En este episodio volvemos al mundo del stoner, con los siguientes grupos:

Solace
The Compnay Band
Trouble
Red Fang
Abdullah
Snail
Firebird
Sideburn
Masters Of Reality
Struck By Lightning
Solarized
Hermano
Unida
Queens Of The Stone Age

También se habla sobre lo siguiente:
The Dead Weather, Jack White, Pentagram, Neil Fallon, Clutch, James Rota, Fireball Ministry, Jess Margera, CKY, Brad Davies, Fu Manchu, Kory Clarke, Live In L.A., Bill Steer, Carcass, Napalm Death, Meteor City, John Garcia, Kyuss

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O escucha online aquí:

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Left to right: Matt Deis (bass), Deron Miller (vocals, guitar), Chad I. Ginsburg (lead guitar), Jess Margera (drums). Source: Matt Grayson

Before there was Viva La Bam, before there was Jackass, before there was CKY (the video series), there was CKY (the band).

The members include lead singer Deron Miller, lead guitarist Chad I. Ginsburg, bassist Matt Deis, and drummer Jess Margera, older brother of professional skateboarder Bam Margera. Last night, the four smalltown guys from West Chester, Pennsylvania rocked the small Richards’ on Richards nightclub in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The show wasn’t sold out, but it had enough people to take up most of the dimly lit brick building. The crowd was made up mostly of barely legal (drinking age) degenerates of the MTV generation. I suppose I was one of them.

Getting Started

The curtain jerkers were Desperate Union out of Toronto. The five band members all looked quite young, perhaps not old enough to be in the venue as fans.

They wore dark clothing and played average modern rock, but it was difficult to hear the vocals. The effort was in their music, but the crowd wasn’t into it enough to move to the floor.

Aside from the lead guitarist, their music wasn’t stellar, but the lead singer repeatedly plugged their MySpace page. (Here’s another plug. You’re welcome.)

Next up was Seattle’s Fall From Grace. As soon as they took the stage, the lead singer yelled for people on the floor level to move up to the stage. Only 14 people did.

Like Desperate Union, they had problems getting vocals clearly through the speakers and the group itself had that aging rocker look. The drummer was a Travis Barker wannabe–he had sleeve tattoos on both arms, t-shirt cut into a basketball jersey and modest Mohawk hidden under his hat.

They weren’t much better than the first act, but they got some people to the stage.

Lastly, hailing from Oshawa, Ontario, Hail the Villain was the most energetic of the opening acts. They didn’t have a gimmick like dressing in all black–they looked like a band with a lead singer who gives it his all at every performance.

Their lead singer was a tall, skinny guy who burst through the door at the sound of the first note and took the stage in a fury. He was by far the most entertaining frontman of the warm-up groups and their music drew more of the audience towards the stage. He even got some audience participation, prompting the crowd to yell “Go” on cue during one of their last songs.

But really, everyone was there for the headliner.

Welcome to Hellview

The club filled with smoke, surprisingly not from 500 metalhead potheads, but courtesy of a smoke machine attached to the balcony.

The generic modern rock played during intermissions cuts out and “Dirty Diana” by Michael Jackson starts. A few days ago, Ginsburg wrote a response to Jackson’s untimely death on CKY’s website.

michael jackson has always been a huge inspiration to everything musical Ive done. my first concert was Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 victory tour September 2nd 1984 in Philly at JFK stadium . the first time we went..it stormed and mj canceled minutes before the show..i was pretty much crying..like a little girl that the show was canceled. it was rescheduled and it was to this day thee best concert experience ive ever had. it changed my life..as did his music. i even had one of those jackets from the beat it video.. im not the least bit ashamed to admit it.

CKY stands for Camp Kill Yourself, taken from the 1983 horror film Sleepaway Camp, and anyone who’s seen Ginsburg wouldn’t think he was a fan of MJ; he looks like Jack Sparrow without the pirate get-up. He has shaggy hair, a nosering and wears dark jeans with a torn leather jacket and a matching cowboy hat.

But sure enough, CKY took the stage to the music. Ginsburg wore a black shirt with purple lettering that read, “A kid who tells on another kid, is a dead kid.”

Despite releasing their new album Carver City last month and poor reviews from Rolling Stone on their previous discs, the band played older material that they knew their fans would recognize and enjoy. They didn’t have a defined setlist as they took requests from the crowd, but their show did include the following tracks: “Disengage the Simulator,” “Shippensburg,” “Shock & Terror” and “96 Quite Bitter Beings” with its follow-up track, “Escape from Hellview.”

At the merchandise booth, the Hellview EP features the last two tracks on a 7-inch 45 rpm vinyl record, one song on each side. These are the first two songs in the series about a deadly town named Hellview (population: 96).

Early on, Miller told the audience that the goal of the night was to keep making noise, namely chanting “C-K-Y” between songs. If we stopped making noise, Ginsburg would press a button on his side of the stage to play top 40 dance music and disco hits from the ’70s.

Needless to say, “C-K-Y” chants broke out after every song.

The band played until 11:30 after finishing other songs such as “The Human Drive in Hi-Fi,” “My Promiscuous Daughter,” “Flesh into Gear” and “Hellions on Parade.” They threw towels and guitar picks to the fans (one of the guys next to me caught one from Ginsburg) and when they left the stage, the audience was still chanting “C-K-Y.”

Richard’s off Richards

During the show, a few of the groups acknowledged that Richard’s on Richards (affectionately called Dick’s on Dicks) will be closing its doors in a few weeks.

The land has been acquired by Aquilini Investments, a company that plans to demolish the nightclub at the end of July to make room for a condo building. Richard’s on Richards is located in the middle of quite a few high-rise complexes.

Though a new club will be opening at 556 Seymour Street, locals have until July 21st to catch one of the last shows at Richard’s on Richards.

The bathrooms wreak of unsanitary janitorial work, but the rest of the club carries a feeling of nostalgia. The wooden banister creaks when you lean on it, but it’s withstood years of rock shows, including the New York Dolls and Booker T. & the M.G.’s.

It has a hardwood floor and lighting rigs which you can almost touch from its oval-shaped balcony that surrounds the stage, providing intimate shows even for people upstairs.

Richard’s on Richards is one of Vancouver’s landmark venues and will be missed by every concert-goer who’s ever seen a show there.

Skater, small-time daredevil and serial nutter, Bam Margera, is hard to take seriously. Luckily for the music-appreciating public, his brother Jess’ band, CKY, is a different affair altogether. The brothers’ projects have been interwoven since day one, with CKY tracks featuring on most of Bam’s skate/prank videos, which would lead you to assume punk, reggae or pop-rock tunes from the Pennsylvania foursome. Surprisingly, CKY (originally Camp Kill Yourself) weigh in with some killer melodic hard rock tunes on fourth studio album, Carver City, their first to be released on Roadrunner Records.

Jess Margera’s driving drums compete with chugging guitars and bass as well as the occasional synthy riff for the biggest sounding instrument on the record. However, far from drowning each other out, the band combine to create some delicious riffs and underlying rhythms. Some nice tempo changes (The Boardwalk Body, Karmaworks) keep things interesting, although after the fifteen track special edition, some of the tracks do seem to blur into each other. Having said that, I think CKY mix up riff, rhythm, solo and vocal melody well enough to keep many tracks memorable, Plagued By Images, Hellions On Parade and A#1 Roller Rager being personal favourites. If the album is let down at all, it’s done so by over-production, potentially a consequence of the label change. Although Deron Miller comes out with some great vocal lines, it all sounds completely unnatural and overly edited. Constant vocal layering, fades and pitch perfect harmonies rob the album of any raw energy; the same can be said for the instrumental tracks which are unnecessarily perfect. Still, if some clean edged, straight up rock is what you’re after, Carver City should not be missed.

The album, released on 19 May, is available on Spotify and check out www.ckyalliance.com for proof of a band that truly has time for its fans.

Floundering until

Margera was their patron

Psycho sex machines

After the sonic abortion of the last blog entry, I think we ought to get back to Proper Metal as soon as fucking possible – which calls for Viking Skull. The above video was shot at the 2006 Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards – I was there, slumped up in the gallery, hiding behind a Rob Zombie cowboy hat. A friend of mine was PR’ing the company providing the free booze to the journalists and rock stars, and I’d happily taken her up on her offer of free VIP tickets. She would later inadvertantly vocalise the thoughts of a thousand right-thinking metal fans when she remarked during Dragonforce’s performance, “This band isn’t for real, are they? They’re a joke band, right?”

In case you’re not familiar with them, The Golden Gods are Metal Hammer magazine’s annual exercise in back-slapping and gong-dishing, and so are scheduled to take place immediately after Download Festival ends, in order to maximise the number of international metal figures can be in attendance. In 2006, I’d somewhat….”overdone” it at Download, and had passed out in the middle of a field on the hottest day of the year. Resulting in second-degree burns all over my face.  I was looking more like a member of Lordi (who later picked up a Spirit of Hammer Award in recognition of their Eurovision win that year, and of whom I later help pick a member of off the floor of the Gent’s after he collapsed in the venue’s sweltering heat).

The band initially started as a joke band, made up by members of Raging Speedhorn at their roadcrew – you can spot a few of them in the video. However, the band would self-destruct in a booze-fueled punch up a mere three months after the above video was shot. Thankfully, Jess Margera, brother of Bam and drummer with CKY, a long-time fan of the band, stepped in and gave frontman Roddy Stone the kick up the arse needed to re-start the band. A few line-up changes and releases later, Viking Skull are now set to release new album, Doom, Gloom, Heartache & Whiskey, in the UK today. And a fucking fine piece of retro-tinged, bulldozer-strength riff indulgence it is too.

Cela faisait longtemps, voici un peu de musique avec CkY et leur titre 96 Quite Bitter Beings. Le clip a été réalisé par Bam Margera, le célèbre skateur professionnel, également membre dégénéré de jackass et accessoirement frère du batteur du groupe (Jess Margera). D’ailleurs, le clip est en grande partie composé d’extraits des exploits débiles mais ô combien délirant de la bande à Johnny Knoxville.