This show is apparently pretty memorable, eh? On a personal silly level, this was the first show I did not X up for. Why do I remember this? I was just kind of bumming out hard. I had just finished a dreadful first semester of college and wasn’t really feeling it too well. But I remember the marker coming around and being all “eh” about it. I wrote about this in a fanzine at some point.
We drove to this show with Ian Smith (OS 101) and I think Jenn West came along as well as our usual crew. We had been to Yardley the previous spring for a show and the area the community center was in was really nice and super suburban. A few of us were psyched to see our friends in the band Rad, who were this cool edge band that wrote songs about BMX as well. They were cool and did a demo and then a seven inch. I think a few of their members moved to the west.
I don’t remember Saves The Day that much. Oh, you want me to talk about Duncan Barlow?
I missed the whole thing. I walked down the street to a Wawa to get something to drink. I was in there for about five minutes talking to some friends from out of the area. By the time I came back, the whole thing had happened. It was pretty stupid to come in and fight some dude and then leave, but you know what is even dumber? Running around the country calling someone a “nazi” because they made a stupid homophobic comment. Telling someone in a Floorpunch shirt, “hey, nice Skrewdriver shirt.” I had lots of mixed feels about the whole thing and when it all played out online in the next few days, that did not go so well. Emos told me I was un PC or whatever and supported “jocks” (lol). Someone in the FPC who I became very friendly with later called me a “faggot” and “we’ll kick your ass” blah blah blah. This was the very beginning of the eventual social distance I would keep from the hardcore scene.
There was definitely this weird damper on the rest of the show. Rain On The Parade played a great set as I recall, but I didn’t really watch Hands Tied because I was in the back sitting with a friend who was really close with the By The Grace Of God guys and was pretty upset. Hands Tied sounded great though and as you can see this was the new lineup with Matt Smith, Dan Hornacker, and Geoff TDT.
Hey another thing: Those dudes in BTGOG are fucking jerks. Any time I have spoken to one of them, whether in this band or another, they’ve been assholes or been real weird towards me. Fuck off.
A lot of older people went crazy for Up Front when they played. There were a few people going off that looked like they had not been to a show in awhile. By The Grace Of God got a good reaction as well. A few of my friends were really into them and I saw them diving and going off. They were okay. The irony is that as much as Floorpunch was this “bringing it back!” band, that is EXACTLY how By The Grace Of God was marketed by Victory as well as some kind of youth crew throwback band, which seems so odd looking back.
We spent the drive home arguing about the show, which in retrospect is so silly. I had just bombed out of my first semester of college and here I am fighting in a van over whether Floorpunch is a “jock band.” The hardcore scene gave me the dumbest priorities. It would be a few more years before I really started to straighten that out.
