Packing up and moving to a new city can be a bit tricky if you don’t luck out and make some solid new friends pretty quickly after arriving. The thing I remember most about the Some Girls, Das Oath, Look Back and Laugh show at the Che Café (besides that I went and filmed it) was that I was there with coworkers from an ultimately ill-fated book chain I had been hired at, Borders. My first year in San Diego was spent working whatever underpaying job would have me and meeting lots and lots and lots of new people, most of whom I just didn’t fit in with. I knew I wasn’t going to throw in the towel and go limping back to Tulsa, and getting the job at the bookstore was a serious turning point- it was where I made my first real long-term friends in what would become my new, adopted hometown. I quit working there after a couple years, but remain eternally grateful for the way it funneled a steady supply of new people into my life that also read books!
I hadn’t heard any of the bands that were playing that night as my new friends and I headed up to the all-ages venue at UCSD, but the fact that they shared members with Charles Bronson, The Locust, and Lesser of Two, strongly hinted at a high-octane evening. By all accounts, the goods were delivered.
Look Back and Laugh brought punishing metallic crust, having traded in some of the more progressive leanings of Lesser of Two in for furious, unapologetic, 80s style circle-pit rippers.
Das Oath brought it up to a different level and at numerous points I had people in the audience (or singer Mark McCoy) roll on top of me as the pit evolved into something more akin to the inside of an active volcano spurred on by the sonic mayhem.
This madness wasn’t deterred by the gap where one band broke down their gear and the next one set up- it was more like people were just recharging their batteries. The chaos resumed the second Some Girls’ strident aural blitz began and I eventually, fearing the destruction of my camera, capitulated and retreated to the relative safety of the back.
While I try to live in the present as much as I can, this night does still pop up in fond conversation here and there with friends I had back then and still now.
Fairly Loud Noises 