Valentine's Day with Sick Thoughts (New Orleans), Midnite Snaxxx, and Talkies at the Ivy Room. 8:30pm, $8/10. Adv. tix now on sale
SICK THOUGHTS If you don’t know Sick Thoughts, you don’t know punk. The band is the mighty Drew Owen. Baltimore born and bred, he then up and moved to the swamps of New Orleans while still a teenager. The general consensus was he’d be another casualty of The Big Easy decadence, and would soon be seen hitting up tourists for money on Bourbon Street with a dog on a rope. But somehow he got hooked up with the best (worst?) folks in the city and kept making great music. That, and the fact that forty-ounce bottles just bounce off his head, have kept him alive. Rock and roll romance and the promise of socialized health care sent him to the (imaginary?) home of Killed By Death punk, Helsinki, Finland. Which makes perfect sense—this album is like the perfect KBD record, full of buzzsaw guitars, machine gun drums and hooks that hit like a tire iron. Owen’s brand of aural early-20s angst, with doses of Zero Boys, Reatards, and early Crüe, mixed with the stench of the streets, has never sounded better. This album clearly puts Sick Thoughts on top of the punk heap. It’s Owen’s world—get in it!
MIDNITE SNAXXX “Since their 2017 record, Chew On This, Oakland’s Midnite Snaxxx have been spitting singles in fits and starts, but the short forms remain their forte. No disrespect to the full length lovers, but the band’s whiplash spirt is best captured between two sides of short attention span snotty punk built for sunshine hijinx. The A-side, “Let Me Do What I Want,” is a denim-vested world beater that’s not content to take no for an answer and isn’t afraid to lob the first volley in food fight fisticuffs. The song might as well stand as a credo for the California combo – loud, fast and brash – it’s a femme punk fuck you to the ruling class, or at the very least, a middle finger to the store manager on the way out of the sliding doors.“ - Raven Sings the Blues
Bay Area four-piece that will take you back to the glamorous days of slick guitar-driven power pop. Frontman Ray Seraphin (whom you may know from Glitz, Legs, and other local bands) describes Talkies as a band "combining the dark, haunting tones of EMPIRE and pop accessibility of the SHOES." - The Bay Bridged
