This year's Thanksgiving holiday started a little early - 4 days early to be precise. My usual Sunday evening interlude in front of the TV watching football was quickly put aside for a much more exciting evening at the Magic Stick with Easy Action and the Lazy Cowgirls. Every Easy Action show is a cause for celebration, but this was one was an opportunity to see the new drummer for the band, who turned out to be the Chuck Burns, who also plays guitar in Shepwrench and Speedball. The new Easy Action lineup provided that intense burst of energy that was needed to start up the week in great style. Some of the highlights of the Easy Action show included covers of Roxy Music ("The In Crowd", the Dead Boys ("I Need Lunch") as well as my favorite part of the show - the concluding Negative Approach tunes. Negative Approach is now just a historic (and expensive, judging by what their records go for on Ebay) memory, but hearing John scream those old NA songs out again is always a treat for us, who had faithfully followed NA around many years ago.
After all of this, I was tempted to leave early and try to get some sleep before work on Monday, but that was not to be. The Lazy Cowgirls had traveled all the way from LA to play here at the Stick and the sleep would have to wait for a while. It was a wise decision. The Lazy Cowgirls have been around for a long time, but they sure knew how to put their experience to good use. They played well into Monday morning and even threw in a few encores for those of us that stayed till the end.
By Wednesday I had almost recovered and it was back to the Magic Stick for the Gore Gore Girls and the Murder City Wrecks. Unfortunately, it was also the last show for one of my favorite bands - the Gore Gore Girls. It really sucks when a band that you have followed for quite a while calls it quits. You always feel that it was partly your fault that things didn't work out. Maybe if you had gotten more people to see their shows and buy their CD's - the band would still be there. Maybe some more words of encouragement and praise could have kept them going. They're gone now, but the Gore Gore Girls went out with all of the class and hard work that they always displayed. Good luck to Amy, Melody and Monica !!! (BTW, you can still pick up their CD - Strange Girls on Get Hip records and check out why they were so cool !!!)
By now the Magic Stick was packed and the Murder City Wrecks were coming up on stage. There is only one thing wrong with this band - they don't play enough !!!! Luckily, the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving is an annual event with these guys and everybody there knew what a kind of a great night they were in for. The Wrecks quickly re-introduced the concept of a mosh pit to the Magic Stick and there were bodies flying all over the place. Their music is an unrelenting barrage of raw Detroit-made rock & roll that only seems to pop up around here. Every song seemed to turn up the energy level even higher and it seemed impossible that they could even sound better - but they did. Eventually, everything ended in an explosion of noise, music, screaming guitars, banging drums, flying bodies and cold beer - the Murder City Wrecks had done it once again. Everybody headed out to celebrate Thanksgiving, the music of the Wrecks was probably bouncing around the heads of quite a few people sitting around the turkey the next day.
