Keep Laughing!: Men's Recovery Project Live at Benway Bop 4/27/98 VIDEO!

The record store Benway Bop was an oasis in Las Vegas in the 90's. They provided a link to underground scenes outside our isolated desert city. As the old story goes: this was before the internet. Ronn Benway had a radio show- shit they even sold records out of an ice cream truck at one point! They later moved to Venice Beach, CA because they were so disgusted with Vegas. I ran into Ron a few years ago and he lost an incredible amount of weight. I thought he had cancer, well really I thought he had Aids cause he's such a rock star. Turns out he eats a raw food diet. He looks great so that's something to be said for eating raw food. I'm not sure where Kelly Benway is but I wish the best for both of them.

I had some funny encounters at that record store. I was looking at their 7" records one day when these two cute Brazilian girls I'd seen at a party the week before walked in. I was such a pussy I didn't try to talk to them! They bought a few records and paid with a $100 bill and left. After about a minute Ronn starts freaking out! "Everyone's gotta get out!" he was all panicky. He closed up the shop and tries frantically looking for the Brazilian girls. The $100 was counterfeit. He was blinded by their beauty and forgot to do the counterfeit check on the bill. That must have been a scam with those girls but who knows? He gave up after a minute or so and reopened the shop and we all went back inside.

There was always something interesting happening there and plenty of good music. This particular show was pretty freakin awesome as you will soon find out. Men's Recovery Project were one of the best bands in the late 90's underground. You always have to mention the fact that Men's Recovery had ex-members of Born Against. But in all honesty I think I liked Men's Recovery Project more.

They were far out of left field and didn't sound anything like the hardcore sounds of Born Against. I don't know how you'd classify their music. New Wave Hardcore? Avant Garde performance Art? Whatever it was I'd say it was damn clever and a logical extension of the smart ass statement Born Against patented. For all the lip service the hardcore scene played to "doing it yourself" and not following the rules there sure were a lot of conforming aspects to the culture. MRP did quite a bit in confounding expectations by turning their back on the genre all together. They got away with as much as they could with MRP without the trappings of the 90's post hardcore sound prevalent at that time.

I've looked around the internet a little and I gotta say this is the best footage I've seen of Men's Recovery Project so far. I'm biased because I shot it, but what a great show it was! What a great day that was! The Aladdin Hotel was imploded a few hours before the show. I've included that footage in the download here. Behead the Profit (No Lord Shall Live) played that show as well. I'll post that later on. Keep an eye out for the shoplifter who was caught stealing a Fifteen CD in this video!

It's broken into 7 different files and I'm not sure why I did that. I suggest you download these files individually instead of trying to download the whole folder because it's so big. The mandatory files to get are probably the 6th and 7th if you wanna skip the preliminary stuff. File 1-3 are mostly people milling about before the show but there's some cool shots of the weird video MRP played before they came out.

Don't miss the 4th file! Sam McPheeters falls into a glass CD display case as he delivers his "Give Me Liberty "monologue! Thankfully no one was hurt except for maybe a Pixies limited edition CD and probably a Ween 7". The photos below show the sequence where he seriously almost kills himself, but luckily recovers!

As was typical for Las Vegas a fight broke out during MRP's set. I didn't film any of that bullshit. But I'm sad to report I know the guy who was in the fight. I won't mention any names but I will say that after viewing these vids you will want to punch someone in the mouth if they say the words "Yeah Baby!"

Sam McPheeter's is still doing interesting stuff. I'm not clued into what they're all up to but I'm convinced the other dudes in MRP are still doing interesting stuff as well. I just can't tell who those guys were. An amazing video that needs to be out there. Share it with your friends.