Oi! Oi! Oi! Fury's Party!

Last night, the Nar was lucky, nay, privileged enough to be invited to the Launch party of Warren Kinsella’s new book, Fury’s Hour. It was incidentally also the debut of his new band, Shit From Hell.

Now, I have to point out that out of my 10 daily readers, about 9 of them come from Warren’s site. So ask yourself, would it be in my best interest to say something that could potentially deny me 9 readers a day? Hell yes! But I kid.

The show was actually great, with a few minor issues. Here are some observations:

-Firstly, the heat. Holy shit, it was hot. Sneaky Dee’s is always a hot place, but the upstairs with little or no ventilation and the sun beating through the windows made Hell seem like a chilly place to hang out. To make matters worse, I was talking to a friend that works there, and she remarked that they had kind of forgotten to turn on the A/C until about 8:30 – the show started at 6. Oops.

-The sound guy deserves a kick in the nuts. It took this kid until the middle of the second act to realize that A) the stage left mic didn’t work, and B) the stage right guitar mic didn’t work either. Once he got the guitar mic’ed, it was WAY too loud, drowning out everything save the bass.

-There was food and free beer tickets, but I seemed to miss out on the beer tickets. Don’t know what happened there.

-Warren is a super nice guy, and knows how to work a crowd. You’d think with the whole place swirling around him, he’d never find the time to speak to gutter trash like yours truly. Think again! Warren was standing at the door when we came in, and knew who I was as soon as introduced myself. Made me all warm and gushy inside (as opposed to the typical shunned and afraid I normally feel at social functions).

-Opening act was Arms to Illustrate (no site I can find). Kids from Whitby I’d never heard before, and they were surprisingly good. In my humble opinion, a lot more metal than punk, but that’s splitting hairs these days, isn’t it? I could tell they are still pretty green, but as I remarked last night, I wish I was that good when I was there age. These guys will only get better, and they’re song writing seemed to reflect it throughout their set. Keep an eye peeled for this group.

-Oi, Oi, Oi. Shit from Hell brought the classics back in style. How punk is this: the singer got hit by a freakin’ street car a few days ago and still showed up to play, arm in a sling! Nice. The original tunes admittedly need a little work to tighten up, but the covers (“Barney Rubble is my Double” totally sent me hurtling back to my early teen years in my first punk band) were awesome. One of my favourite punk rock quotes was made by Cheech Marin in some movie “It’s only punk, man. You don't have to know how to play; you just have to look good”. And Shit from Hell looked good. Being the doofus that I am, I completely forgot to buy a CD to review for Friday. Sorry guys. I can tell you that there are samples available on their website here.

So all in all, a good night that sadly ended all too early. I’d love to sit down for some bevies with Warren again and pick his brain about an era of punk rock music I’m sadly ignorant of. I’ll admit, my experience with punk rock began with Suffer by Bad Religion (which I heard last night, props to the DJ!), and this guys pool of experience goes way beyond anything I’d ever know. But then again, I’m just a washed up punk. But aren’t we all? Wasn’t that the point of last night?