The Pietasters/ Big D and the Kids Table @ CBGB 10/5/2006
Last Thursday was the last ska show at CBGB and probably the last ska show that I’ll ever attend.
When I was in highschool I was a skanking fool decked out in checkerboard apparel but at CBGB I felt so out of place. The club is so tight that there is nowhere to comfortably dance. I wore my shirt with the extra pockets for nothing. Also that night one half of the crowd looked 15 or 16 and had on weird goth clothes augmented with safety pins, I guess that was the crowd for Big D and the Kid’s Table. The other half were in their mid twenties, beer in hand, with the “I just got out of work, I’m ready to unwind” aura emanating off of them. I figured that was the crowd for the DC/MD ska band The Pietasters. I don’t fit into either one of those categories. Luckily I wasn’t the only one.
There was one guy that I couldn’t pigeonhold and his name is Skankin’ Richard. You may have seen him at various Boston/NYC ska show but that night was the first time I ever got watch the infamous 60 year old ska loving grandpa dancing it up in the pit. Look at this youtube clip to get a sense of what I experienced:
My hero.
I missed some of the opening bands. I don’t think it really matters because all of the music I heard that night was pretty generic. I do remember that the first full set I saw that night was the band Lost City Angels. Before they played I went outside because my friend wanted to smoke a cigarette and this guy comes up to us and gives me and my friend a button with his face on it! Awesome. He said he is in the band called Black History Month playing at the gallery next door and we should pretend to be in the band by singing some Operation Ivy covers so we won’t have to pay to get in. Sadly, we declined because my friend wanted to see Lost City Angels, (an unexciting punk band with an English singer). I should have went to see Black History Month’s set. Displayed above is a taste of what I missed.
I’ve seen Big D and the Kid’s Table at least 4 times and I have never understood it until that night. It always seemed like too much was going on and that the singer was rapping, but I realized that he just talks fast. That night I really grasped why the kiddies love them, its because they are just a fun band. They are fun to dance to and their songs are catchy, plus the singer is hot.
When The Pietasters came on all the kids left and there was nothing but tipsy adults. I stayed for 3 songs but then I got out of there because, again, I got frustrated with the fact there was no where too dance. The crowd was a little too violent for a ska show too.
**Update on a previous entry: My prophecy of The Stooges playing the last show at CBGB was made in vain. Many of my friends read that now to make fun of me but seriously, how cool would that have been for Iggy to play opposed to Patti Smith? I love Patti but I wish she was coupled with something a little more exciting. Possibly co-headlining with a reunited Television? R.I.P CBGB
