A while back I caught a New Found Glory show at the Coral Springs Sports Complex. It was when the band first got big so instead of packing a small club they opted to do the show in an open field to accommodate a larger audience. NFG chose the local South Florida hardcore band When Fear And Weapons Meet to open up the show.

Taking the stage in front of a massive crowd which included parents and police officers, WFAWM singer Alex Justice did an amazingly smart thing. He took the time to clarify what was about to happen. He explained that bringing hardcore from out of the clubs and into the open might be misinterpreted.  He assured the parents and the police that there was no need to get upset or intervene. What they were about to see was how kids act at hardcore shows.

This misunderstanding of hardcore culture played the same role in the events that set in motion a minor scrum with security at the August 8, 2009 Gig Life Tour stop at the Culture Room.

When the band Fireworks from Detroit, MI took the stage the audience immediately responded by boosting each other up to get above the raised stage to sing into the mic. The clubs security, whose job it was to catch crowd surfers and shuffle them down the stages front stairs, didn’t know how to react trying to clear the stage.

During a song break after security aggressively pushed one audience member back into the crowd, Fireworks singer Dave Mackinder made a statement about the “ego-trip” that comes along with being security. His comment got a big response from everyone in attendance. Seconds into the next song a few fans reacted by jumping up on stage. Once security came out a pushing war began which saw Mackinder and guitarist Brett Jones right in the middle, taking side with the crowd.

Almost immediately, Fireworks guitarist Chris Mojan turned his amp off, threw a water bottle across the stage in a full mirrored wall and stormed off stage right. As the crowd on stage slowly disbursed the rest of the band followed suit by leaving, cutting their set short by only a few minutes. As the stage lights came on the crowd erupted.

Though the chaos last under only a minute or two, it set the tone for the rest of the evening.

When Polar Bear Club hit the stage the crowd was ready to have fun. PBC singer Jimmy Stadt commented, looking down at the heads and hands poking just above the stage, that it “looked like they were trying to steal a pie off his window sill”. Realizing the disconnect from the height difference Stadt opted to get on his knees at the front of the stage to let people sing along.

Four Year Strong took the stage opening with the intro song, “The Takeover”,  from their 2007 album Rise Or Die Trying – minus their varsity jackets.  Their set touched on almost every song from the same album including “Bada Bing With A Pipe”, “Catastrophe”, “Abandon Ship Or Abandon All Hope”, “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Hell”, “Be Prepared To Be Digitally Manipulated”, “Beatdown In The Key Of Happy”, “Maniac” and “Heroes Get Remembered, Legends Never Die”. The only songs played from the newly released FYS cover album, Explains It All, were Third Eye Blind’s “Semi Charmed Life” and Reach The Sky’s “She Really Loved You”.

Set Your Goals mixed up their set by mixing songs from their new album This Will Be The Death  Of Us and their break through 2006 album Mutiny. Opening the set with the  title track of the new album SYG followed by “Fallen”, “Work In Progress”, “We Do It For The Money, Obviously”, “Look Closer”, “Summer Jam”, “Echoes”, “Goonies Never Say Die”, “To Be Continued”, “Gaia Bleeds”, “This Very Moment”, and “Like You To Me”. For the encore they played “Our Ethos – A Legacy To Pass On” and “Dead Men Tell No Tales/Mutiny”.

Polar Bear Club will go on to fill an opening slot on the Strike Anywhere/Bridge Nine Tour in support of their album, Chasing Hamburg, which will come out on September 8, 2009. Four Year Strong will be crossing the pond to tour with Anti-Flag and Alexisonfire. Set Your Goals will make another run of the country on the AP Tour Fall Ball.

There was a time when I was young and impressionable. I was open to a variety of musical styles. I chased around a girl that I associate with that Grateful Dead song “Sugar Magnolia”. Truth be known, “I should have let her pass by”. In that stage of my life I saw a handful of jam bands. After last nights Rx Bandits show at Culture Room I can’t help but think of associating the similarities.

I’ve been a Bandits fan since Half Way Between Here And There and I’ve seen every South Florida show since they were here on Warped Tour in 2002. When I first started listening to them it was because they had a ska-punk sound. With every album release they have taken a step further away from their early beginnings. But with every new record they seem to find a way to keep their music fresh. Even though the music now seems to be aimed at satisfying themselves as musicians and less mainstream, I can’t deny that the complexity and structures of the songs are enough to keep my attention.

The release of Mandala seemed a little more hyped than 2006’s And The Battle Begun. This is probably because Sargent House did an advance sale of a digital version of the album through Amazon.com. It can be said that Mandala hit #1 on the sites music sales, though it only stayed there for brief period of time. By the time I had purchased the album for $2.99 it had already slipped to #2 and by the official release date on July 21, 2009 it had fallen to #616.

The Rx Bandits show was best typified by percussion based jams. The set opened with all four band members beating skins. There were points where Matt Embree and Steve Choi slid back into one of the extra kits to play along. At the end of the show Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez drummer of the opening band Zech’s Marquise, who is also the drummer for The Mars Volta, joined them on stage for the proverbial drum circle.

I’m not going to say that their drumming could top a Grateful Dead drum solo, if that’s what you are thinking. What Rx Bandits did was more testosterone based. In comparison to other bands that I’ve photographed that do drum solos, mainly 311, they are definitely more skilled musicians.

The Rx Bandits set included the new songs “My Lonesome Only Friend”, “It’s Only Another Parsec..”, “Mientras La Veo Soñar”, “Hope Is A Butterfly, No Net Its Captor” and “Bring Our Children Home Or Everything Is Nothing”. The older songs they played included “In Her Drawer”, “Decrescendo”, and “Dinna-Dog (And the Inevitable Onset of Lunacy)”.

The encore began with the song that has become Rx Bandits’ sing-a-long, “Overcome (The Recapitulation)”. During the finale which included the prior mentioned drum solo with Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez, Matt Embree created a musical medley of sorts during “Only For The Night” by breaking it down into a rendition of Smokey Robinsons’ “I Second That Emotion” which was notably popular as covered by the Grateful Dead.

Hearing that song took me back a bit to a time in which I am guilty of being sentimental. And it made me feel better….. but only for the night.

Headlining a hometown show for newcomers Hey Monday is a daunting realization. Just shy of three months after their debut release, Hold on Tight, they made it back to where it all began, South Florida, and we were there to document their reception in Ft. Lauderdale at the Culture Room on December 27, 2008.

The five member power pop band consists of vocalist Cassadee Pope, Jersey Moriarty (bass), Elliot James (drums), and guitarists Mike Gentile and Alex Lipshaw, all coming together in West Palm Beach to form the band we know of now as Hey Monday. Cassadee and Alex, stepping out of one interview and into ours, appear collected beyond their years. When they were told they would be headlining a hometown show Cassadee says, “It was crazy ‘cause we didn’t think we would sell any tickets when we came…We were like, oh okay, that’s probably not the best idea, but alright.” But it was a good idea.

They performed 8 songs from Hold on Tight to a full crowd of moving and shaking fans. A sizable portion of the audience was male. After watching their set it here is my criticism. Cassadee moves just like Haley, of Paramore, and Mike moves just like Pete Wentz, of Fallout Boy. It is comparable to sorting through popular stock photography. However, Cassadee is a strong vocalist and doesn’t need much help, if at all, from technology in the studio. Any sureness or originality that they lack now, as with most new bands in the genre, will develop as the band grows.

Alex admits that he has “been to a lot of shows here,” at the Culture Room, and gets excited when talking about the music scene in Florida. “To be honest, when we came back it kinda blew us away how much better this place is than all the other, a lot of the other, places. It really is not that bad. Everybody thinks their music scene sucks.” Cassadee chimes in, “Lately there have just been a lot of bands coming out of Florida, and I think that it’s a turning point. I hope at least. The old venue in West Palm called Ray’s is opening back up. So that is going to be huge for a lot of local bands…that will be perfect.”

It was only recently that Hey Monday inked a deal with Columbia Records and Decaydance, Pete Wentz’s label, and hit the scene. Once signed, they were quickly ushered into the recording studio with S*A*M & Sluggo, the production team that brought albums by Metro Station, We the Kings and the Academy Is… to life. What resulted in October of 2008 is Hold on Tight. An album that is upbeat and full of audience enabling chorus’. Tried and true, it is the perfect formula. Especially since they snagged a spot on the Bill & Trav’s Bogus Journey Tour, featuring The Academy Is… and We the Kings which wrapped up in November of 2008. Where one tour ends, another begins. They will be kicking off the next tour in early 2009 with Fallout Boy.

There was a time when Nivek Ogre ruled the world as the front-man of Skinny Puppy. That mythos still applies to him as an artist regardless of ticket sales. This disjointed dichotomy was apparent when his current project ohGr played the Culture Room on December 12, 2008, as the venue that was thin with interest. That didn’t mean that there was nothing to be seen, as the night was a constant stream of visual and audio stimuli for the diehards that were in attendance. 

Having had a couple drinks early in the night I made it to the venue too late to catch the local opening band Children of the Plague. They are a female fronted metal industrial type band from Miami. If you are familiar with the crowd that hangs out with Deadstar Assembly some of these people may look familiar. They do have this awesome video posted on Youtube.

So first up for me was American Memory Project. I was told that the group was essentially ohGr under a different name but little other detail was known. Simply stated AMP is a high concept audio video critique of America’s sordid past. The actual message of the presentation is open to interpretation but the forbiddingly dark overtones could only suggest that AMP was critically scrutinizing our exploitative and brutally violent inception as a country. To get a better idea of what was inferred a segment from the  video can be seen at AMP’s website here.

When Ogre took the stage he came out looking like a mummified Tusken Raider that had been outfitted with surveillance equipment. While performing the songs in sequence from Devil In My Details, the bands latest release, he slowly stripped down his layered cocoon of clothing in a dramatic fashion revealing fresh layers of masks that obscured his true appearance. At the point where all external props had been removed Ogre still appeared menacing sporting a full face of smeared grease paint that wasn’t too far off from the current version of The Joker from “The Dark Knight” or the character that Brandon Lee made famous in “The Crow”. 

Most notable in the performance was that the band utilized a sophisticated series of projectors that flashed patterns and imagery across the stage.  Every song was painted a virtual technicolor dreamscape. In a way it held the performance together as it seemed that most, if not all in the crowd, were not familiar with any of the music. 

At the conclusion of the album ohGr played a two song encore of older songs.