Good Riddance, Mr. T Experience & Lifetime

Punk was on parade last Thursday at the Zocalo Room. The venue was stocked with skater-punks looking for a good time, and luckily there were just the right bands to give it to them.

I arrived about midway through Lifetime's set and was a bit distressed to have missed the beginning (I've never been to a punk show that started anywhere near the time it was supposed to-just my luck, the one that does had a killer opening band). Lifetime was visiting our fair town from New Jersey and, and got the energy going with rough 'n tumble vocals and heavy guitar.

Mr. T Experience the next band up and put out an excellent set of weird tunes. Songs about things like adjectives and Hitler were teamed with the catchy rhythm of East Bay punk. But for some reason the audience didn't give these guys the Chico welcome I would have hoped for. I'll admit the trio was on the quirky side compared to the other two acts, but so what? And if you were the one yelling at the band to "Shut up and play!" when they were trying to engage the crowd, then I can't stress this enough: that was not cool, you are not cool and you're hurting the Chico scene by pissing off prime talent.

When the guys from Good Riddance took the stage, the crowd seemed to recover their senses. This Santa Cruz-based band had the look: all of them were tattooed in one place or another, and they had the drum kit adorned with a Satanic symbol. More importantly, they had the sound, a angry, fast and heavy sound that got the audience pumped. The crowd danced, moshed and pumped their hearts out for these guys. I sweat that the bassist slipped into some alternate plane of reality where you can play insanely fast and intense for an hour with no stoppages. Good Riddance=good stuff.

-Elizabyth Hiscox

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