Category: suburbs

Show #39: Afternight Studios, Franklin Park

GET THE LIVE RECORDING HERE

this show was awesome. there were 5 bands, we played 2nd. the 1st band was pretty heavy, called Bello. they were something like alice in chains(that what hilger said, i agree). the drummer was pretty cool, the singer
was pretty tatted and pierced up. i was anxious and nervous as ever, the place is only like 1 mile from my crib so i went home and laid down for a bit. the place is in a factory, there are also rehersal rooms for rent in there, there were actaully bands in there jamming in their rooms while the show went on. there were alot of young kids there(high school), at least
1 or more of the other bands were around that age. the best thing about playing with bands like that(besides scoping out the underage L.G.’s)is that they bring a ton of people. we fucking jammed, it felt very right, i didnt feel overly exerted after the show but we played balls out. jamey johnsen came on stage and played’coming down’with us for the last song. for the approx.
$180 that hilger paid for the tickets(which we didnt sell)we got an audio recording(cd)and videotape(multi-camera, with audio straight out of the board.), both came out great, very high quality. all the people there were very nice and respectful, the other bands were all nice, overall great gig.

Low Profile live at Afternight Soundstage – Saturday June 8th
w/ Bello, Going Lefty, Afternoon Drive, and the Target Rats

Well, a good time was had by all. The venue is not the best. The stage is all
good and the club is all good but the procedures they go thru to put on
a show is bullshit. There was a security guard there and I’m sure the Franklin Park officials made it so but oh well. He was an alright guy.
Anyways, we played second. We played a damn good set. Rocked the mutha fucka without a doubt. We gave out a bunch of free CD’s and stickers and I made a bunch more friends. The guys in Target Rats were great. I had a lot of fun hanging with them. And the girls that worked the front door were cool as hell. See I have to start remembering names so that I can put names
instead of descriptions of people. Oh well.

Going Lefty played third. They were alright. They had the talent and the
desire to be in a band but they weren’t playing together as a band. It
seemed that someone was always off tempo from everyone else. Usually the drummer I noticed. I’m not ripping them but saying practice more.
Afternoon Drive played fourth. They were good. A bit to nice and poppy for
me. The singer/guitarist was awesome. Good voice, he played guitar good
and was entertaining. The drummer was awesome. Props to him. But the
second guitarist and bassist already have big heads and just annoyed me.
They thought they were the shit and lost my respect. Target Rats played last and they played like 4 NOFX songs and an H20 song and then 3 songs I didn’t recognize. They need to write their own material and
just cover 1 NOFX song per show. Oh well. Give them some time. I jumped
on stage to sing backups for Stickin In My Eye and Beer Bong. It was a
blast. So that was the show. I had a lot of fun. The live recordings came out
awesome.

Show #38: Champ’s, Burbank

Champ’s is located in Burbank. I guess that the Disturbed got their start there, they had all kinds of Disturbed shit on the walls. First up was Off Balance. We booked this band, they played pop punk, i was friendly to them and they seemed nice enough. They brought a substantial amount of people to the show, I urged them to stick around(we were playing last)
and catch our set, and to tell their people not to leave either. They graciously agreed. In the end, they ended up bailing and i couldn’t believe it. We got them the show! They lied! If anyone from Off Balance is reading this, why don’t you go to the lyrics page and see what our shit is all about. I will fight each and everyone of you and kick your pussy ass Ambercrombie
and Fitch wearing motherfuckers one by one, bring it on. You may enter the 708 on foot or car, but you leave in a pine box.

Chainsaw Johnny also played, they wore diapers on stage and had a semi-retarded guy they knew come on stage and tell jokes to ‘warm up the crowd’. Jeff the drummer told me that he was also going to make the poor guy eat a Spam sandwich. I laughed then he handed me the makings for said sandwich in a jewel bag. I went in the back of the stage and made the nasty concoction, I almost puked. He actually ate about half of it. The band came out and rocked, they poured beer in a gas can and drank it during their song ‘Lawnmower Gas’, all the while repeating the single line,’Don’t drink the lawnmower gas!’ Those guys are the shit,
they are real gutter punks, just fucking dirtbags.

Show #37: Penny Road Pub, Barrington

penny road pub. i would call this place a roadhouse. we were all looking for
patrick swzaze. its literally in the middle of nowhere in barrington. you are driving down (you guessed it)penny road and there are no street lights, there is nothing, then this massive bar. they have 2 stages, one on the main floor, one in the basement. we were in the basement, playing with 2 other bands: r&r and dropmouth. R&R played all covers, they were a 5
piece with a chick frontperson. they opened with ‘just a girl’ by no doubt, they played a good selection of songs but werent very technically sound. dropmouth was awesome, 4 piece with a front man. the very things that would make me want to rip on the guy were the same things
that made him awesome. rob told me he saw him hairspraying his do in the car before the set. he had painted nails and leather pants. but above all he had some vocal stamina. they sounded (at least vocally) like the disturbed (also from chicago, the singer chris also told me that they knew the band personally). they played a very long set of 4 min.+ songs, i was very anxious. we finally went on, there were a good deal of people there whom i didnt know or invite, they definitely dug us though. i handed out some cd’s after the set, i didnt recognize any of the faces. the sound man maurice was awesome, a very nice guy. i got paid a whopping(literally) $68 by the owner(?)/manager dave. he was pretty much of a dick and unfriendly despite my attempts to by professional and respectful but i cant complain after receiving probably our 2nd biggest paycheck ever. on the stage upstairs was a band called arra, they have a HUGE local following, they play all covers, or mostly i think. the upstairs was totally packed. I must
also bitch about the asshole security. when i first arrived and tried to load in, i had to tell them that i was in a band, i told them low profile and one commented, “oh, thats DEFINITELY the basement stage…”. i then asked if they could open a fire door to allow me to load in.  they said that i could (and had to) but they refused to open it or help in any way(im sure they needed like 5 people at the door to take money)so i just said fuck it, ill load in thru the front door where they were standing. then a bitch security guard commented that,’well dont get mad now’ in a very sarcastic tone as if  i was a 2nd grader. there was one guard though who was very cool, a black dude with a yankees hat, if hes reading this, youre down dude. great gig overall, despite some assholish behavior from some of the guards.

Show #36: Riley’s Rock House, Aurora

Johnny Vomit I knew about from when I worked a year long stint at Motorola in ’00. They let us listen to walkmans and people used to stash CD’s in the desks. One of my co-workers found a CD by this band called
Johnny Vomit and it showed a dude puking like 4 feet out of his mouth
and he was holding a beer bong. It was called ‘Projectile’. It had 5 or 6
songs and sounded like DRI without major label production. It was fucking
raw and every song was about alcohol. It fucking rocked. I didn’t keep
the CD, it must have been owned by another dude who working midnight-8:00AM. Chainsaw Johnny we played with at Smiler Coogan’s ‘Inkfest’ when I got my first tattoo. They are a very garage raw, 3 piece. They are as punk as fuck and they make me look like a poser. All of their songs are about drinking as well. They cover GG Allin and they are into that shit. We played our tribute to GG ‘Excessive’ at Inkfest and their singer Steve came up on stage and sang it with me. He had never heard the song before so I literally taught him the part of the song on stage live.

I got laid off from Motorola in Fall 00 and i started searching the net for ‘johnny vomit’ in Yahoo one night, I knew the band was local. I found Mr. Vomit’s email and wrote him. He sent me the CD free of charge. The note he sent with the CD was on back of a flyer: Johnny Vomit and DRI. Unfortunately the show was passed.Now thats a sign of a real band. I can’t count the times I’ve used unused flyers as scratch paper. I have quite a supply right now. I mentioned playing a show with him and he said hed check out our shit on mp3.com.

We booked this gig and had to get 2 bands. Hilger recommended Chainsaw Johnny, he got their CD at Inkfest and it had their address, they are from Joliet-area. I brought up Vomit. Emailed them, they were down. We realized that these bands actually knew each other and were all crew. In Chainsaw Johnny’s CD we noticed that they thanked Vomit. When I spoke with Mr. Vomit and told him about Chainsaw he said that he knew him. That is some twilight zone shit.

We got to the gig, it was awesome.

hobo got his shirt ripped off, my cousin showed up, there was a drunk guy who got crazy to all the bands and said shit that no one could understand.vomit used a smoke machine,we were all knocking each other down and tackling each other at the end of vomits set. (they played last)

we got paid 50 for all 3 bands and we didnt take any, i gave them 25 each, i was so fucking impressed by both bands, they are real. playing again with them may 24…….

 

Show #34: Riverpalooza III, River Grove

GET THE LIVE RECORDING HERE

Riverpalooza 3 was a blast as usual this year.It was at the River Grove American Legion right on Grand around River Rd. Rob my drummer lives a block away and Eric, my guitarist lives right across the fuckin street. The cops and an ambulance actually had to come to this show cause some girl wanted to mosh around and hurt her ankle. Well, Low Profile played a 55 minute, 22 song set. We played really well. We even did a cover of Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues. How bout that shit? The man in black. So the place was pretty packed when we played. At least the most people were in there to see us play and it emptied out as we brought our equiptment outside. Selling tickets for shows is a pain in the ass. Eric and I gave all our tickets away for free. But of course the day of the show we had people calling us and showing up at the American Legion trying to get in and we had to refuse. I mean, people I offered tickets to a month in advance wanting tickets the day of the show. Sorry, u get a big “Fuck You.” We had the sound man, Ranger, get a DAT and record us live. We made like 30 copies on CD and gave them away for free cause thats what Low Profile does. So yeah, thats about it. Some other bands played. I’m only going to mention Cyribis cause they’re the only band worth talking about. I only got to see 3 of their songs. They fuckin rocked as usual.

Show #33: Lee Street Billiards, Des Plaines

This place is a pool hall. There is no stage whatsoever, we had to play infront of a bunch of video games in the corner. As I speak, I still have black eye makeup on that I can’t get off. We got there good and early but the place was locked up. Eventually Keith, our contact, showed up and let us in. 1st set: Low Profile w/ Mike Farmer 15 Misfits songs. We opened with ‘Violent World’. The set was great, I have so much confidence in our performances of those songs that its just perfect. Something inside of me kept telling me to save my strength for our second set, but I had to go all out. We were supposed to start at 6:00 but no one was really there yet and we stalled till closed to 6:30. Keith had said all 3 sets had to be done by 8, but he was leniant with our start time and didn’t mention anything abot it. The Perps were up next, Paul took a while fucking with his gear to get it going then it was fucking loud, too loud. To make up for it they opened with Mandy’s on Ritalin and Cute Blue Skirt. The guitar was so loud that the PA had to be cranked and it was feeding back. I manned it for the first couple of songs, turning it down during insturmental breaks but it was too fucking loud so I just turned it down and bailed. We finally got up there and jammed. Opened with Sex Party/Excited to Die, fucking awesome. We played 1-2-3 of 1-2-3-4. At one point, Keith came into the room and said something about ‘play some Jewel’. He sholdnt have brought it up. I jumped right into ‘You Were Meant for Me’, singing it and playing the guitar. I think that that was about the best reaction I’ve ever gotten from a crowd. They all heard Keith say to play it, and I think they all thought I would stop at any minute, and that I didn’t know the song that good. I played the first verse then said’Wait a minute, that shit sucks!’ Farmer came back up for ‘the 6th sense’, jammed it. Paul from the Perps requested ‘In the Zone’, neither me nor Hilger could remember the words or the music, we eventually did and jammed that. We were already well past our time to stop, but Hilger just kept on going with Lachrymose. I grabbed the mic for the stand for my rap and just tossed it on the ground at the end. The white guitar was a bitch, very ot of tune, had to switch back to the Jackson half way through the set and play that instead. Farmer said it was like our best show and I was thinking the same thing. There was like a family with a little boy or something right by me watching intently throughout the show, I made a point to scream in their faces and say a lot of offensive shit. Great. Totally great.

Show #26: Off The Alley, Homewood

Like the previous show, no one was there although there were a few sound men and workers around, as well as some girlfriends. This place is really far — about as far as Rockford. It’s a juice bar which is cool because they had the obscure Snapple Hydros line. I bought a few and they were great. I nearly broke my neck and back at this show thrashing so hard. They made us wear bracelets to show that we were in the band which was ironic since no one showed up and we didn’t even need them. Me and Hilger wore ours for a while after that — a few months. The Perps were great and they gave us all CD’s and we gave them ours. Out back where we parked there were back doors to all the businesses next door. There was some kind of meeting going on next door and when it convened they stood out there and they did some kind of weird corporate inspirational chant/cheer. We all laughed and cheered them on and they loved it. As usual, Paul from the Perps was drinking vodka out of a Snapple bottle. He cracked the bottle and we tried to duct tape it but it didn’t work. I didn’t know there was vodka in there and when we realized the tape wasn’t holding, I kept telling him to just pound the whole thing cause it was leaking everywhere. I didn’t really understand why he was so concerned and why he couldn’t just pound the whole thing. He told me it was mixed with vodka and I felt pretty dumb.

 

Show #25: Uncle Snorkey’s, Berwyn

I’ve played many shows were there was almost no one there. We always joked about playing for just the sound man and how that was good enough. Well this was a 21+ and even the sound man disappeared soon after we started. It only made me get more crazy. This is a decent size club with a nice high stage and huge drum riser so it seemed that much more empty. We played “Lifestyles” and I rapped all of “Bling Bling” by B.G. out of nowhere. Hilger and Rob just went along with it. We jammed really hard then packed up and bailed. We had another show booked for the next week but we decided to ditch out the night before. I’ve played that club enough fucking times.

Show #24: Uncle Snorkey’s, Berwyn

We set this show up about 4 months in advance. We were set to play an all ages at 7 and a 21+ at 10, both sets with Cyribiss. A few other bands also played with us at the all ages show. We had a pretty good turnout, mostly thanks to a band called Five Point O. I didn’t see their set but I heard it was Korn like and pretty decent. We played last at the all ages and while Cyribiss was playing, me and Hilger were standing backstage. Tony had put like 5 cups of water for his band on the stage near him. This guy walks up (who I was later told was in 5.0) and asks if the water is mine. I told him that it wasn’t and it was the bands’. I intended this as a way of getting him not to drink it. Being the idiot that he was, he drinks from one cup anyways. I just stared him down and I wanted to kill him. He got my vibes and realized how pissed I was. I must have scared him since he started apologizing and shit. I kept ignoring him and just stared right into his eyes. I asked why I hated him and I said, “I hate everyone — including myself”. He said that I had attitude and that was good. He said that he respected me and he saw the pins on my sweater. He told me to hang on and runs out the back door. He came back and handed me a pin that said “Fucking Glenview Youth Onslaught Quartet”. He told me that this band was crazy and since I had ‘attitude’, I would dig them. I put the pin on my sweater and it’s still there.

For the 21+ show, not a single soul turned up. Two band members girlfriends were watching us and that’s it. I remember playing ‘Clean House’ which is a pretty sad type of song and its slow at the end. I saw Rich from Cyribiss making out with his girlfriend at that part and I knew that I had written the song properly. Polish Mike from Cyribiss played ‘Brown’ with us and Rob played “For Whom the Bell Tolls’ with Cyribiss with me and Rich singing it together. Joe even started playing bass and. The sound system there was terrible and since the drunk sound man Heath was passed out at the bar outside, we just cranked up all the faders on the shitty crosswired board and it was LOUD. It still sounded like shit and I remember Rich singing into both mics and the same time and just screaming. We started destroying the place — throwing chairs and breaking bottles and tossing all kinds of shit. Somehow Joe got a bloody nose and blood was pouring out. It was fucking great.

Show #23: Riverpalooza II, River Grove

Since the VFW hall where both Riverpalooza’s have been held is 2 blocks from Rob’s, I sat in his basement the entire time until we played. Half Stachon played and I heard that they could barely finish a song. I watched Cyribiss play after us and they rocked. They played all the hits — “Black Magic”, and plenty of Metallica along with their own insane original metal songs. I remember taking a huge shit before the show when I was at Rob’s and being nervous as usual. George’s rap group Tribal Warfare played and we wrote a pretty good song with him. I wrote some great rap lyrics and unfortunately forgot some of them. We got the crowd involved. Tribal Warfare’s set was a bit unrehearsed but still good. Here are the lyrics that I partially forgot.

Big G from R.G. thinking he’s notoriousRappin and flowin like he thinks he’s gloriousBut in reality he’s fuckin boring usLying and fibbin and tellin us stories and…

Keep playing hard you fuckin jokeLike a 72 Pinto your flow is straight brokeYou’re a chump in a slump – more talent in a junk dumpAnd once again I’m a fuck you up

Thinking you can bring the noiseBut you grab the mic without any poiseIn my sleep I could defend your battlinThe last verse got your cage rattlin

Clocking G’s and I’m getting richerThen I fuck your lady with 4 fingersI’ll be makin her sore behind closed doorsShe gets buck wild but still wants more

You can’t have victory you cant top meYour shit is silly its gonna flop seeThe people yellin when I tear it offYour just an employee and I’m the boss

No hope left you’re getting franticYou are static and I’m dynamicNaturally I got the talentI’ll hold your skull like I was Hamlet

Take that mic and set it the fuck downMe and you gonna go round and roundRoll up your sleeves and step outsideI’m a put a whippin to your backside

You can’t purchase skills at the fuckin storeCub Foods, Jewel, 7-11 or PharmorYour rhymes are gone but a bad taste lingersFuck with my set and you’re going to get injured