On January 28, 2024, I ventured to the Roxian Theatre, with photo pass in hand, to see Thursday and Rival Schools. The morning of the show I started to feel the weight of encountering two bands that I have attached a lot to over the years. The nostalgia of the evening was setting in because it felt like a show that I would have seen at Club Laga back in 2001, among many other reasons.
The opening act, Many Eyes, was cool. They have a few tracks on Bandcamp that I made sure to give a listen to before the show. Even though their set felt kind of stiff, I was glad to see Many Eyes in this stage of their existence. It was as if they were still feeling their way through the music but it was only their fifth show so that will eventually go away over miles and time when they find themselves as a band. I can certainly see the potential in the band and will be interested to see them play when the songs become second nature. If they were that good when it seemed like they were unsure of themselves, they will be downright dangerous when they come into their own.
The weirdest thing was that Many Eyes had to set their merch up in the basement across from the bathrooms. There was plenty of room at merch central but for whatever reason the Roxian puts the opening acts next to the toilets.
Any time that I have an opportunity to be in a room with Walter Schreifels I will take it, especially when he’s fronting Rival Schools. As much as I will preach the gospel of Quicksand until everyone else is blue in the face, Rival Schools fits my over-caffeinated, depression addled, broken brain like a glove.
This was the third time that I had a chance to see Rival Schools and the second time that I had the privilege of taking pictures of them while they did it. Each time it’s been life changing and this night was no different.
I am way too close to that band’s music to know if their set was any good. United By Fate and Pedals are records that are part of my genetic bedrock so there is no way that I could be an impartial voice when it comes to Rival Schools. Their songs “Under Covers On” and “Wring It Out” have practically been on a constant loop in my head for at least a decade.
When the tour was announced, I was very curious to see if Ian Love would be playing guitar in the band and was not surprised when I saw that he wasn’t. He must be allergic to touring or have a family that he cares about and likes to spend time with. Thankfully, Steve from Thursday sat in to fill out the sound. With a tour of that size there would have been too much involved for Rival Schools to cancel.
Ian Love had left the band in the middle of the Pedals tour back in 2012 but the rest of the band finished it out as a three piece which was when I first saw them when they played at the Grog Shop, in Cleveland. He then came back for a handful of United By Fate anniversary shows last year and I was lucky enough to make the journey to Brooklyn to take pictures at one of them.
This may have been only the second time that Rival Schools has played Pittsburgh. If I remember correctly, they played to a practically empty club about a week or so before I knew of the band’s existence. I only know this because I ran into the bartender that worked the show the following week and he asked why I wasn’t there. After I pleaded pre-internet ignorance, he clued me into the band and said the show was great other than there not being any people there. My next stop was the record store where I found the advanced/promotional CD in the used bin. It was the best $8.00 I’ve ever spent and I have not been the same since that first listen.
After I ran around and took my pictures, I stashed myself away in the corner of the balcony in time for them to lay into “Under Covers On” and just let the song level me as it always does. For years, every time I listened to United By Fate, I would instinctively hit the skip button at the 1:53 mark of “High Acetate” to pass over “Under Covers On” because that song hits way too close to home.
The only mistake that I made was hiding on the wrong side of the balcony. From my perch, Sammy Siegler was obscured by the bass amp and I couldn’t really see him go to town on the drums. I very easily could have made my way over to the other side but I was already settled in and decided to live with my bad decision.
With all of the Rival Schools activity over the past year or so, one can hope that there might be new music on the horizon but, even if there isn’t, I’ll take what I can get.
Much like the majority of music fans in the early aughts, I came into contact with Thursday because of their album Full Collapse. The record War All The Time, which followed, came out at an odd period in my life that has too many bad times attached to it so I put the record on the shelf for several years so as to not be reminded of that period and to get some distance from those events.
When the band announced that they were going to play War All The Time front to back on this tour for its twentieth anniversary, I dusted the record off to see what would happen in my brain when I listened to it. Due to current life events and the fact that I have become a sentimental old fool that was a fucking mistake. I recently had to bring someone up to speed on some family history from around the time the record came out and that jarred a few things loose from my memory when I listened to it again. Some instances in my life came roaring back out of the rearview mirror and turned me into a sobbing, angry mess by the end of the first side.
I am well aware that attaching too much weight to music and living so closely to it is a major problem. Other people can listen to music and not be bothered by it and that’s something that I am starting to become envious of. I am incapable of doing that, because of the faulty wiring in my brain, music is not entertainment for me and it never has been.
Most of the times that Thursday came through town were for Warped Tour. I always skipped Warped Tour because I found it to be gross for multiple reasons and the short sets that the bands had to play always bothered me. Any time they played a club show in or around Pittsburgh, I always had something else going on and couldn’t get there.
The first time I saw them was at 123 Pleasant St, in what I think was the spring or summer of 2003. It was during that weird period of the band where they were endlessly touring and wandering the earth between Full Collapse and War All The Time in their efforts to get away from Victory Records. There is a chapter in Dan Ozzi’s book Sellout that tells the tale from that time and it is definitely worth reading. The main lesson for us all to learn from the story is that friends shouldn’t let friends sign to Victory Records.
I did have a flyer and a ticket stub from the Morgantown show somewhere in my house but several years ago a few boxes of my archive went “missing” because the boxes were seen as useless junk. Again, the family history from that time flares up. Grrr…
I was in the room when Thursday played at Metropol on September 19, 2003 for the War All The Time tour shortly thereafter. I don’t remember much from the show other than it being very crowded and what may have been one of the earliest instances of thinking to myself that I should go to shows on my own because other people are too needy and attention starved to not bother me while there is a band playing.
I do have an 18x24 poster that was used to promote this show. I was able to take it off the wall at Bovvers (formerly the only place in Pittsburgh to get a pair of Doc Martens) when I stopped into the store during their last week in business. The employees clearly did not give a shit when I asked for it and probably would have let me walk out with anything else that I could carry. Luckily, the poster didn’t end up in the landfill because it was framed and hanging on a wall.
The last time I saw Thursday was on September 3, 2022 and I think it was one of the last times that I darkened the doorway of Mr. Smalls Theater. I don’t know what’s going on with that place but they haven’t been booking anything that I have even been remotely interested in seeing in a very long time. This was the tour where Thursday played Full Collapse from beginning to end. After allowing more time to pass than I should have without listening to them, that show served as a reminder of just how good of a band they are. Full Collapse immediately went back into my listening rotation but I was still hesitant to take War All The Time off of the embargoed list. I would end up having a staring contest with the jacket’s spine. I would inevitably blink and the record would remain unheard.
I was going to try to get to Cleveland the following December to see them at the Beachland Ballroom but unforeseen circumstances caused me to eat the ticket. I did get to see Geoff Rickley play twice last year when he opened for Sparta on his own. There was something that felt very right and made perfect sense about hearing those songs laid bare when they were performed by only one guy with a guitar. It shows the strength of the material and how solid those songs really are.
Thursday’s set at the Roxian was like nothing I’ve seen from them before. It sounded like they were pushing harder and digging down deeper in an effort to attack the music. The extra twist of vinegar might have had something to do with discovering that a large amount of their gear was stolen from their storage space when they went to sort out what they were going to take with them for this tour. They scrambled to replace what they could in time to hit the road and make the best of shitty circumstances. That situation would definitely put a little extra spite-filled spring in my step, to say the least.
I did learn an interesting bit of history about their song “Jet Black New Year.” It was supposed to be on War All The Time as the second song in a two song arc with “Tomorrow I’ll Be You.” It turns out that “Jet Black New Year” was a casualty in the negotiations for the band to get away from Victory Records. The song ended up on the Five Stories Falling EP which was released on Victory. I always wondered about that EP because it definitely had the vibe of contractual obligation written all over it. It was four live songs with a studio track added on at the end and even the artwork didn’t really seem to visually fit in with anything the band had done before.
I took my pictures within the allotted three songs and then I made sure to hide in the balcony on stage right so my view would not be obscured. My brain once again became unstuck in time and I was transported back to earlier this century for the rest of their set.
Seeing both Thursday and Rival Schools was a catharsis that I had no idea that I needed. Both bands have helped to keep me together over the years and I felt not necessarily renewed but slightly repaired as I walked back to my car after the show. And slightly repaired is the best I can do these days.
