My amigo Jorge from ColombianPunk.com is helping to promote the Casualties for the Bogota show in December. He’s in town (NYC) staying with me and we went to the Casualties show in at Nokia Times Square. Jorge was able to talk our way back stage (with me translating, scary shit if you’ve heard me speak Spanish) thanks to the super cool folks with the band, Nokia event staff & management. The guys very graciously helped film a promo to get the word out about the Bogota and Medellin Colombia gigs.. Super cool guys and a great show afterwards. Looking forward to seeing them in South America.. should be nutz. I”m heading to Mexico and an undisclosed Caribbean island tomorrow and I haven’t even packed, but I’ll try to get more video up, including the promo as soon as possible.
So I’m all amped for the big Youth Brigade/Casualties show at Cafe Europa in Brooklyn, NYC on Saturday 9/19/09. I mean, I literally postpone a couple of trips to catch one of my all time favorite hard core bands the Casualties. I just bought their recent CD off i-tunes “We are all we have” and i have to say it is excellent stuff. I also want to see Youth Brigade, I mean these are two legendary punk bands, why aren’t they playing in Manhattan?
Well, I figure its going to be a packed show, so I prepare for the day by going to see a special documentary screening of “Let Them Know” the story of the Youth Brigade and BYO Records. I don’t regret spending a couple hours of a beautiful college football Saturday holed up in a dark theater checking this doc out. This is one good documentary and it deals with the often overlooked West Coast punk scene so often overshadowed by the scenes in NYC and England. With interviews with Fat Mike from NOFX, Seven Seconds, Bouncing Souls and of course the Stern brothers from Youth Brigade, it is a truly entertaining, mostly hilarious and slightly uplifting documentary. It really made me appreciate what punks went through in the 80s in the U.S.
I arrived at Cafe Europa around 8:30PM and was dismayed to find out I arrived just in time to hear the last :20-:30 of the Casualties “Unknown Soldier” with about 100 or so punks in full fury in the pit. That was it? Final song!? WTF? What kind of punk show is over at 8:30PM on a Saturday in NYC none the less? What do punks have to be in bed by 10pm or something?
I was really dismayed, proceeded to down 4 beers in a row but the evening was almost salvaged when I met Shawn Stern, lead singer of Youth Brigade, who was out mingling with the crowd before the show.
I congratulated him on an excellent documentary (he executive produced and got the most air time). We also discussed the punk scene down in Central and Latin America. Shawn’s a big surfer and he indicated he’s ready to tour down there and get some good surfing in.
He’s a cool guy, as expected and YB proceeded to put on a hell of a show. Here are a couple of clips for your viewing pleasure. YB and Shawn, thanks for all you’ve done for punk… oh and thanks for salvaging my night.
This was a great show and I was lucky enough to get to go backstage and meet Tim and the gang from the band. Nice guys and very talented.. Chicago representing punk!
My name is Robert G. Rose (I use my middle initial because I’m not Robert Rose the Jewelry Designer, Robert Rose the football player or any of the other thousands of Robert Rose’s in the world).
I live in New York City and I love punk rock music. This page is dedicated to Punk music and [...]
