Another Nightmare (by Jay Hale)

No matter what some concert promoter may tell a prospective band, the difference between Worcester, Massachusetts and Boston is on par with apples and dump trucks. CKY got that impression as they pulled up their bus in front of the Palladium while making the rounds with Fireball Ministry and The Knives on their first U.S. tour in support of An Answer Can Be Found. During their previous trips to Boston, the band walked down the block to shop for music, hit up one of the numerous neighborhood bars or ventured out on the town to find something that piqued their interest. Aside from the crowd queued up in front of the Palladium for the show, Worcester was pretty much dead so the band holed themselves up on the bus with little to do but count the minutes until their set — six hours after the club’s doors were opened. This evening’s itinerary was in stark contrast to the rest of the stops on the tour. CKY and their traveling companions were bundled as part of a two-day event dubbed Skate Fest and the band found themselves knee-deep in everything they hate — commercialized, trend-fitting music performed by, as drummer Jess Margera likes to say, “whiny, emo fruits.”

“The only reason we were asked to play Skate Fest is because of my brother,” Margera laments in regards his older sibling, Bam, as he walked from the bus toward one of the city’s most popular watering holes, The Irish Village. “For some reason, people have always considered us a skateboard band. Some asshole went as far as to call us ‘snotty skate punks from Philadelphia.’ I mean, what the fuck? Maybe I was a snotty skate punk when I was 14 but I’m 27 now and I have a daughter.”

Regardless of the billing, there was no half pipe in the Palladium parking lot nor was there a single skateboard to be found. Just wall to wall metalcore bands and a lot of bad tattoos sandwiched in between CKY and their touring counterparts. Although they’ve always prided themselves on not running with the pack, Margera and the rest of the gang felt obligated to fit in with Skate Fest’s roster so moments before they hit the stage, CKY grabbed a few Sharpie markers and performed a little impromptu inkwork. The results may not have been visible to those in the back of the room but when guitarist Chad Ginsburg asked if the “scenester pussies” in the crowd liked the body art on his forearm that read “Cool Tattoo to Fit In,” the holdovers from the night’s metalcore hoedown slunk closer to the exits. By then it was primarily a CKY-supporting crowd anyway and they relished Ginsburg’s antics.

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Insult and Injury (by Jimmy Reject)

By some strange cosmic coincidence, it was nearly 50 years ago that GG Allin, the now deceased rock star admired and abhorred for the most violent stage act and lewd lyrical content ever, was born to a dysfunctional family in the wilds of northern New Hampshire. It was also 50 years ago almost to the day that Elvis Presley gyrated his hips on stage, creating a catalyst that ignited GG’s heights and depths of rock ’n’ roll subversion.

Between then and now, the tradition has been kept. Sweaty, drunken rock shows have met on those dingy surfaces where the law is bent, reality is skewed and the whole room steals the carte blanche to soar like a rocket ship into the unknown. Since 1977, the sweaty and drunk contingency has matriculated into increasingly smaller rooms, urging with clenched fists that their three-chord heroes jet even faster to nowhere. Known for starting a career that attracted both talk show hosts and FBI agents, GG Allin and the Jabbers were among the first to answer the call.

Brandishing a Stiv Bators/Iggy Pop-ish contempt for the audience, the pre-shit stained GG would hit the stage wearing only fishnet stockings or egg — no pun intended — the crowd to pelt him with an assortment of grocery items that would leave any early Germs show in the dust. On their classic 1980 debut LP, Always Was, Is and Always Shall Be, one can hear streaming punk guitars, blistering leads and harmonies worthy of any pop aficionado’s sweetest dreams. Live, the band provided a muddier derivation of just that, but to some, records are merely promotional tools for the live experience and they exist strictly as a memoir of the time they performed. In their moment they gleam like the sun but before too long, the flame dies out, the band goes on to their respective day jobs and the moths flee to another flame. That’s when the worn vinyl spins through the melancholy chasm of time, oozing its sugary lament; a sonic snapshot saying “You wish you were here.” Until recently, that was the status of the Jabber’s oft-reissued debut album.

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Handsome Devils (by Emily Zemler)

Music journalism and music fandom are not supposed to mix. Even if you are invited onto the tour bus of your favorite band, one that has seen you though thick and thin the way no human being ever could, you have to remain calm, act aloof and pretend that you don’t want to scream out with every fiber of your being, “Holy shit! I am on Alkaline Trio’s tour bus!”

If someone had told me four years ago, when the song “Bloodied Up” catalyzed a descent into the cult of the Trio, that I would be welcomed by the band’s tour manager onto the cleanest tour bus I’ve ever seen, I would have told you to lay off the hallucinogens. But as I settle into the far back of the bus with drummer Derek Grant and bassist-slash-singer Dan Andriano on the final day of The Bamboozle festival in Asbury Park, a mere three weeks before their latest album, Crimson, will be released, the mind-altering drugs certainly aren’t pumping through my blood stream. In fact, they are nowhere to be found. On the back of the bus where a few lone sneakers and a Playstation2 decorate the floor, Grant and Andriano appear surprisingly calm considering that hundreds upon hundreds of teenage fans are eagerly awaiting Alkaline Trio’s set later that evening in the town’s crumbling convention center. The album had not yet been laid upon record store shelves and their nationwide tour had yet to commence, making this an opportune time to catch the boys before the inevitable road weariness could set in.

Andriano insists that they aren’t nervous about the impending release of Crimson, the group’s fifth — or sixth if you include their self-titled singles collection — full-length album, because after almost a decade’s practice, he feels they have gotten it right for, perhaps, the first time ever.

“So far I’m not sick of it,” Andriano says. “Usually before the record’s out I’m unhappy with a laundry list of things but I feel like we finally made the record that we wanted to make. There were a couple corners we had to cut here and there because of budget but we pretty much got everything done that we wanted to get done.”

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The New Gunslingers (by Jay Hale)

Like a little flash with your lead guitarist? Fat City brings you three axemen - and one axe woman - who were born to be modern day guitar heroes.

Euroboy (Turbonegro): Like death and taxes, debates among guitarists are inevitable. Whether it’s at the Berklee School of Music, the Guitar Center around the corner or the local rehearsal space, somebody somewhere at sometime is going to drudge up the classic argument of Les Paul or Strat? Dirty or Clean? Jimmy Page or Pete Townshend? These are all tough decisions and who’s to say who’s right? Inside Turbonegro’s dressing room however, the internal struggle within the mind of guitarist extraordinaire Euroboy (né Knut Schreiner) is much more daunting. Does the red or the brown lipstick look best with this eye glitter? Should I wear the blemish-free silver army helmet, standard sailor cap or SS-style service hat tonight? Because when it comes to showing the world what a true modern day rock god looks like, you’d better look your best.

Gel (The Eyeliners): Some people are so uncoordinated that they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Don’t you dare count Eyeliners guitarist Gel among this stumbling bunch. On any given night at any given club you’ll find her not only chewing gum and strutting around on stage simultaneously but you’ll catch her playing guitar behind her back. Or with her teeth. While in a complete split. And never, ever, does she miss a beat. Try topping that fellas. Most guitarists draw from a major influence for their on-stage persona but Gel can’t seem to narrow the basis of her showmanship down to a single person. “I’ve just always loved when people are over the top on stage,” she says. “The more extreme, the better ... at least in my humble opinion. I always figured, anyone can learn to play their instrument, but it’s the way you approach it that counts. There’s a million bands that just get up on stage and stand there with no movement — I didn’t want to be one of them.”

Marc Orrell (Dropkick Murphys): Although they formed in 1996, the majority of Boston’s punk rock underground didn’t realize just how special the Dropkick Murphys were until they blew the roof off the Rat during their first St. Patrick’s Day gig the following year. They had played quality shows around town but this was the catalyst that propelled them into the limelight and onto the Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ “Boston On The Road” U.S. tour (the Dropkicks’ first), culminating in an opening slot before a capacity crowd New Year’s Eve celebration at the Worcester Centrum. From there, the band’s future was destined to be the punk rock equivalent of sunshine and lollipops — a sold-out record release show at the Middle East and a subsequent tour in support of their debut full length, Do or Die, with the Business. Fate apparently was not on the Dropkicks’ side. A mere two months later, lead vocalist Mike McColgan was giving the band the Heisman, leaving his cohorts to pursue a life-long dream of fire fighting. That summer Al Barr of the Bruisers took the helm of the ship and led it toward a different horizon. The following summer while on the road promoting their sophomore release, The Gang’s All Here, the Dropkicks enlisted tourmate James Lynch of the Ducky Boys to bolster their guitar sound alongside founding member Rick Barton. But as the millennium approached Barton, too, parted ways after remarrying, leaving bassist Ken Casey as the lone survivor of the original four piece. The Dropkick Murphys had made great strides in just under four years and they weren’t about to let the momentum slip through the cracks. They were able to replace a vital cog in McColgan so Casey and drummer Matt Kelly were equally confident they could find a proper replacement on guitar. But how should they go about it? Youth movement, anyone?

Craig Fairbaugh (Mercy Killers/Lars & The Bastards): He may not be a maestro with the guitar but he sure knows how to use it. Growing up in the Bay Area, Fairbaugh had the punk rock bug sink its fangs into his jugular at the ripe age of 15 and he quickly became a staple at the legendary Gilman St. collective in Berkeley, witnessing the salad days of AFI and the Swingin’ Utters. He later formed and fronted his own three-piece band, Vintage 46. Although this fledgling act did get to open a community center show for the aforementioned AFI (“I did a front flip off the stage during their set and landed on the seats just behind the pit — I couldn’t walk right for a week!” he recalls) Vintage 46 never really played more than local house parties and small hometown gigs. Along the way, Fairbaugh handed off a demo CD to Rancid’s Tim Armstrong who vowed to release one of the band’s albums on a new label he was starting up. Though that never materialized, Fairbaugh had made inroads to vast opportunities which would open up less than five years down the road.

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Last Exit Before Tolls (by Jay Hale)

When you play in a touring band that is on the road eight months out of the year, the notion of “home life” takes on an entirely different meaning. Just because you rent an apartment doesn’t mean you consider it your home. With this life you choose, your mailing address becomes a post office box across town and your bed transforms into a bench seat in a van or, better yet, a stranger’s floor. When you’re not loading in your gear for the next show or visiting a new city every night, you find yourself going stir crazy; marking off the days on your calendar until the wheels start spinning again and those lines on the highway fade into a soothing blur. At least that’s the case for Kelly Ogden, lead vocalist/bassist for The Dollyrots.

“I feel all weird when I’m here in Los Angeles, actually,” she says. “I never thought I’d be the kind of person that would be OK with living out of a van and waking up somewhere weird on the floor every day but I’ve grown to like it.” And so have her bandmates, guitarist Luis Cabezas and drummer Amy Wood. When the three of them pack the trailer and head off into the horizon, there’s a huge sigh of relief and an overall giddiness for what lies ahead. Will everything go off without a hitch? Of course not, but there in lies the adventure.

Regardless of the season or the weather, when you hit the road for weeks on end, you need to keep your wits about you or tempers start to flare, punches get thrown and band members make a B-line for the Greyhound station in a huff. The Boy Scouts always say “Be Prepared” and while that motto works well when a scout master is making a pass at you, the same goes for an independent rock band on tour. Those who don’t plan ahead and can’t improvise on the fly won’t survive. Winging it just happens to be The Dollyrots’ forte.

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Bad News Brandon (by Jay Hale)

Every artist — whether it be a songwriter, sculptor or a suburban geek with a can of spray paint and a chip on his shoulder — takes pride in his or her work, past and present. So it came as no surprise that when former child actor and Dr. Know frontman Brandon Cruz caught wind that one of his old flicks, “Bad News Bears,” was being remade, he was filled with trepidation. Cruz wasn’t nervous that the update of the unrelenting and knee slappingly hilarious baseball comedy was going to overshadow the original, he feared that the redo would huff the proverbial dong. Let’s face it, when you tamper with a classic you’re destined to screw something up. Although no one from the original cast popped up in 2005’s go ’round — not even in a one-line cameo — notorious Hollywood asshole Billy Bob Thorton was a perfect match for the role of Morris Buttermaker, the notorious asshole Little League coach made famous by Walter Matthau. Cruz’s first meeting with the new coach may have been a bit choppy, but he agreed .

“I saw Billy Bob at a party before the movie started [filming] and walked up to him and said, ‘I like your shit,’” Cruz recalls. “He said, ‘Well thank you, I shit a lot.’ I told him we should work together to which he replied, ‘Well sure, I work a lot.’ But then he looked at me and said, ‘I think I’m remaking your movie. Weren’t you in ‘Bad News Bears?’’’ I told him that yes, I did work on that and he explained who the writers and producers were and then we talked about Walter Matthau and Vic Morrow. He seemed into the original and it was cool that he was a fan. I hope it transfers onto the big screen.”

In this day and age, duplicating the brand of juvenile humor that ran rampant in the 1976 version of “Bears” is damn near impossible. Thirty years ago it was much easier for a less politically correct Hollywood to use gender, nationality and race as punchlines, even if done tongue-in-cheek. Bill Simmons, columnist for ESPN: The Magazine and espn2.com refers to the string of chronically insensitive epithets belched forth by Bears shortstop Tanner Boyle as “11 words my editors will never let me write” yet they are repeated several times throughout the film. As naughty as it was on the written page, Cruz added his own debauchery to the film behind the scenes. When asked what his most vivid memory of his time spent portraying Joey Turner, ace pitcher of the hated Yankees, in “Bears,” he simply replied: “I remember getting high before every scene.”

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Barroom Heroes (by Jay Hale)

Now, I’m no headshrinker but when I step out on the town, I certainly suffer from demophobia — an intense dislike of crowds. At a ball game or a live show, I’m fine because there is always a focal point on which I can fix my attention. But when I’m at a bar, my focus tends to wander toward frat boys wearing polo shirts with their collars popped up or dorks showing off their new J. Crew turtlenecks. From there my anger redlines into crude put downs, death stares and occasional violence. What can I say? I’m not really a people person.

There are, however, a few great bars around Boston where the drinks are plentiful and the Jay-to-loser ratio is extremely low. Every magazine in town has its own little “Best of Boston” ass-grab where big-buck advertisers are rewarded with special certificates and huzzahs which, of course, result in the consumer being duped by America’s national pastime — Payola. We don’t get bars to advertise in Fat City. We wish we could, but, c’mon. Who cares about punk rock these days? Exactly.

The following establishments aren’t being repayed for filling our coffers all year, we really enjoy them and think you will as well. I’ve rated the best of the best right here in regards to five crucial categories:

Seclusion: Frat boys and other top of the social ladder miscreants hate putting forth an effort. If a cool place is hard to find, they’re probably not inside bugging you.

Dank: Do you want to drink in a place that’s so clean and sterile that you can lick the bar top and not contract Hepatitis C? If so, why are you reading Fat City?

Beverage Quality: The only way you can sacrifice beverage quality is ...

Price: ... If the price is ridiculously cheap.

Clientele: Is the establishment teeming with shaggy-haired, chest-bumping dudes in T-shirts and ties? Are you being served watered-down beer by a whore waitress whose Bedazzled mini-skirt barely covers her 42-year-old ass? This stuff is important people!

These four watering holes deserve your hard-earned dough and for that, they get the Fat City Seal of Approval. But, if you guys manage to muck up these joints with your stupid friends, prepare to get stomped. Ya dig?

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Roll Dem Bomes (by Tim Burton)

So you’ve managed to sneak backstage during the Warped Tour in a vain attempt to slip Fat Mike your poor quality demo CD. After snooping around for what seems like an eternity, you locate the NOFX HQ near their tour bus — a shoddy looking white EZ-Up tent with the band’s name spray painted across the front. Silently plotting the next move, you’re stopped in your tracks by a loud, drunken mass congregating just outside the tent. A handful of musicians, road crew and other farmer’s tanned punks are rolling dice and clutching a fistful of Abe Lincolns. What the hell are they up to? They’re playing C-LO, a wildly popular gambling excursion that has been creating high rollers and penniless chumps behind the scenes at Warped for over a decade. Tim Burton (aka Johnny Vegas) of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones originally penned a beginner’s guide to C-LO for the legendary RUDE: International Magazine back in 1998 and has allowed us to reprint it here. Hopefully, with a little help from Fat City’s fan base, we can put a halt to all those damn Texas Hold ‘Em poker shows and put gambling back in the seedy alleyways where it belongs.

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