Dub Narcotic Sound System, D+, The Johnsons, The Blazing Bulkheads

Oakland Beehive, Pittsburgh, PA

22 September 1997

posted: 30 June, 2021 19:40

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I made this flyer, for my band was playing, though Manny booked the show. That's you you get my terrible 1997 design style of all-lowercase mixing of serif/sans-serif fonts with Manny's phone number.

I'm a bit shocked that this was a full 11 months after we played with <a href="https://johnw.fail/crumbles/renderers-pineal-ventana-blazing-bulkheads-meisha">The Renderers</a>; I guess the Blazing Bulkheads were together longer than I remembered. By this point our original bass player was out and we had John Roman from The 1985 playing bass with us, which felt like a big deal to me as less than a year prior I saw <a href="https://johnw.fail/crumbles/melt-banana-monorchid-shale-arab-on-radar-the-1985">The 1985</a> for the first time and lost my mind, and now he was moonlighting in my band.

This very probably was our last show? We were also asked to open up for a British band around the same time, but had to cancel so Weird Paul could get his wisdom teeth removed, and I didn't even go to the show, which meant I didn't see the Shadow Ring in 1997, which is a regret I'll take to my grave. I also think that Harry Pussy was on tha bill, or maybe that was another show we didn't play around the same time, and thus I also missed seeing them at their peak.

Regrets aside, I definitely remember we were doing my 'Monopoly God' song, a heavy, dirgy riff-based song about a board game which sounded like Karp, where I sang. And also Paul's masterpiece 'I Dropped My Almond Joy Bar' was surely played at this time, which I thought was his peak of songwriting in the Bulkheads.

I was never into Dub Narcotic or Beat Happening (I've since come around to enjoy, or at least appreciate some Beat Happening) so I don't think I paid much attention to them, and D+ I also don't remember. Not a lot of people turned up to see this, but at that time I don't think the K label/indie-pop sound had a big following in Pittsburgh.

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