Prologue
As long as I can remember, the scene in St. Petersburg has been one that has fought to get its shit together. If I had to make a judgement call, I would say that it is worse now than ever before. The old reliable promoters are taking it easy leaving slack club promoters and owners to pick up the slack, yet inevitably drop the ball. Drop the ball they did on this show.
Picture it: My excitement was at its peak when Reid from Volcom emailed me to tell me that the Volcom Tour featuring Valient Thorr, Riverboat Gamblers, ASG, and Totimoshi was coming to St. Petersburg. Months later, much to my chagrin, Reid again emailed me to let me know that the show had been moved from the State Theatre across the street to the Garage. The Garage is a half bit show venue that was initially opened by the folks that lease out the State Theatre, with the intention to showcase local bands. When the local bands lost interest in the Garage for one reason or another, they decided to start booking other regional and touring bands. This show was moved to the Garage because the State Theatre was double booked on the night of the 10th. Then the promoters at the Garage did absolutely nothing to promote it until less than a week prior to the show. It’s as though they wanted to see the show fail.
With that said Friday August 10 finally arrived, and nothing, not even crappy promoters, could take away my excitement. Unfortunately because the promoter never mentioned any door or show times so I missed Totimoshi. Onward to the next band ASG
ASG is a band that I am relatively familiar with. I’ve seen the a couple of times before and really liked them, so I was pretty excited to see them again. I grabbed a beer and made my way to the front of the stage. ASG is a hard band to pen down which is a good thing in my book. Part power rock, part southern rock, part surfer, and part punk rock sensibilities, ASG did a good job of keeping the audience entertained for the duration of their 30 minute set. Next up was the band I was most excited to see play, the Riverboat Gamblers.
Over the last few years the Riverboat Gamblers have built quite the reputation of being one of the best live bands around. How they put everything they have into their live show on a nightly basis is beyond me. Kicking the set off with “Rattle Me Bones” from Something to Crow About, Riverboat focused on songs from their last two albums like the last few times that I’ve seen them play. I was pretty excited by the fact that they played two new songs, “Pilgrims” and “Don’t Answer Me.” Both songs sounded on par with their newer material if not a bit more developed. I love that Riverboat is not afraid to grow as a band as evident from their earlier material up to their newer stuff. Mike left the stage and climbed on things, and the rest of the band flawlessly held everything together. After 45 minutes of seizure inducing movement on the part of the band, Riverboat left the stage as Valient Thorr set up their gear in preparation to close the night out.
After traveling all the way from North Carolina…err, umm I mean Venus, Valient Thorr finally took the stage, and in a blur of hair (head, facial, and body) and sweat whipped everyone into a frenzy. The air was filled with anthems of political conspiracy that one would assume were written about the current climate of repression on the planet of Venus rather than situation on our home planet. You know, because nothing questionable has happened in the good ole world in the past few years that would esteem such rabble rousing. All joking aside, Valient Thorr was once again amazing. Bare with me if you will: Valent Thorr is like a mutation of AC/DC by way of Metallica, a Southern Pentecostal preacher by way of someone like David Icke, and the dudes from your high-school that used to drive around in their T-Top Camero all day whilst being wasted. They (along with Riverboat) are one of the best live bands that I’ve ever seen. Maybe it’s the deranged dialog by Valient himself between songs, or maybe it’s their furious seemingly unstoppable steamroller of a live show. Valient Thorr posses that quality that very few bands do that makes me want to see them time and again and never get tired in doing so.
All in all, when you consider the chain of events that potentially conspired against this show, things went off without a hitch. Sure there were those morons in the “pit” that don’t understand that if no-one wants to dance, and you are one of two people total “moshing” then maybe you should count your losses, and give up on the foolish idea that splitting skulls might be a good idea. But I wasn’t going to let those events and morons get in the way of me enjoying a great show, and what a great show it was.
