In celebrating Easter on Good Friday we remember the sacrifice made to save the souls of all men and women… or fuck all that and let’s go to the punk rock show. Ditching the usual passive aggressive mess of family get-togethers, The Old Bar entertained a capacity crowd for the first show of the Mesa Cosa/Clowns Crucial Dudes Tour.
Mesa Cosa are Mexican fused garage punk, whose show pummels along at a freaky momentum as the band members pogo around the stage into each other and the crowd. A moment of real crowd involvement saw a guitar carried from the front of the stage to the back with everyone in between having a crack at soloing on the unplugged axe. By the end of the set, the stage had been invaded; people were trying to shove tambourines down each other’s throats and an average of one in nine people had been kicked in the face.
Clowns play short, fast, loud and unabashed punk music without trying to mix in anything from outside the genre. As the band took to the stage, people started streaming in from all corners and erupted into a fist flinging pile of sweaty jerks two songs into the set. Vocalist Stevie led the brutality, one-upping everyone in the crowd and pushing them to keep up with him. Bombarding the audience with his body, he climbed as high as he could to the roof of the Old Bar and, after shoving his mic into his gob, catapulted himself downwards.
That sort of body-on-the-line, don’t-hold-back showmanship is sadly becoming a lost art at a lot of rock shows today, with most lead men opting for the brooding potential-of-menace look. Clowns and Mesa Cosa both remind us that there are still bands willing to damn near kill themselves in the name of their music.
BY RHYS MCRAE
Loved: Bands that are all out of fucks to give.
Hated: How smug that Jesus guy looks in all his photos.
Drank: H2woahhh.
