Team Dresch, Heathen Machinery, and Hawaiian BBQ

After battling pallets of cheese all morning I was wary of last evening. I was exhausted, from my cheese receiving shift and lack of sleep for no fun reason the night before. It was one of those days where I kept noticing how heavy my eyelids were. One of those days where I have almost fallen asleep while lying down "just for a second, on a nice bed of commodity 40 lb. blocks of cheddar.

But I had big plans. First the Queer Open Mic where mr_heathen was featuring. Too many fabulous people were there for me to name check, but Heathen Machinery is fast becoming one of my favorite writers. Awesome, intense, and laugh out loud funny. I have to go to work soon so I’m rushing here, but justin42 made his reading in public debut and was deservedly well-loved. Plus there were three "Fucking Daphne" pieces read. Now I don’t have to buy the book (Kidding!).

cindymonkey and I had Team Dresch tickets so we rushed out after the reading. Unfortunately we got waylaid on a sleazy street corner with a big gay cop for an hour or so and didn’t make it to Slim’s until halfway through their first song. Damn, I actually wanted to see the opening bands for once! We did run into jactitation and subjective almost right away though and they made room for us.

Slim’s is such a horrible place. I mean, the sound is great and there actually is a lot of room in front of the stage for a venue of its size, but man there are always fratboys there. On a house outing once we went to see Jonathon Richman and the crowd was so horrible that I don’t think I even listened to his music for a year. In retrospect it was right after "Something About Mary" came out so it wasn’t actually a Jonathon crowd, but the combo of weekend night in the city, booze, and heterosexual mating rituals I thought were extinct ruined him to me for awhile . Jonathon will always have a place in my heart but we needed a break.

Before that I think I saw Beck there because Lancypants was playing guitar and put me on the guest list.. ‘nuff said.

Frat boys can’t really gain much traction at a Team Dresch show (though Jactitation may share with you how they tried) but man the show was filled with young folks. It was like being at the opposite end of the Gang of Four reunion. Here was a band I saw back in the day that I was seeing surrounded with people who were inspired by Team Dresch when they were kids too young or geographically isolated to see them. I mean Team Dresch is not the most well known band, but they were a pioneering dyke, political, Queercore group so they have their place in history. Some of the audience was near tears finally getting a chance to sing along with "Hate the Christian Right!" "Fagetarian and Dyke" and "Freewheel".

I ran into crusherrrr as I was about to leave but we only got a chance to say hi before an important band member came up to visit him. I had to go get Cindy’s car out of my workplace parking lot before the alarm was turned on for the night so I couldn’t stay. Crusherrrr, when they dedicated the song to you, did you hear someone yell out "We love (your real name)!"from the back? That was me.

Cindy and I then went to the new 24 hr Hawaiian BBQ place where the Zim’s used to be on 19th and Taraval. I love her new neighborhood and plan to visit that BBQ place whenever I am drunk, hungry, and aimless. Yay for the L being an owl bus! (Though Cindy was nice enough to drive me home last night)

Oh, and here’s Team Dresch rocking out at Epicenter in 1994 or so. Look how clean it was! From other pics I see that we were doing an art show so someone had pained all the walls. I love how you can’t see anyone’s faces.