I started writing some version of this back in February to keep some demons at bay. The first sentence of the original draft was: “If the human race does not figure out a way to bring itself to an end by October of this year, Submachine will end up being a band for thirty years.” I couldn't help but laugh when I read that because here we are at the end of October and we're getting pretty damn close to snuffing ourselves out on multiple fronts.
Plans to mark the anniversary were being made and then had to be scrapped because a good portion of the population refused to be on their best behavior for two months earlier in the year. New plans are being made that won't be nearly as sweaty and beer soaked but the occasion will be acknowledged in some way.
I have been a fan of Submachine since I was but a wee lad and saw their fliers on phone poles around town. I hadn't even heard any of their music yet and didn't even know where to go to find it but I knew from the looks of those fliers that there was something to what they were doing and I wanted a piece of it.
Thanks to my local dealer, Brave New World, I had picked up all of their singles over time but still hadn't seen the band with my own eyes because of the under-21 of it all for the clubs and bars that they played. If there were DIY or house shows that they played, I had no way of knowing when and where those took place since I was on the outside looking in and there was no such thing as the internet yet.
If my memory is correct, the first time I saw Submachine was at a sparsely attended all-ages show at Club Laga, in the summer of 1997 or 1998, when they played with Crayon-Death. I say sparsely attended because that has always been the nature of the beast with all-ages club shows in Pittsburgh when there were only local acts on the bill. Which is why those shows hardly ever happened. There were plenty of complaints about the lack of all-ages shows but when the time came no one would ever show up to the damned things.
I don't remember much about it except that it was the early show because there was an overabundance of sunlight still streaming in through the windows of the club. This was in the days before I would drag my camera and Mini-Disc recorder around with me so I have no documentation of the show. I do remember having a handbill for the show but it has not survived after multiple apartment moves.
By this time Submachine's vinyl anthology, Sawed Off Shotglass, had been released on CD so now I could walk around town with all thirty six songs playing on my Disc-Man and mainline those songs directly into my brain. I played the hell out of that CD and still do.
After the two beers that I had to mark the occasion of my 21st birthday, I was finally able to gain entry to the 31st St. Pub and other clubs for all of the punk and metal shows that my hearing could handle. Still on the outside, I always posted up in the back of the room or by the soundboard of whatever club I ended up in since I didn't know anyone and the scene was, and still is, very insular. I was damn near nonexistent except for the “Who the fuck is this asshole?” looks I would get when I'd walk in. I really wasn't looking to belong to anything back then and I'm probably still not. I was only there for the music and would go off into the night to search for food and coffee as soon as the last band finished playing.
I stopped carrying the camera around with me because I had lost the plot and didn't really feel the need to at that point. Scraping together the funds to have film developed and then stuffing the pictures into a drawer had lost its appeal. How I regret that now. A stack of punk photos from the late 90s through 2003 would have been quite the bit of history to sift through.
During this time, Fresh Out Of Give A Fucks, Live Fast, Die Dumb and, the live DVD/CD, Off The Rails: Loose At The Moose were released. Needless to say, I took copies of each home the first time I saw them on the shelf at the record store. “Unhinged,” “Sluff Up My Nards” and “Trocadero Riot” quickly became some of my favorite songs.
After a hiatus and the addition of stalwart Pittsburgh punk drummer, Greg Mairs, to the rhythm section with Ricky Budway and Jay Nulph, they are louder than ever and can still show the younger punks how it's done on a regular basis. Their last LP, In Spite Of Everything, and a few recent singles have been the best sonic representations of their sound to date. As a live band, Submachine can still steal any show that they're a part of. Jeff Cherep is still one of my favorite punk rock guitar players of all time. And if there's a room full of people, Alex Peightal will get in their faces while spitting gravelly fire and get the crowd moving in the pit. Or moving out the door as I witnessed at last year's Halloween show when the band sent the hipster/college student clientele of the Halloween pop-up bar running for the nearest exit which still brings a smile to my face when I think about it.
Once I decided to start going to shows again and sticking a lens in musicians faces, they were the first band that I made it a point to see as many times as possible. I missed out on seeing them play too many times before their hiatus so I was not going to make the same mistake again.
Since then, I have been lucky enough to have befriended the band and help out in any way that I can. Going from the socially awkward kid in the back of the room to the socially awkward coffin dodger next to the speaker stack to take pictures and keep an eye on the drum kit has been a weird ride. And hopefully the ride can resume at some point before humanity calls it a day.
https://submachinepgh.bandcamp.com/
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