Dad works at night (sometimes)
Rolling up 95, I was really unsure what the first venue would be like. It's been a long time since I'd been to a punk rock show in a church basement. Last time was 1992, when Ad-roc and I went to Florida avenue to catch Circus Lupus, Trenchmouth (from Chicago) Tsunami, and some other band that we missed. It was an earnest affair, 5 bucks at the door, earplugs optional, Trenchmouth an amazing blur of polyrythmnic noise-core mixed with odd melodic wanderings. But that was then. Philly was now.
For reasons that remain obscure, there is no parking in the entire city. Until you finally pay for a lot, then there's an open spot right in front of the address you've been circling. That's one thing that makes philly so weird.
If you believe random things have meaning, what would you make of the following: a flyer taped to a pole that reads:" IF YOU WERE SENT HERE TO FIND SOMEONE- IT'S A SCAM! YOU ARE NOT A SECRET AGENT!" I was too dumbstruck to even snap a photo.
The First Unitarian church is a block-long monolith with stinky ginko trees in front of it. We shuffled down and in to the basement. Dudes were setting up, and we made contact with our guys. They gave us the skinny, we scoped it out and yada yada, the lights went down.
I climbed the stage left PA tower while Bentley crouched on the stage right stairs and fought a fistful of elbowy still photogs. Once The Dillinger Escape Plan came on, the place exploded.