Scream / Rustbuckit - Black Cat Dec 20 2009

Rustbuckit - Something snowy happened to Dykstra who were not here to open, or maybe it was bankruptcy court. Anyway, we have four older guys who clearly have their chops and are grinding out some punk related straight ahead rock. They introduce themselves as a couple of guys from Black Market Baby and Steve from Minor Threat/GI. That makes perfect sense as this is in the BMB style as I remember it at least. Kind of reminded me of Easy Action (Post Negative Approach) with a totally different vocal style. Good rapid fire body blows delivered here, more than hook oriented pop. Solid, well done and glad to see them still rocking.

Scream - Happily, the Black Cat was able to move this sell-out from the back room stage to the full stage. They easily doubled the attendance with that move as the club was moderately packed in spite of the weekend of snow. The original four banged out two songs before introducing a newer second guitarist to play the rest of the way. Apparently, they are still a bit active as they had new songs to debut. I kind of assumed this was a one-off to get a paid trip back home for Christmas or something. And maybe it was as Brian Baker also was on hand for the encores adding more guitar pyrotechnics. The songs were great to hear again, always a tuneful band, the songs rocked with a mainstream style that was not pretentious. The sound started murky and confused but eventually righted itself as it often does. That distracted me a little, but the band was strong and together and the crowd enjoyed it a lot. They had a sax out for two of their more reggae inspired numbers, so lots of good variety in their set. The very bald Peter Stahl had a song about 1995 being the year of the bald singer, but I would like to see his thesis as it seemed the 80s was more where that happened. But he looked good and sounded better, so that was the main thing. The one key to Scream's success was their backing vocals (overall singing for that matter) and I had half forgotten how much that Skeeter and Franz helped move the songs along. I will happily plow through snow to see these guys anytime.

Quote of the Night: Between a couple of guys in the opener... "God those guys (Scream) got old." "Yeah, and we didn't?". I have to say Scream looked about 20 years older, two of the Rustbuckit guys looked about 35 years older.