So, about a month or so ago, a facebook event was created such that, it asked some of our close friends what their favorite memories of coming to The Trunk Space were. We’re going to try and roll a couple of these every day, so be sure to keep up! First up is Mike Bogomil;
April 2006: One of my first shows at the Trunk Space. It was Streetside Prophet (a disbanded pop punk band with Wes Korte who now sings in Rumspringer) Parkway Wretch (another pop punk band whose members are now in other pop punk bands) and a touring band from Israel called Man Alive. The show was kind of poorly attended, but I remembered liking the overall feel of the venue. I had just gone to ginormous show at the Marquee the night before with Against Me! and the Alkaline Trio, and it was nice to see music in a much more quaint environment. Also, one of the guys in the Israeli band said that the audience were “strangers in an arid land” and his bandmate replied “Strangers in an Arab land? That’s us.” They were really cool and talked about being drafted into the Israeli army and how the only big punk bands that had played Israel recently were Good Clean Fun and Frenzal Rhomb. New venue and new perspective on punk rock and geography = memories indeed.
August 2006: O Pioneers and Porches. O Pioneers was really good, they were a lot more noisy than they are now and sounded a lot more like (Young) Pioneers, who they were often compared to at the time. They are still really good, by the way. This was the first time I saw Porches (Ben Horowitz). I may not have watched him had he not politely asked me and my friend to come inside and watch in this kind of passive and sort of guilt trip inducing “if you really want to” manner. Anyway, it worked, and Ben proclaimed two very true things to myself and everyone else who he made feel sorry enough to watch him. Firstly “there is no such thing as an apolitical song, there are only songs that don’t talk about what’s going on”. Secondly, through stage banter rather than music, he stated that everyone in the scene, no matter how much they may disagree with each other, all appreciate things that are “croosh”. I guess crooshalness is in the eye of the beholder, but nevertheless, I think most people involved with DIY music and art are very prone to get super stoked over things that they think are the crooshest things ever, and that kind of enthusiasm tends to transcend all cliques and genres and whatever. I think the main moral of the story is Ben said some profound and interesting things, which is something he does a lot, but this was the first time I experienced it.
June 2007: This show may have been on my 19th birthday. It was Deer Tick, Jacob Smigel, Uggamugga, and French Quarter I believe. I wanted to take some of my friends who don’t really go to shows to a show they would like, as a lot of the shows I went to at this time were hardcore punk shows, which are not palatable to most people’s “normal” friends. So in a way I was trying to share something I liked (live ‘indie’ music) with my friends while making them feel comfortable. The show was good. Deer Tick was alt country with a singer who sounded like Boomhauer from King of the Hill. If they still sound like this, I am not surprised that they are huge now. Jacob Smigel was kind of a primadonna but still good. The locals were also good, and my friends had a good time and realized that I didn’t listen exclusively to what probably sounded like serial killer music to them (normal people think this about ‘heavy’ music for some reason).
To add to the Deer Tick show story, that night as I was getting stamped, I asked JRC if the hand mattered, because at Modified they do it on the left hand. He said that it didn’t matter and asked me “Do they do this at Modified?” and gave me a hug. They didn’t give hugs at the Modified, and now they don’t do shows anymore. Do the math.
Much more abbreviated memories:
-Dancing shirtless to Captain Ahab with a bunch of people who I am now friends with.
-Watching noodle climb a tree or try to kill a bug while a boring band plays inside.
-Having some woman dressed like a gypsy walking to the Bikini look at me and Naomi and say “Oooh! I love hipsters!”.
-Witnessing Sean Michael (Grassroots Campaign) drunkenly chuck his cellphone onto Grand Avenue only to have it get ran over by a car while he talks about love being bullshit as a boring band plays inside.