Low Profile live at Buddy’s in Franklin Park
Saturday June 25th
with the Rules of Attraction and the Powerknobs
what a fucking show. what a fucking weekend. i had a blast. and trust me, i’m still feeling it today(Monday morning).
so i lounged around this chicks pool in St Charles all day Saturday. it was great. so i was fully energized and ready to stay up all night. i got to my crib about 6 and Satan called me to see what was up. we got off the phone and he went to go eat and i went to go shower up and get my shit ready. we met up at Rob’s around 7 and played a few songs to warm up. then we loaded up and headed to Buddy’s. we got there a lil after 8 and the Powerknobs were already there drinking and everything.
all 3 members of RoA showed up and some more people started to arrive. Metko got there pretty early and started drinking right away. i must have drank about 5 glasses of water, spent like 5 bucks on the Sopranos pinball machine and probably 12 bucks in the jukebox. but hey, thats fun for me.
RoA started some time around 10 i guess. they played a good rocking set. i knew most of their songs. Satan burned me a CD of all their songs off the record so i know them but not the titles. except for the Rules of Attraction song which is my favorite one right now. each member of this band rules. good people, good musicians, good songwriters. this was our second time playing with them and i can’t wait till the next one.
the Powerknobs were up next. we haven’t played with them in way too long. so i was really looking forward to seeing and playing with them again. they played an awesome set. they played Wild Colonial Boy for us which got us rowdy. but the last 2 songs took the cake. Dr. Z came up and i thought they were going to do Bat’s Blood but instead they covered the Ace of Spades by Motorhead. it was fucking awesome!!!
after that, they covered our song Hot Mom. and that was even more awesome. that was our first time being covered. and what an honor. Gaynor had they lyrics in his pocket and i saw him double check them before they started the song but he sang it all good. Satan, Rob and I were all right up front singing along. they rocked it out for sure. so thanks guys. that was truly awesome. and we luv u!!!!
we played last. i’m not sure what time we started. but we played the whole ‘get it RiGht, keep it RiGht’ album.
Ultraviolence
High Gravity
the Will to Kill
Milwaukee
Hotboxed
Radical New Idea
One Mississippi
Studio Nightmare
JPF
and then we covered Breaking the Law by Judas Priest as our finale.
i thought it was a cool idea to play the whole album. i don’t think we’ll ever do it again but it was cool to do it once. i think we played really well but i lost my voice from yelling so much during the RoA and Powerknobs sets so i couldn’t sing too well. not that i sing good anyways. but it was all good. we had a blast and it seemed everyone else did too. Metko took pics for us but i know some other people were too cuz i kept seeing flashes goin off. my buddy from work the Birdman came with his brother and some ladies. he set up his video camera up on a tripod and some fucker knocked it down. he didn’t see who did it tho which sucks. so he says it must have gotten a few of our songs. i’m actually kind of glad he didn’t tape the whole thing cuz during JPF, i went up to my mic to sing my part and when i went to say my lines, nothing came out. my voice was totally hoarse and dry. so i wouldn’t want to have to watch that. hahahaha. but it was a good fun set anyways.
we loaded out past 1 i think. we unloaded at Rob’s and then Satan went to go start the afterparty. i went to my crib to shower up and change clothes. then i headed back over to Satan’s. the Powerknobs were there along with the 40oz crew. it was awesome. drinkin, smokin up, playin atari and spinnin records all night. i walked out of Satan’s crib at 5am. i didn’t go to sleep till a lil after 6 and didn’t get out of bed on Sunday till like 1:45. i was hung over and hungry so i went over to Northlake fest to chow. then i laid around for the rest of the afternoon/night. i watched a good movie called Truth or Consequences, NM. it is written and directed by Keifer Sutherland and he also stars in the movie as a totally ruthless thief. it was awesome. so if u haven’t seen it, check it out. Vincent Gallo is also in it and normally i really hate him and he annoys me but he was alright in this. not so annoying for some reason. but he played his normal type of scumbag role.
alright. thats about it.
shout outs:
i gotta thank Metko for showin up and taking all the good pics. the Birdman(sorry about your camera), Veno, Amy and Stephanie for showing up and supporting us. the Powerknobs, the Rules of Attraction. Brock and Dave for hookin us up and being so hospitable. the Ranger soundman. the 40 oz crew. Susie Bilik and her crew. Rob’s gf Katie. Danielle, my favorite Buddy’s bartender. and everyone else who was there watching. this show was a blast and we should be setting up another show there sometime soon hopefully so stay tuned to the Low Pro site folks!!!! cya round.
–ERIK
i visited new york city amongst other east coast locations in april of this year. i got plowed in a bar in greenwich village with my friends and it was great. are you wondering why im bringing that up? good question. beucase it was one of the best days ever. and this show, and everything that went along with it was actually a better and more fun day and i didnt really think that was possible.
i got up around 2 pm. the night before i was shooting dice, spinnin wax and drinking belvedere as well as an obligatory olde english 40. so i was a bit dried out and hung over when i woke up. i had planned for that and stocked my fridge with pedialyte. if you dont know whats up, now you do. all the real rock stars know whats up with the pedialyte. well i felt a lil better after that. so i jumped into some fresh gear and cleaned up my house. in the midst of my cleaning i got really crazy and cleaned my shower. i went down to the local RG eatery ‘goodies’ and copped a ham and swiss club sandwich w/ fries and i also got an order of onion rings. ive gotten the onion rings a few times before but ive always gotten my shit to go. and when i get home the breading on the rings is fouled up, and like ‘weird crunchy’. i always attributed this to the hot onion rings making condensation inside the little strofoam container. i figured if i ordered them to eat inside the joint they would be good. they werent. conclusion=goodies onion rings suck. luckily everything else there is good.
after that i cruised my ass over to robs. we thru down a short set to warm up before the show. i started sweating and felt loose. we had been rehersing as our set as our last album all the way thru, in order. we also decided to toss in ‘breakin the law’ as a finale after that to close out the set. i came up with the idea for ‘breakin the law’ just this week and told rob and hilger about it, so we wanted to practice it a few times real quick. its an easy song and we used to play it all the time but its been a while. so we rehersed it ok but then i could not for the life of me remember the 1st line of the 2nd verse. we loaded up the van, but rob had been working all day so he wanted to take a shower. i told him to also go online and print me lyrics for ‘breaking the law’, and he was going to meet us at the club in an hour or whatever.
so me and hilger drove to buddys and unloaded all the gear and drums. dr. z and andrew and bill from the powerknobs were already there. just then mike from RofA pulled up as well. the club was dead empty. so i sat down at teh bar and was drinking some water. hilger was sitting next to me and there was some prick at the end of the bar. he was obviously gettin lit up and he started making a bunch of comments. the bartender was a truly beautiful young lady and she was fuckin with me saying she refused to serve me water. so this guy starts getting all obnoxious saying ‘its like coyote ugly! no water is served here!’. i kind of laughed and hoped he would shut up. he kept trying to talk to us and he said some bullshit then he was like ‘who punched you man?’. that might seem like a strange question but ive had a few rude invidiuals ask me that. you see, i am a very ugly person. i have pale skin and i have huge black circles around my eyes. i might actually attribute this partially to being punched a few times, tho that hasnt happend in years. its genetics, my dad and brother have it also (tho mine are worse then theirs). i answered to the guy ‘sorry im not pretty enough for you’. but being that he was drunk — and a prick (at the same time) — he pressed on….’no seriously man, who punched you?’. looking back i should have run up on the dude, he was severly pissing me off. i told him ‘yo im ugly dog, dont worry about it’. then i bailed out before severe violence popped off. fuckin cocksucker.
so we lounged around and all the bands loaded in. we had joe aka ‘explosive joseph’ from ranger sound running the boards and mics. we have dealt with ranger sound numerous times at different venues and also at buddys in our previous gig there last year. i never dealt with joe before i dont think but he was fuckin awesome. we talked for a long time about bands and all kinds of musical related shit. before the show he was telling me hes in a few bands and one plays alot of heavy metal covers and he said they play some judas priest. i asked what song and he told me ‘breakin the law’, i admitted our secret finale, what a coincidence.
rules of attraction were up first. so i think ive seen them twice and this is the 2nd time were playing with em. their drummer matt who is a huge star wars freak joked that we are playing a ‘triology’ of shows (we have a 3rd with them in a month)…so therefore that makes this show ‘the empire strikes back’ which he said is the best one so therefore this show will be the best. they were so awesome on stage as usual. its hard to say but possibly this was the best gig ive ever seen them play. i could go on and on about these guys. ok i will. their bassist andy has such a proper textbook technique of bass playing its fucking phenominal. ive seen him play bass fills all on the same string like a guitar. the way he picks teh strings is so awesome, like no wasted effort. he makes playing open strings look awesome. his style is very hard to explain but its fucking awesome. he just looks like (And he is) a super experienced musician. his style has been focused over years and years of jammin. then you have matt the drummer. now im saying this to show off no doubt, but its also true. i do not often or ever see drummers better then rob himself. i mean, lets be serious people. the drummer in my band is hands down the best. he has a technical understanding of drums and is interested in the style of very skilled drummers. however matt from RofA is so impressive it blows me the fuck away. hes the only drummer besides rob that i see where im that impressed. hes a real hard hitter even tho you might not know it lookin at the guy. but hes more then a hardhitter, like andy he has a style that cant be described….and its a style ive not really seen before. and of course mike. mike is such a skilled vocalist he actually measures the distance from the mic to his mouth (while playing guitar no less) by using a number of fingers (1,2,3,4). he uses all types of different voicings and strange chords and is one of hte best lyricists ive ever heard, no joke. i love the way the gibson SG looks but id never play one cause i dont like the way they sound. in fact, i think that kind of sound is horrible, sounds like shit. but i realized that he not only can get away with that guitar tone, but its absoutley perfect. that guitar was made for him and his style just as my 4 jacksons were made for me. its a beautiful thing. i went and saw them play a few weeks ago and i was very disappointed that they didnt play any of my favorite songs. but at this show they played them all and it was awesome. my favorite songs are ‘geography’ and their self titled hit ‘the rules of attraction’. they played both in a row! i was in heaven. my new favorite song which i dont have a recording of is called ‘smoke’. this song starts out super simple then gets so complex. i love watching them play it because i sit there and watch mikes hands and try to keep track of the changes and it just keeps getting more and more complex. its amazing. after their last show i told him i loved their song ‘sprue’. he said maybe i meant ‘smoke’. i have no idea how or why i thought he said sprue….what the fuck is a sprue anyways? i need to write a song called sprue now.
next up were the famous powerknobs. this was the 6th time weve played with em and they are so awesome. this band is truly beginning to evolve now, its amazing. they truly are becoming even more tight and taking it to next levels even tho theyve been around a while now. i felt like i hadnt seem them live in so long, it was like a different band. they seem so rehersed up there its amazing. they played a bunch of songs i never heard before, some where covers and some were new originals and im unclear on what was what. they played 2 songs with crazy long psyhdeclic breakdowns. one was called ‘the raven’ and i remembered bill telling me something about a new song with crazy parts and this must have been it. i cant wait until they record this track so i can hear it. its hard to believe this band has only been together for like 3-4 years. it was good to see them again after a while, it was like seeing a whole new band. they had a slight wardrobe variation with some white slack and shit. dr. z even wore all white with a white sweater vest. it was awesome. they closed with ‘ace of spades’ by motorhead with dr. z on vocals. i saw it on their set list the whole time and i was wodnering if it was actually some other cover called that or possibly even an original. i dont really like or know any other motorhead songs besides this one and i figured that they didnt listen to motorhead at all. it was fucking awesome. they tricked me real good too because they know i always stand right up front watching them and i read their set list to see whats next. my point being that they left one of the most important songs off the list….after what i thought was their last song dr. z came up front. so im thinking ‘ok, maybe they are going to play ‘uncivilized’. they often close with one of a few songs that dr. z comes forward to sing all crazy. but it was so much more……..they busted out ‘hot mom’…an older low profile song!!! i was baffled. for like the 1st couple seconds i was thinking ‘what the fuck song is this?’. then i realized and rob came running up and i was literally in shock. hilger told me that ross kind of tipped him off earlier and said how he was nervous to play it cause he couldnt play drums like rob or some crap. thats the last thing you need to worry about! i dont expect or even want to hear some kind of perfect cover of the song, i want to hear it powerkobs style and i defiantely did. actualy when i watched tehm play it i was marveling at my own awesome songwriting. it was cool to see it from an outside perspective.
well then we went on last. ross used robs drums so set up was pretty quick. i talked some shit to the crowd and watched their reactions. thats always fun. like i said before we played our whole last album beginning to end. i dropped my pick during the 2nd song which doesnt happen very often. i tried to see where it was while i was still singing/playing so i could try to grab it when i got chance but i couldnt find it. ‘high gravity’ was not a very forgiving song to try and play with my hands. so many times people have surprised me by grabbing my dropped pick and handing it back to me while i was still playing but no one did. oh well. my throat was kind of fucked from screaming for the 1st bands which hasnt really happend before. i joked on stage that thats what happens when you play with good bands. i was happy to reach the end of teh set, i was running a little low on oxygen. i think i only drank a redbull/vodka and a shot of jager before our set. i was saving myself for after the show. we closed with breaking the law as planned and i remembered the lyrics no problem, rob had brought me a printout and i briefly reviewed them before we went on stage. the line i couldnt remember was ‘so much for the golden future, i cant even start’ i feel like ill never forget it again now and its very obvious. the end of the song ends ‘clean’, meaning we all hit a note at the end and it just ‘cuts off’. i recommended that we do a ‘2,3,4’ count after it and then go into a long ‘rock n roll ending’ at practice. (if you arent in a band all that may have well sounded like nonsense). i should have reminded rob and hilger about it cause we ended the song and i spun around to look at rob and he was standing up walking off stage! him and hilger totally forgot. i meant to make fun of them for it after the show but i forgot, ill have to do it next time i see them.
i lounged around a while after teh show and drank about a gallon of water. i was so hot and sweaty it was out of control. i had a full pitcher and a cup and i just started drinking out of the pitcher eventually. it was so goddamn good. brock hit us up then. first he took some money folded up and like thrust it into hilgers chest so neither of us could see how much it was. he said something like ‘heres the money for tonite’ or something and shook his head like he was super disappointed in himself for paying us so little. it seemed to me like he felt bad about it or something, but maybe he was pissed that more people didnt come out and he blamed us for that. hilger said eariler he was saying how pissed he was that there was a local fest going on this weekend and also that rocky denis had a show, which i took to mean like he couldnt possibly blame us for those events. hilger checked after he walked away and we got 60 which i was very happy with. i didnt think of it at all at the time but i guess that money was for all the bands. shortly thereafter andy from RofA asked me if the bands were getting paid. then i put it together and i conceded my $20 to him and his band. so either rob or hilger should have paid the powerknobs their 20. further more i want 33% of low profiles $20!!!
well we rolled the fuck out of there. every body came back to my place. the cops were all around but i guess they were acutally there for someone else. myself denny and 64 all jumped on the turntables alternately and spun some jams. i was wondering before the show when i was cleaning up if people would want to play the atari. of course they did! dr. z asked about it right away and i told him to go for it. i warned him that it was a typical atari system and could be a bitch, and you had to fuck with the cartdiges and shit to get em to work sometimes. amazingly, he had no problems then i started to play and it worked for me too! they it got really out of line when andrew and dr. z started playing NHL hockey on the xbox and dr. z was screaming ‘no!!!!!’ when andrew woudl score a goal or some shit. it seemed that all the powerknobs in attendance were pretty ripped. late in teh night i was offereing them beers and they all turned me down hahahahaha they were all smashed. nothing wrong with that.
my man 64 came thru with a 1/5th of peach stoli which i have been on a hunt for for over a year at least, i first discovered it at the big wig back in the day and its been impossible to find since. we were mixing that with 7up and a splash of grenadine. awesome sippin drink.
by about 530 am or so only hilger and metko were still around. hilger went to jet and metko who was smashed asked if i wanted to go swimming. he lives in teh grove about a mile away and i said fuck yeah. i drove his car (since he was drunk……and he has his license suspended…from a DUI!!! hahaha) and we went for an awesome swim. i walked home with my bathing suit on which caused a bit of chafing (ouch!) but nothing major. i could have crashed out when hilger left and been happy with the night, but this was a great ending to the night. i got home at like 730am and crashed hardcore, it was nice. awesome venue — awesome show — awesome afterparty — awesome everything. thanx to the bands and everyone else involved, it was everything i hoped it would be and then some!!
–satan165
