“ I have many fantastic pictures of Shogo.”
-Walter Schreifels on his Japanese friend-
P’s Take: Me and Uncle T and the rest of the mighty Bolshevix have been friends for a long time, since we were 14 or so. So our taste in music, obviously with differences here and there, are pretty consistent. And we spent a lot of years going to the punk rock shows, doing punk rock things. And punk rockers are not immune from old-school sentimentality by a long shot. Lemme splain.
This past Sunday, T, his wife Sister Michele my brother Edawg and myself went down to Maxwell’s in Hoboken to see Walter Schreifels. There was so much remembered of things past going on Marcel Proust even would have encouraged people to move the fuck on. Did I just drop a snotty literary reference? Yas.
Some kid named was Brandon opened up, him and his acoustic guitar. I think he needed a ride home or something. He opened up with a cover of The Modern Lovers Hospital (my least favorite Lovers song) that was so fucking earnest my brother broke into hyena laughter at the “I go to bakeries” line and I had to spend the rest of his set looking at my shoes and wall. I was embarrassed for him. Jonathan Richman can get away with a lot of dumb lyrics cause he’s Jonathan Richman. This Brandon guy, not so much.
Then Walter came on, lookin’ all substitute teacherish. Let me get back to my point from paragraph 1. I take T’s opinion as valid on bands always. I had never heard Schreifels solo album, in fact, I was only familiar with Gorilla Biscuits and Quicksand. But if T was down with this cat, that was enough for me. Usually our taste doesn’t diverge so drastically. Usually.
Schreifels seems like a good dude. His band are made up of longtime friends, they all seem like solid, righteous cats. All of them have that old scene vibe. But fuck, how much memory lane can you do? They opened with a mostly acoustic set of AF’s Society Sucker, did a Quicksand number,a song Walt wrote for Civ back in day called Don’t Gotta Prove It and a medley of Start Today and a Morrissey song that right now escapes me. All of this going on with the centerpiece song of the night being An Open Letter To the Scene, a song about among other things, the death of Raybeez from Warzone of some years ago. What the fuck is going on here?
It’s not that the music was bad. It wasn’t. Or that it was corny and earnest like that kid Brandon who needed a ride home, it wasn’t that either. I just didn’t like it and I couldn’t place why exactly till later. I thought at the time it was because I didn’t have enough money for beer, but I didn’t like it cuz it made me sad. I’m 32 now and I guess I look back at my old days, the Bolshevix old days with fondness and I guess that’s what Schreifels was doing, only more so, being that he was in seminal NYHC bands back in the day. And I think that is what made in uncomfortable to watch and listen to, that and the fact that a Gorilla Biscuits/Morissey acoustic medley jam is just against nature. What made it uncomfortable maybe was that I fear being a skinny old punk rocker, lookin’ all substitute teacherish.
T’s Take: If you like music but hate crowds and hassles Sunday night shows at Maxwell’s are usually the way to go. I think during Brandon Reilly’s (Nightmare of You) solo acoustic set there were about 25 people there. This shouldn’t be a slight against Reilly either. People just don’t come out on Sunday nights like they do Fridays and Saturdays. Truth be told I actually dug Reilly’s set a lot. Hospital may not be the best Modern Lover’s song as P noted but it’s nevertheless a good song mixing great lyrics like “I still get jealous of your old boyfriends in the suburbs sometimes” with corny ones like “I go to bakeries all day long cause there’s a lack of sweetness in my life”. Either way the songs been stuck in my head now since Sunday to the point where I had to put on the “Live at Berkeley” album yesterday to get it out. Aside from Hospital Reilly did a bunch of stuff from Nightmare of you that I recognized which is odd cause I don’t actually own anything by them. Either way he seemed like a good guy and I hope someone gave him that ride home.
Walter Schreifels definitely brought about some mixed emotions during his set though. Schreifels himself, like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, was a “funny guy”. He had the sound guy play the band off with that take it to the limit song from Scarface. And his stage banter, while definitely unrehearsed and not always hilarious, still showed him having a good time and that shit is infectious (usually). Which is to say that I had a good time while my wife found him somewhat annoying. I think she would have preferred less chit-chat more rock. Which brings me to my second and more important point about Walter. Walter comes from a long line of Hardcore bands so you would think that maybe his set would’ve been (for lack of a better word) “harder”. I think this is what a lot of people probably expected. And often (especially when going to shows) expectations can make or break an experience. Sometimes bands don’t meet your expectations at all, sometimes they hit them dead on and other times they exceed them. I’m not sure entirely what I expected from Walter. I’m a huge Quicksand fan. In fact they were one of the first bands I remember being genuinely upset about breaking up. Rival Schools reminded me why Post Hardcore should be a relevant genre once more. And Walter has (more than) paid his scene dues over the years going back to starting the Youth Crew movement. More recently I had a great deal of time spent with his new solo album (review here). So I think, humor aside, my expectations were more or less in line with the performance.
Had Walter come out and straight brought the Hardcore for 45 minutes we all would have surely had a great time. He clearly knows the genre. Instead we heard ballads about Ray Beez and acoustic-ish versions of Thorn In My Side (Quicksand), and Pushed Too Far (Sick Of It All) and while rife with nostalgia for sure they bring me to my third and final point. Personally I liked them, but I can understand why people who see the originals as beloved wouldn’t. I can also understand how presenting them in such a manner smacks of nostalgia and even a little corniness. But I’d like to ask this. Would you rather Walter went the route of Sick of It All and put out 4 or 5 identical tired Hardcore albums over the last 15 years? Or would you rather he do something a little different and fresh? Or just do nothing? And look I’m not here to diss Sick of It All either. I still love them and look forward to seeing them play. But lets be honest. They haven’t had a solid album beginning to end since “Scratch the Surface”. Walter in the mean time has gone from Hardcore to Post Hardcore to Acoustic Rock and for better or worse has kept the original spirit (call it nostalgia if you will). So what do you want from these old Hardcore guys? I don’t have the answer.
Oh one more thing. Walter’s guitarist was the fucking King of Miami, Dave Hill. Awesome. Check him out to “feel the magic” and check out the below video of Walter and crew doing Don’t Gotta Prove It from the show we’ve just rambled about.
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I would be willing to call “Built to Last” SOIA’s last solid album. Huge drop-off after that though.
you might be right dick. but as good as us vs. them is, ya gotta admit it’s a dumb song. but i’ma give it to you, i should’ve given soia a little more credit than i did. i will say this though for as many ehh albums as they’ve put out they’re still one of my favorite bands.