anything about Noothgrush, Midian, Lycosa, or Kojak. I'm sure some of my readers will have a better recollection of this show.