Inflatable Supermodels, The Ballistics, 1208, Capacity 3, EWI & A Moment's Loss

The variety of punk rock choices on this particular Wednesday night must have drove some would-be audience members into a conniption fit. With the Manifest Destiny showcase happening at Mr. Lucky and the Punk-O-Rama tour scheduled to hit The Brick Works on the same night, I thought The Red Room's Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Shame show might suffer from the competition. As luck would have it, the Punk-O-Rama Tour was cancelled due to the hospitalization of Guttermouth's singer…which is too bad for the 21-and-under crowd, but good for the bands slated for the Red Room and Mr. Lucky this evening.
With true journalistic integrity, I arrived at the show just in time to catch the last two songs from Reno's A Moment's Loss. Damn. Although they looked like a bunch of self-pitying emo kids fraught with anorexia nervosa, they played an excellent set of punk with solid musicianship and engaging songwriting. Their mid-song time changes and captivating stage presence will insure my attendance at their next Chico engagement. Well done.
Seattle's EWI proved less appetizing. They had a pronounced pop sensibility mixed with their one-two rhythms and preemptively catchy choruses, and I soon found myself standing outside. EWI wasn't bad - in fact, they played admirably well. My personal tastes just didn't find them to my suiting.
Capacity 3 had an interesting duality working for them. With his Les Paul hanging below his balls, the guitarist sang in typical English-oriented vocal fashion, adding a 'Y' sound to every vowel that left his mouth. The chubby, shirtless, spectacle-adorned bassist added the screaming element to their music, and displayed mesmeric stage presence. Their drummer was tight and the group had some good original tunes in their repertoire, as well as The Romantics' "What I Like About You." They held their set together with variety and charm.
I found the last-minute inclusion of L.A.'s 1208 to be quite a treat. However, most of the audience seemed apathetic. Freshly released from the Punk-O-Rama Tour, the group presented great guitar tones, old-school backup vocals and well-written songs. Unfortunately, it seemed that 1208 were painting by numbers a bit, perhaps disappointed by the less-than receptive audience. They played well, but without much enthusiasm.
And then came the show's low point: The Ballistics' set change. A half-hour set change at a show of this nature is simply unforgivable. During their set, they mentioned something about how you respect yourself as much as you respect others. If they had any respect for the following band or the audience, they would have gotten their shit together or at least played a short set due to all their time-wasting bumbling. With only two bands to go, and at that late of an hour, that kind of unprofessional, dubious behavior was entirely disrespectful. Oh, and they even broke the stage with a dive off of the bar. They had good presence though.
And at last, with great anticipation the Inflatable Supermodels stepped on stage. Though the instrumentalists were tight, playing fun, diverse punk rock with conviction, the show belonged to singer Joe Manente. Imagine a sillier version of Iggy Pop. Shirtless and dripping with water, the maniacal singer was simply all over the place, enticing the audience with his spastic antics that included a guest appearance of Britney Spears (actually, a picture of her which he stapled to his chest - ouch!) and his constant "Oooh yeah!" catch phrase, bellowed with the panache of a professional wrestler with a Kool-Aid Man fixation. Yes, yes, some of their songs are a bit low-brow ("The Ripper," a song about fucking sorority girls up the pooper, for instance)…but if that's so, call me pond scum because I loved every minute of it. Their set was cut short due to a broken guitar string and concluded with "Puff The Magic Dragon." I simply can't wait to see what they have in store for us next time.
- Serge Thunderberg

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