Fulcrum Benefit Show

As I sat and waited for one of the bands to finish setting up, I couldn't help but wonder how the locals were going to react to the seven hours of punk and metal going down at the park on Sunday. I had to laugh as I envisioned some elderly couple taking a stroll down to the Chico Paper Company, only to be rudely interrupted by the obnoxiousness that is Botchii, but more on that later. Fortunately, the show went off without a hitch, and from the amount of people hitting the donation box, Rene Stephens and Fulcrum Records made a solid chunk of change which will hopefully help keep the store around for awhile. Although the show wasn't always fantastic, it definitely accomplished its goal, which was to get people together on a Sunday afternoon to support the community and local music.
Put on by Fulcrum, Idlevinyl Records and the Good Shepard's Studio (who I'm told records kids and their bands for free), the show got off to an interesting start with the junior high punk rock of Agent Mecrob. Sounding like a Romper Room version of Minor Threat, the band was very quick to point out their likes and dislikes in their song titles, including "I Hate Allergies," "I Like Soda," and my personal favorite, "My Teacher Is Mean and Makes Me Do Homework Sometimes." My only concern was how the lead singer avoided getting heat stroke wearing a big black pirate cape on his back all day. Next was Esterdaye who worked through a solid, if not entirely exciting, set of Hoobastank-inspired melodic hard rock with some emo lyrics and vocals.
Unfortunately for Gruk, the sound system by this point seemed to be having some serious troubles. Luckily however, lead singer Rachel Loveless' chainsaw vocals were able to rise above the muddled sound and salvage what was left of their intense punk set. Botchii was up next, and their brief 15-minute set went on for about 14 minutes too long. I've seen Botchii before so I knew what to expect, but this time, their jokes seemed to fall on completely deaf ears as the lead singer went around asking random girls in the crowd if they had boyfriends. One of the highlights of the show came when some fed up man in the back started yelling at them to get off the stage.
After a quick yogurt run, I made it back in time to catch West By Swan. The sound problems were fortunately solved by the time they started and the foursome provided perhaps the best set of the afternoon. The group played an interesting set of emotionally charged, mostly instrumental songs that flowed seamlessly into one another. My only complaint was that they occasionally broke into long, seemingly improvisational passages that could have been actual songs, or just them warming up or tuning for the next song.
I gotta mention Brad of Nothing Left who kind of served as the MC of the whole benefit. Rather than simply having downtime between bands, Brad entertained the crowd with some cool punk covers on acoustic guitar from bands like Bad Religion, Social Distortion and the Mr. T Experience. The show wrapped up with the enthusiastic punk / metal of Double Down, and the thrashing hardcore metal of Brain In A Cage, who amassed a strong amount of fans and supporters and brought the long show to a solid finish.
- Landon Moblad
- Photo by Chris Schreiber

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