It's Brad Shanks' birthday, one man who's of the small handful of Replay Records' administrative moguls, who tonight is also celebrating the label's second release - Up The Academy's new 7-inch. This is the guy to watch tonight. He's the dangerous one. It is this man who sprays popcorn all over everybody like a money shot during the Up The Academy set, as the band bangs out yet another pairing of tawdry garage riffs. It's this man who pushes around those dumb enough to stand in front of Ron Miller, the front-man brain-child of the band, so that a chaotic pit forms and dissipates at once.
But let us first discuss the opening band, Muscle Worship:
Although Muscle Worship traverses genres foreign to the get-down/get-laid punk stompers of Up The Academy, the sounds of their set attracted a modest crowd that mostly stuck around and stayed interested. What you have with Muscle Worship, whether you like it or not, is a hefty helping of angular guitar-school-dropout riffs that are cut up by occasional vocals and the hearty chops of a busy but all-too-competent drummer. The bass player plays murky chords that cuddle nicely with the strange, math-whiz progressions of the guitar player, whose glasses slip down his nose, and who screams in ways known mostly to the more emotional inmates of Guantanamo. No one dances because there is no way to dance, because the danceable beat impregnates itself, multiplies, and then eats itself, and vanishes.
Miller croons into the reverbed-as-fuck microphone in a tenor as rich as fudge, and humps the air like it's drunk and passed out. It must be twelve songs into the set that it feels like it's about to die down and get over with, but somehow, with minimal on-stage consultation, Up The Academy belts out another five or six songs - one with Ron and his guitar alone. He sings, "Happy birthday Braaaaaaaaaaad...You're so fucking oooooooooold," and the fifty or so people there laugh and scream or do that thing that's both at the same time. Twenty-six should be a memorable year for all of us, though it's probably not tonight, for the drunken Shanks.
Showing 1-3 of 3
