March was really all about the music. Five shows — five perfect evenings — with coffee dates, zine stuff, bike rides, and quiet moments spent curled up in my reading nook tucked in between all that beautiful noise. Our traditional midwest winter hibernation has thawed and it is time to get out and get loud again. Time for socializing and song and dance.
It started with grimy old school punk in the sweaty attic of miniBar. Madman and The Itch and TV Preacher, who paced and glowered and bounced, like Dead Kennedys meets Stiff Little Fingers. Someone in the crowd shouted out that they dreamed one night that they were playing with TV Preacher action figure playsets, watching a TV Preacher Saturday Morning cartoon, and I can hear how their brain would conjure that image. Not quite the “Scooby Doo” energy of, say, Kepi Ghoulie, but a manic, winking rage all the same. And then Red Kate closed out the night with their punchy leftist rock-n-roll, and there was so much to be angry about, but in the snarling camaraderie of this punk show, my rage felt so damn good.
The next evening, I felt a different sort of punk camaraderie on Stadium Drive: Futchdog, Doom Scroll, and Sister Wife Sex Strike. I can’t even begin to describe the amount of joy and camaraderie I felt in that space, and I don’t even really have to try because Nat summed it up pretty damn well on her Substack. If Red Kate and TV Preacher let me revel in my disappointment and anger at this country, then that folk punk show really truly did make me proud to be an American, or rather, proud of the people here. I told Nat on the ride back that it reminded me that there are good people everywhere, that we’re not the villains. The fuckers in power are the villains, but everyday Americans? For the most part, we are a good people. We just want to live our lives, to stomp and holler and clap and dance to jangly anthems about freedom, real freedom: freedom from capitalism and hierarchy and imperialism.
Futchdog played covers of Neutral Milk Hotel and Kimya Dawson and AJJ — of course, she played AJJ, it’s a folk punk show… if they didn’t play “Brave as a Noun” then it was almost guaranteed that one of the other bands on the bill would’ve. And we all knew all the words and sang along with our full throats, which primed us to stomp and clap and dance for Doom Scroll’s mandolins and soaring gang vocals. And then all that stomping primed us perfectly for Sister Wife Sex Strike, where we danced to their catchy klezmer punk, the room a joyous jittery hive of skanking and linked arms. In between each set, we gathered outside, the smokers all bumming smokes off Nat, all of us shooting the shit, and our circle just kept growing. It felt like we were all friends out there that night. No strangers, only friends. The show ended as all Sister Wife shows do, with Pigeon and Moth (and Dusty the Kid for this tour!) gathered in the center of the room, us punks forming a sweaty circle around them, and we all sang out and loud together, a chorus, a community, everyone’s voices loud and true.
On the ides of March, I walked in the rain to a house show in a tiny cottage full of antique typewriters. The sets were in the basement, ofc, but unlike a typical house show, Drew had set up a very cozy, very chill space full of floor pillows and plush rugs and mood lighting, including a row of candles to demarcate the “stage” from the rest of the floor. It was the loveliest house show I’d ever been to, sitting on the floor enjoying Drew’s gravelly heartbreak songs and Jocelyn’s catchy power pop. And then Kate blew everyone away by creating an enormous torrent of beautiful rage and sorrow, looping chants and groans and whispers with haunting vocals into a murmuration of feminine rage. It was something in between Bjork and Wildbirds & Peacedrums, but also wholly and richly unique, and holy shit this is why I love local music. What a gem, what a treasure.
Another house show was up next, a last minute swap from Goof to Raytown Records (not a record store, not technically in Raytown but in the farthest edges of southeastern KC). We rolled up to the cul de sac and found a buncha punks sitting out in the backyard like dandelions sprouting up, the best sorta weeds, then piled in the basement (this time, a more traditional set up, sheet walls and a mosh pit) for the industrial glitch weirdness of HIHELGA, the post-hardcore pummel of TOWER, and oh my god S.L.O.G. — S.L.O.G. is the most delicious rage, snarky and loud and the snarling refrain in “Come Closer” has been playing in a loop in my mind for a good week and a half now. Tapes were bought, cupcakes were consumed, and just like the past two shows, in between each set there was the lovely punk past time of hanging out with friends outside the venue/house, which is my favorite way to socialize: in short bursts, with loud musical interludes every 30 minutes or so.
And then I was off! Off to Phoenix for a weekend desert adventure with Tom, a Refused show at its core. I first saw Refused in 2016 at Trees in Dallas and I entered a skeptic. I liked Refused, but did not love them. I left a zealot, and then spent the next year following everything and anything that their lead singer Dennis Lyxzén touched (my favorite of his projects is still the catchy, radiant post-punk of INVSN. Highly recommend!) T was already a convert and something of a diehard (as much of a diehard as he gets for anything). Anyways, we had seen them one more time in LFK with the Hives (goddamn do Swedes know how to ROCK), and when they announced their “farewell” tour it seemed like a good excuse for a spring vacation. Do I believe any band nowadays when they say it’s their farewell tour? No, but Dennis had a heart-attack last year, and the US border is becoming more and more fraught, so even if my favorite leftist-pinko-commie-Swedes do decide to tour again, they might not make it back this country, so better see ’em now while we can!
And of course, I am so glad we did! It was a classic Refused set, full of rage and raised fists. I let myself fall into the rhythm of the tornado, skipping and pushing my way around the circle pit as Dennis danced onstage, swinging the mic around like a lasso, skipping, rolling wrists and hips with flair in his sparkly velvet suit. He interjected each song with stories about his heart attack — in Sweden, a hospital stay and life-saving surgery only cost $45 — and the band and freedom. He asked us many times to think about what freedom really means to us.
The S.L.O.G. song “1 Year HRT” imagines a transfuturist vision for the year 2043, and the song ends with a description of community that sounds like freedom to me: No one gets shot in the community, we love each other in community. No one is homeless in the community, we all have a place in the community. No one is shunned in the community, we care for each other in community. No one is hopeless in community, we found liberation in community. Freedom is the year we won’t give in (…) A chance to change the channel and make up your own mind. Freedom is when someone falls, you pick them back up, pat ’em on the back, and then we all keep on dancing to that new noise. Freedom is found in community and friendship, it is liberty and it is felt in this loud stupid raucous music that I pummel into my eardrums.
