The Show

Why you should pay to watch a bunch of guys do something badly

Our live show combines three things: (1) chaos, (2) way too much banter, (3) versions of our songs played badly and at 287% the original tempo. Yet, people tell us that it’s great, and we’re planning more long tours for 2023. So in anticipation, let’s talk about the philosophy behind… THE SHOW!!!!!!!

1. Chaos

Punk should be dangerous. It should make you wonder what the hell is going to happen next. From the stage to the pit and in between, Punk should channel the ancient Dionysian spirit within all of us, and it should give birth to joyous, community-building destruction.

So, chaos is the name of the game. Instead of some kind of scripted intro with a banner and a superubercool light show, we usually just wander on stage and start doing whatever comes to mind. Then, along with the bashing around and breaking things, we have virtually never played the same set two nights running, nor do we usually stick to a written set list, nor will we make it through a night without at least two bizarre impromptu cover songs. Previous examples: “Man, I Feel like a Woman”, “Jesus is a Friend of Mine”, “Losing my Religion” and “Hey Mickey”. Once, at a gig in Germany, four guys in mohawks heard one of these covers, gave us the finger and stormed out. Ha ha. Fuck ‘em.

Speaking of which, we can and do get angry at audiences, and we will take this anger out on them without hesitation. One lucky couple of audiences in Switzerland and (ugh) Belgium learned this the hard way, by sitting back on their rich comfortable butts while we tried our best for the first few songs. We broke down and just played “Sweet Home Alabama” over and over until they left.

I know what you’re thinking: “NO you didn’t!” Oh yeah? Didn’t we…?

Watch those videos, you can see the slow burn apathetic rage oozing out of five young men who’ve travelled 11,000 miles to play to a bunch of uninterested Euro-Yuppies. Fuck ‘em.

One German crowd annoyingly sat back on comfy couches and stood at the bar, so we brought our entire backstage food platter out and threw it at them, apple by banana by loaf of bread, until the stupid motherfuckers got up and started throwing stuff back at us and/or leaving. Fuck ‘em. Chaos. Let’s go.

2. Way Too Much Banter

Much like our heroes in NOFX, we refuse to do the dumbshit rock n’ roll cliches that pervade the live music scene. “How’s everybody doing tonight?” = go fuck yourself. You have been given an extraordinary gift, a stage, a spotlight, people who desperately want to like you and have paid to see you… and that’s what you have? STOP IT.

So let’s talk about our two major influences here: Steve Martin and Neil Hamburger.

Martin is of course world-famous and has been mostly boring for decades, but his early comedy was punk as fuck. He completely messed with his audiences, telling intentionally bad or inexplicable jokes, lampooning the whole idea of the show, refusing to adhere to any script. And Neil Hamburger is quite simply the Heavyweight Champion of this brand of anti-comedy, taking it to heights that have to be seen to be believed. Martin and Hamburger are gods in our eyes, they have perfected this fundamentally aggressive form of comedy that dares the audience to get bored or pissed off.

So that’s what we try to do on stage. Want proof? Check out the intro to this show. It’s fucking BIZARRE. We have no memory of doing it. But opening with three minutes of whale noises, speaking only in languages that Czech people can’t speak, that joke at the end… oy. I am so, legitimately proud of doing that. The music part that comes after isn’t even worth watching. Because of the…

3. Songs Played Badly

Yeah we honestly have no idea how you guys don’t notice this and call us out on it. Fifteen years of playing like absolute dogshit and not one person has asked for a refund. Sometimes the songs are literally twice as fast as they are supposed to be. No-one playing a complex fiddle or mandolin or accordion part can play it at that speed, especially not after two bottles of wine with a bucket on their head (that actually happened, at the same show from Interlaken shown above…).

There is a reason there are no live albums of this band. We can’t even listen to live recordings of ourselves, they are absolutely godawful. Heat and sweat and collisions send strings way out of tune. No-one has a tuner anyway because our one tuner fell out of the van in Drummondville. Drums fall over, amps break, harmonies are way off because everyone’s blitzed, and generally everything is just completely, totally fucked. Yet, you guys keep paying to see us and coming back. Some kind of musical Stockholm Syndrome.

Anyway, if you want songs that sound good, put the damn albums on. If you want to drink too much and catch a half-eaten banana to the face, come see… the SHOW!