Am I Getting Too Old For This?

     I ventured out of the house last Friday to see Code Orange play at Mr. Smalls.  I almost didn't make it off of the couch because I was aware of the cluster fuck of traffic that was between the venue and myself but I'm glad I went.  Not so much for the music but for the few things I learned about myself while watching the opening acts.

     I got to Mr. Smalls early enough to grab a pre-show burger and get my usual spot behind the soundboard.  I was greeted with a, “What are you doing here?  You are getting way too old for this shit,” when I ran into the house sound engineer that I went to high school with.  I tried to counter with, “Well, you're here too,” only to be swatted away with, “At least I'm getting paid to be here.”  It didn't help matters when the much younger woman that was running lights said, “I think it's cute when the older punks come out to these shows.”  That's when it sunk in that I was officially the coffin dodger in the back of the room instead of the perpetually 22 year old that's too cool for school image of myself that's been stuck in my head for the past several years.

     Just as my final thread of self-esteem had been incinerated, the stage manager came back to alert them that the start time was being pushed back by twenty minutes for some unknown reason.  At that point I'm feeling really old.  Trying to make it through four opening acts and a headliner suddenly felt like an insurmountable task and there was not a cup of coffee in the place.  Then I saw the list of run times for the bands.  Each opener had between 20 and 30 minutes.  Things were looking up or so I thought.

     I have been a fan of Code Orange since I picked up their second LP I Am King a few years back.  I had seen them open for Anti-Flag a few times and they also opened for the Black Flag reunion band, Flag.  I was impressed after seeing how they handled themselves in the up hill battle that is being the first band to go out in front of an unfriendly audience that doesn't care about the first band to hit stage. They had a very “We don't give a fuck about you” attitude and ran right through the crowd's apathy each time.

     It's been rather enjoyable to see the weird kids from the local performing arts high school, CAPA, grow into this world wide metal phenomenon.  Even though most people from Pittsburgh could give two shits about them because Code Orange isn't some sort of 90s cover band.  They're playing bigger stages and hitting the festival circuit and, more importantly, the records keep progressing and getting better and better.  Their latest, Forever, is a slab of brutality that finds its way into my ears on a regular basis.

     Their set the other night was another display of how Code Orange is evolving by leaps and bounds.  They put together an hour long audio/visual assault on the senses that felt like it could have gone off the rails at any time if it were in the hands of a lesser band.  Code Orange was in control of the mayhem every step of the way.

     At the board for the lights, there was a piece of notebook paper with lighting cues for each song in the set which included a series of convulsion inducing strobe lights all over the stage.  Just before the band came out, the sound guy turned to the lighting engineer, flipped her off, and donned a pair of sunglasses to protect himself from the coming onslaught to his rods and cones.  I suddenly wished that I had a welder's mask in my pocket.

     At one point, the bass player ended up bleeding profusely from the head but he certainly didn't let some mere flesh wound get in the way of him finishing the set while diving in and out of the crowd while still playing.  These kids mean business and after being together for ten years already they show no signs of stopping any time soon.

     The most disappointing part of the evening were the four opening acts.  They were all cut from the same stylistic cloth of the jock, bro-down hardcore band.  None of them even displayed a variation on the theme.  All four bands were indistinguishable from each other.  If this is the state of modern hardcore, then there is a lot of work to be done for it to reestablish the form and get it out of its current rut.

     Each band seemed to be more interested in posing, jumping around and flexing than they were focussed on actually playing.  Playing stop time only works when everyone stops and starts at the same time.  Maybe if the members of these bands spent less time in the gym and more time in the practice room they would sound a little better.  My disdain for jumping jacks, alone, would prevent me from being the singer in a current hardcore band.

     I couldn't even say that trading a few hours of calisthenics for a few more hours of working on lyrical content would be beneficial.  All I could hear was something along the lines of “Bark, Bark, Bark!!!”  I'm sure it could be loosely translated to “I hate my mom, I hate my Dad, why don't any girls like me” or some such silly white boy nonsense.

     I was left with a very “Back in my day...” feeling after seeing these bands.  Moments like that always remind of the Ian MacKaye quote from the documentary American Hardcore.  It was something along the lines of, “I didn't leave hardcore.  Hardcore left me.”

     The one upside after seeing these bands fall flat has been the heavy music palette cleansing I've been going through over the past few days to get the taste out of my ears.  Large doses of Eyehategod, The Fix, Turmoil, Snapcase, Helmet, Rollins Band and, of course, Code Orange.

     Maybe I'm not getting too old for this shit.  Maybe it's hardcore's stagnating lack of forward progress that can't keep up with me.