bleeding fucking valentine to gbh

This post is supposed to be a review of the unfuckingbelievable GBH show we went to on Tuesday night, tallying up the number of times we were punched in the chest and spat on with blood and how we cracked a beer bottle on the floor and screamed into the mosh pit but I'll give you a heads up...

Like many of the past music posts, it will become introspective and lovely and all those purple and red bruises on my chest and shoulders will resemble something not unlike a bouquet of spring roses in the fuzzy logic of nostalgia.

So if you will, please slip on your Lady Gloves and let's peruse photos of bleeding heart punks (literally bleeding from their hearts because someone head butted them in the chest).

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If you don't know GBH, 'tis alright. 'Tis sad but 'tis alright. I'm assuming that if you don't know GBH then you don't know much about street punk and that is just not excusable. It'll change your life if your life needs changing. It yells at you to yell back. It's aggression without the violence. It's broken teeth and bleeding lips and goofy smiles. It's, I guess, whatever you want it to be. For me, GBH is something I loved when I first heard it on the rear speakers of a minivan my cousin was driving to Dairy Queen in the summer of 1997. Here's the first UK82 song I ever heard:

It grows on you, I swear.

Growing up with parents who listened to the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and other jam band delights I'm sure played into my interest in something completely counter to their hippie soundtrack. At the time though I didn't question it. The slobbering, zit-faced mess that was street punk felt like a higher power beckoning me to join them. On one hand I had the familiar world of hippie rock with its hand-holding, world unity, love-preaching psychedelia and on the other hand I was opening my eyes to a world of screeching rants and cuts and bruises and the oddly comforting assurance that everyone gets angry and it's ok to yell and kick because it feels like the most rational way to get your message across, the message being political and usually morose. Punk music was this running commentary about society and class, about bigotry and sexism, about issues that needed a spotlight. So obviously my fling with punk started right there in the backseat of that minivan on the way to Dairy Queen. God Save the Queen, hahaha.

Later while in high school I threw out certain "secular" items I owned in the name of Christianity, most regrettably my punk albums, artwork, magazines and posters. What can I say? I was a complete moron surrounded by church-loving Christian peers in a very malleable time of my life, but that is another story for another day. I didn't listen to punk for years. Even after I considered myself agnostic I felt I had moved on from punk. I was listening to late 60s rock and figured I had found what I was looking for. And then I met Marc.

Marc was this asshole punk who listened to The Exploited and Fugazi, who prescribed to the politics fastened in its scratchy rhythms and lyrics. He was a soft-spoken skateboarder who'd smoke two cigarettes at a time and talk to me about Minor Threat and anti-consumerism, who had callused fingers and scars all over his legs, who told me he loved me before I was done being in love with my high school boyfriend. And without knowing it I'm sure, revived my sleeping weakness for punk. I bet he thought that he introduced me to it, too. I'm sorry to say babe, that honor goes to the Dairy Queen trip in the minivan.

So to say the GBH show was unfuckingbelievable is an understatement. It was a show that was a culmination of my 13 year old self covertly listening to Slip It In in my bedroom, asking my mom to buy me a Circle Jerks album from Hastings on her way back from work in Albuquerque and then a decade later listening to Marc rattle on about Minor Threat like he was teaching me something I didn't know and not correcting him because I was silly in love and we felt crazy around each other. So yeah, GBH was pretty damn good. It was 'I want to go to a punk show every night for the rest of my life' good (even without an extensive and slightly trite back story).

a fairly recent snap of Colin Abrahall

Oh, yeah, wait... after the show we tallied 7 scratches, 1 large welt from a full beer bottle hurled from the stage, 2 broken toes, 11 quarter size bruises, 2 fist sized bruises, 1 swollen lip, 1 ripped shirt, 2 faces full of spit and 6 ringing eardrums on Marc, my brother and me.