JULY 9th,1997
AGENT ORANGE
THE BLUE MEANIES
& APOCALYPSE HOBOKEN
All Ages@ Safari Nite Club
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One of the first punk band I ever heard and the first southern California punk record I bought was Agent Orange's Everything Turns Grey. They had played here back in 88 with Underdog (remember those assholes) and the show sucked because the cops showed up and there was this fight. So, this was a feather in my cap and something I wanted to do. So out of the blue the booking agent for The Blue Meanies called me and wanted the date. At first I was pissed because I thought I'd have to dump AO because BM would make more money but after a lot of quick talking I got them to open.
This was the first time I saw Apolcalypse and I was blown away. They did this great cover of Little Red Riddinghood that blows the orginal off the map. I noticed that a lot of the younger kids didn't get their rough gritty sound but that's not surprising.
Ok another hint on booking, caught words. If your unsure of a show drawing enough throw words on like Ska. It may not fill the club completely but it will add about 50 people. I know that the Blue Meanies are not a ska band but they have a horn so that's good enough. I like them. They have this creepy anger to them that grabs you and shakes the shit out of you. Once again the Rudies didn't get it. It wasn't happy and they couldn't do the line dance thing.
Sure Agent Orange shut the door on their punk rock past a long time ago. Sure they talked all kinds of shit on punk and then sued the Offspring but I still can't get them out of my system. There's a deepness to those first records on Posh Boy, that beats the shit out of most of the records that came out in the last 10 years. I mean these are the guys that wrote the sound track to my teen years with songs like America, Bloodstains, Everything Turns Grey, Breakdown, and Living in Darkness and brother and sisters they did them all. It may be Palm and a backup band but the music is just as fresh as it was when they took that 8-track to Rodney back in 79. So I got drunk and for just a little while closed my eyes and pictured myself in that parking lot back in 86 drinking Pabst, breaking bottles and slam dancing with my friends to the car stereo. It was that hopeless and that is great.
