A friend of mine is in a punk band called The Battle Scars, and they were playing the other night at a local club called THE ROCKER!! Just seems like you should always yell that name. Anyway, so I went to the show, and really quite enjoyed myself, and overall I was very impressed for the most part at the band’s tightness and songwriting, and it was just nice to hear some good old punk music. I would have some pictures, but Verizon apparently doesn’t want me to send any photos to my flikkr site. So whatever, but big thumbs up for The Battle Scars. Check out their site, go to a show. (Ryan, that was free publicity for you buddy)

However, the band that played right after was a band called The Cartridge Family. Now I will attempt to explain what happened after that, though as another friend of mine said to me just before they started “It’s an experience.” Just to try to describe this band, there’s probably 21 people in the band (that make up “the family” if you will), and their overall style would be considered Rock/Metal/Hard Rock, something in that area. Now one of the guitarists dressed up in a black panda suit, complete with mask, and the keyboardist dressed up in a white panda suit, complete with mask. The lead singer wore a half shirt, and the most hideous spandex pants known to man. However, this much would prove to be pretty tame.

Another member of the band wore a cape (sort of) and played a toy fisher-price xylophone. Another member played a marching-band snare drum, and wore a darth vader mask. Another guy played one bongo on the edge of the stage, as if we could have heard him, but he did play passionately I’ll give him that. There was also a trombone and saxaphone player, who just basically wandered the room. And finally, a girl sat on the edge of the stage and played a toilet tank with a hammer, and as far as I can tell she wasn’t really playing any specific beat either, just sort of tapping it.

Because of the size and energy of them, the band and audience become one, in that most of the members of the band spent more time off the stage and among the crowd than on the stage. Now throughout the show the following things happened:

– the guitarist dressed as the black panda was playing guitar while on the shoulders of one of the other guitarists (not all that impressive, except to note that the ceilings in the facility were maybe 8 ft. high)

– the guy playing the toy xylophone crawled between the chairs in the table I was sitting at, leaving his xylophone behind. So I started to play it, and he came back and took it away to my chagrin

– the black panda breathed fire (like blew a fireball out of his mouth)

– the girl playing the toilet tank decided she’d had enough, placed it on the floor and smashed it to pieces with the hammer she had

– a slip and slide was built across the dance floor, where several of the band members, and a couple audience members proceeded to slip and slide

I’m not sure what else I can do to describe it, but I would have to say it was one of the strangest shows I’ve ever experienced, and I laughed quite a bit. However, I think I laughed most when the house band came on after them (to a perplexed MC saying “Umm.. okay… Give it up for ….the Cartridge …..Family”), because the name of their band was “Iron Pig.” Iron Pig? Wow. What do you even say to that? Their first song was called “Cardboard Mansion,” and suddenly I was able to fully experience what the heavy metal scene in the mid-eighties looked like. It was scary.