We had a bit of time to kill the rest of the day. For the life of me, I don't remember what the hell we did. The opening band at the Bottom Lounge came on at 10:15pm. Prior to that, we met up with some fellow Daghousers - Foxton, Tom M, and we met akissfan for the first time. It was nice to finally meet akissfan who only lives about 20-30 minutes from me. I have e-world known him for 6+ years ;). The crazy thing is the guy was off to Italy the next morning to get married. He was almost speechless when he sat down at the table and recognized we were chatting with Dave Smalley.
Up first was Holy Mess from Philly. They were fairly entertaining, but probably spent more time shooting the shit on stage than they did playing.
They were followed by Milwaukee's Chinese Telephones who reunited after breaking up and supposedly are breaking up again before they release any new songs. They too were fairly entertaining except for their Neil Young lookalike guitar player who kept breaking strings. They also had an Angus Young lookalike playing bass.
In all fairness to the two opening bands, we were there to see Dave Smalley rock the house. Finally, Down by Law hit the stage. It has not been since August 2003 that I have seen them play. That was the last time they were remotely close to the area. They played at a VFW hall in Joliet with the first incarnation of Jeff Pezzati's The Bomb pre-Jeff Dean era.
We got to hear "Best Friends", "Gruesome Gary", "Independence Day", and "500 Miles" amongst quite a few others. The band played pretty well together considering they probably played out less than 10 times in the last 8 years together. Sam Williams III still rocks on guitar almost like no other in punk rock. To close the set, they played one of my favorite Dag Nasty tunes "Under Your Influence". And, by the time they played it, I was under the influence of some Anheuser Busch hops & barleys.
Finally, what we were all there to see, ALL hit the stage. Dave Smalley was on vocals for the first four songs. This was the first time I had the pleasure to see Dave on vocals with ALL. He did not let us down. As the Cure would say, it was "Just Like Heaven"!!! Many thanks to Dave and the guys from ALL for allowing this to happen.
After that, Scott Danzig hit the stage. It was the funniest thing I have ever seen at a punk show. Scott Reynolds was not to be outdone by Dave so he hit the stage in a Danzig costume. You will have to catch the tale end of the video below to see the Danzig costume. I almost believe he took the rest of the band by surprise too. Scott was great on vocals that night as he has been every time I have seen ALL. Bug (ALL and Descendents roadie extraordinaire) took care of the band and made sure everything was OK for a great performance too. Bug has been a roadie with ALL since I snuck into the LnG club in New London, CT to see them play at the ripe age of 20 in 1989 with my college roommate who lived there. They ended the set with probably my favorite ALL tune "She's My Ex". An incredible set to cap an incredible night.
Somehow, Earthdog snagged the setlist again. He was still trying to get back at me for winning the Naked Raygun "Huge Bigness" CD that we fought over at Reckless Records. That will teach him to pick the Bruins over the Flyers.
Well, that was not the end of the evening either. We went outside to shoot the shit with Dave some more. We found him chatting with Stephen who remember Earthdog and I from the night before. Then out of nowhere, Earthdog spotted fellow Daghouser Mickey who drove from Philly that day with the bass player, Ben, from The Gerunds. This story is almost as good as my first meeting with Mickey the prior year at Riot Fest, but nothing could top that. You can read it here - http://daghouse.com/jacopo/viewtopic.php?t=19610.
We got to witness members of Teenage Bottlerocket in the crowd early on as well as Chicago guitar player extraordinaire, Jeff Dean. He told us about him having to be at the Chicago Marathon to play at 8am with his new band All Eyes West. Better him than me having to get up that early during Riot Fest. I ran into James Baker, punk rock legend from Green Bay, and a friend of Waikiki Ted's, Frank, who I have not seen since the Joliet DBL show. Another night in the books, albiet, we got to bed about 4:30am!! Checkout my Flickr page for more pics and my youtube page for some more videos.
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