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| Dick Lucas from Citizen Fish answering probing questions. |
Vegas has a history of desert shows that probably goes back to the pioneer days when the menfolk would go outside camp get shitfaced and attempt to sing songs.
This desert show happened near the dry lake bed North of Nellis Air Force Base on the way to Mesquite. It was an unusual place because I never heard of shows happening there before and I never heard o' any since.
This show was put together basically by Boyde Wenger from Boba Fett Youth. That guy fucking rules. He put on so many of the great shows going to in Vegas from 95-98. A lot of shit would have gone under LV's radar if not for Boyde. I want to say David Hayes had a hand in this show as well. I dunno.
If you got a flyer for this show you should share because I seem to remember there being a Greg Higgins flyer! Shit I don't even remember what day this was. What the fuck? The line-up was the Automatics from Portland, OR. The Lizards from Sacramento, CA. The Tedio Boys from Portugal. The Independents from South Carolina. And Citizen Fish from England. A legendary show and perhaps the largest from that time period.
The cops showed up and left because they were outnumbered far outside of town. Love it when that happens.
The Independents footage is priceless. And to me this was the classic line up from that band. You get the amazing singer, the blood spitting guitarist, the weirdo 666 guy with the Hannibal Lector mask, the super goth keyboard player, and the Dave Mello look-a-like on drums! Riotous horror ska(!) with equal influence from the Specials and the Misfits. With a description like that you'd imagine it sounds like a shit sandwich but it's spectacular pop with pyrotechnics! I'm not exaggerating.
Citizen Fish you know and well maybe you love em? I could take or leave em but they've been around the block. It was a novel thing when CF first came over for a US tour. They played in Las Vegas around 1992 or 93 at the Rainbow caves with Life of Lies and a few other bands. I never heard of them touring in the States before that show and it took a long time for them to return, this show being 1997 or maybe 96? The last few years Citizen Fish seem to be coming through like clockwork every Summer. I consider the Citizen Fish/Subhumans franchise the Rolling Stones of Anarcho Punk. But I think that's cool. They deserve it. I might not be a fan now but there's someone new turning 15 years old every second so they will never run out of fans.
After this show I rode my motorcycle back to Greg Telles house with the intention of passing out on his big couch. Around 3 in the morning the door opens up and Dick Citizen comes in with his "bird." I guess they took their girlfriends on that tour because she had an English accent. Apparently I was passed out on their bed. So I dragged myself into a corner and went back to sleep, but I could hear his girl asking Dick who the "chap in the corner is." I think I prevented them from having a love connection. Proof that these guys deserve their status as the Rolling Stones of Peace Punk! I'm sure they're still crashing on couches when they tour half the time. They probably deserve that too.
Tedio Boys is a weird one. I posted most of these videos on youtube and the Tedio Boys got the most attention with a 1,000 or so viewings. I found their CD some months after the show and thought it was horrific. But they put on a good show. The Portuguese people who posted comments about the clips were adamant about how great they are. Well it looks cool anyway. Pretty standard garage stuff but loads of energy.
Lizards. Doin what feels right.
Very Small records recording artists the Lizards were an awesome band from Sacramento, CA and they played Las Vegas at least once before this gig at the La Canada house off of Desert Inn Drive. The Lizards footage fucks up a little bit. Probably cause they rock so hard.
I recorded the Automatics too but have somehow misplaced the tape. You can see various members of the Automatics in the crowd during the show. It was a good sized crowd. Probably 300-400 people at this show maybe more.
I had a fairly standard Sony hi-8 camcorder for this show. It ran on a crappy 1 hour battery so I tried to get a few songs from each band. Ultimately the battery died during Citizen Fish's set.
I was intrepid enough to have a brief interview with Dick Citizen. It's pretty laughable yet somewhat insightful. I've included that here in this download. While I was interviewing him we got surrounded by kids who blocked all the light. That's why he goes dark half way through the interview. I got stage fright being the center of attention and just kind of walked away. I'm not Barbra Walters what do you want from me?
I saw other people with camcorders at this show. Maybe someday we'll see their footage? In the meantime here's the footage I shot. On a technical note, for some reason the video is a bit shrunk down. I transferred this stuff ages ago. Not sure why it's like that but digitizing this shit is a serious pain in the ass. I don't plan on doing it again. Enjoy.
Download links for all these videos below
Independents PART 1
Independents PART 2
Lizards
Citizen Fish PART 1
Citizen Fish PART 2
Interview with Dick
Tedio Boys Part 1
Tedio Boys Part 2
Cops came to investigate
Always hassled by the man when we're trippin'
I just find your blog, and congratulations for this post. I'm portuguese and a big fan of Tedio Boys.Thank you for post this about them.
ReplyDeleteWhat do they put in the water in Portugal to make you guys go so apeshit about this band?
ReplyDeleteThe tedio boys are like pioneers of the punk and garage scene in Portugal like them. One of their guitarrists now owns two successful projects, his one man band "legendary tigerman" and a rock band "wraygunn". That helps keeping the tedio boys name alive. However don't think portuguese are all worshipers of the tedio boys, Portugal has 10 million people I would be surprised if 1/20 knew who the fuck were the tedio boys.
ReplyDeleteoh.
ReplyDeletetedio boys were, as the anonymous implicitly said, a cult band. There were very few bands in Portugal in the psychobilly-garage-punk genre. The fact remains though, they made 3 US tours but they were largely ignored by the media - practically no airtime on the radio (the few that played tedio boys were independent or student radiostations) - and very few even knew about them. What makes them so special - asides being one of the few bands in this genre - was their energy, the international tours (not that common in portuguese bands from those days, and even more uncommon - if not unheard of until then - from this genre of music) and the numerous incidents along the way: portuguese society never witnessed this kind of thing before and they paid a price: getting arrested for "disturbing the peace" by playing in the streets, people shooting guns in an indoor concert, police raiding their gigs to prohibit them to play live, and so on...
ReplyDeleteHonestly, i think they were quite good. Raw energy by the shitload, and they didn't sound very conventional. Just by curiosity, which CD did you found?
Alex
Mediafire says they took down the video download of Citizen Fish but it appears to be working still. Go figure.
ReplyDelete