The Mishka bro-ciety (society of bros) got me on the list for the Fucked Up show at Market Hotel so I went there. Market Hotel is a giant fucking performance space in Bushwick shaped like a wedge of cheese. Actually it’s shaped like a wedge of anything. Any kind of wedge. You stare at the stage and it feels like the room’s shrinking. Does that make sense?

The entrance to the club involves a long, steep, slippery, crowded and unlit staircase which would definitely kill you if it got the chance.

The walls all seemed to be foam-core or some garbage like that. It felt like it would be really easy for someone to punch through the wall and find a rap group on the other side and yell “WALK THIS A-WAYYYYYY!”

80s Hardcore went on stage.  That’s a band with Gavin McInness, founder of Vice and Streetcarnage, Josh from the Stalkers and two other guys.  One works at Eat Records.  This was supposedly their last show but we’ll see.

They did all the songs that you would want to hear and there was some girl holding up the lyrics to all of the songs to the right of the stage.  She even did little drawings on them to accompany the lyrics.  I wasn’t sure if she was someone’s girlfriend or sister or just an enthusiastic fan.

I wandered around in the darkened room bumping into people I knew. Gasface gave me a nice zine. Some others gave me smirks & dirty looks. Market Hotel is an eerie fucking place. It feels good though. It’s like the old hardcore spirit is alive. Spontaneous performance spaces and things done without licenses or thoughts for safety. I love the photos of the old LA punk clubs, the Masque and the Starwood. This space reminded me of them. I almost expected Laurence Fishburne to be working the door.

Mike Jones and I had a meeting of the minds afterward in his girlfriend’s car and discovered that we had the same plan in case of fire. If fire broke out we both planned to kick back for a little bit while everybody else trampled each other to death. After they were all dead or the smoke and flames were getting too intense we would luge down the slidey slope of dead and unconscious bodies that would coat the staircase.

The Vivian GIrls are pretty girls who make poppy garage rock.  They are all really cute.  The music is rockin’ and occasionally cute.

Editors note: the Vivian Girls are Twee douchebag!

By the time Pissed Jeans went on I was all tired and fagged out.  (fagged out is an English phrase that means tired I think.  I am trying to make it a thing that people say.)  They punched a hole in the wall and punched out the one light in the place.  After they were done I was too tired to deal with Fucked Up so I clambered into a cramped car and got dumped out outside my house.  I’m going to bet that Fucked Up were pretty good.

- Toilet Cobra