Various Artists
The Show, Vol. One
Side One Dummy
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A few simple Yes/No questions will help determine whether you fit the target
demographic for The Show, Volume One, a highlight video from the
first season of the Los Angeles-based cable program:
- Are you sixteen years old?
- Have you ever attended your local stop of the Warped Tour?
- Do you own a skateboard?
- Are you male?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, and certainly if you answered
yes to more than one -- or, more generously, if you wished you could
answer in the affirmative -- The Show could be for you. Amiably hosted
by Side One Dummy Records' Joe Sib, this hour-long collection of
interviews, videos and live performances brings the new-punk noise from
bands like No Use for a Name, Less than Jake and MXPX. Sib makes the most
of a low-key interviewing style as he meets and greets bands in both
Los Angeles and at a Warped Tour stop in San Francisco. Nothing much is
gleaned beyond the usual "doin' it for the fans" prescription,
had-to-be-there tour stories and occasional backstage antics, but Sib's
appealing personality and humorous self-awareness keep things rolling
smoothly. The funniest interviews are short man-on-the-street segments, as
he stops passersby on the streets of LA and finds that none of them have
ever heard of The Show. Sib's chat with Flogging Molly -- a
part-Irish group that adds accordian, acoustic guitar and an Irish reel to
its punk attitude-- is significant if only for the band's mandolin
player, the only female face to grace the screen in these sixty minutes.
Marketing plays as large a part as art, as almost all of the bands featured
have a connection with Side One Dummy, and advertisements for upcoming
records and the label's Web site garner screen time in between segments.
The videos, too, suffer from a sort of desperation, as the bands attempt to
jump on an MTV bandwagon which has long since tipped over into reality show
hell; H2O's frenetic "It Was a Good Day" pigeonholes the group with its
alt-rock Ice Cube cover, while artsy black & white add little to videos from
both Flogging Molly and Madcap. "Total Immortal", a fine Goth-influenced
contribution from AFI (more black and white) underscores Sib's conversation with the
band's singer and guitarist about their emerging influences, but the video
itself is trying in its repetition of established tropes.
The real treats here come in the live segments, despite their uniformly poor
recorded sound. (Bootlegs often sound better than these professional
recordings; some bands suffer more than others, such as Less Than Jake,
whose horn section is almost entirely buried in the mix.) Veteran hardcore
heroes 7 Seconds rip through their cover of Sham 69's "If the Kids are United" in what's perhaps the video's highlight; Avail and the Ataris encapsulate the sound that has
congealed around SoCal's Fat Wreck Chords, heavily represented here.
There's an undeniably uplifting element to The Show, evident in the
care expressed between the bands and their fans. The music, in its mixture
of hardcore and melodic punk, its dual expression of adolescent frustration
and positive reinforcement, has been done before and arguably better -- a
band like the Descendents comes to mind -- but every generation deserves
their own spokesmen. Disdaining the big rock dreams and existential angst
of the previous army of grunge warriors, bands like Kill Your Idols use
The Show to talk to their fans about "real life", in all its petty
disappointments and small triumphs, and there's nothing demographically
specific about that.
-- Ryan Tranquilla
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